num_pages: 282
description: Emil Coetzee a civil servant in his fifties is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced.Like everyone else he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose his identity.But why has Emils life turned out so different from his parents who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah losing himself in it?Prize-winning novelist Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu traces Emils life from boyhood to manhood  from his days at a privileged boarding school with the motto It is here that boys become the men of history to his falling in love with the ever-elusive Marion whose free-spirited nature has dire consequences for his heart  all the while showing how Emil becomes a man apart.Set in a southern African country that is never named this powerful tale of human fallibility  told with empathy generosity and a light touch  is an excursion into the interiority of the coloniser.
language: English
title: The History of Man
publisher: Penguin Books South Africa