Fiela's Child

"This book is going to break your heart. Be prepared to cry your eyes out, to feel immense anger, to laugh, to cry again. What a book! I don’t want to give too much away, but as you mentioned, a white boy is raised by a woman of mixed race. He lives there for 9 years before being discovered. He is taken away to go and live with what a judge tells him is his “real” family. His life is upturned from one of love and affection and education, to one of violence and ignorance and cruelty. I don’t want to give it all away, but the key here is about identity. Do we find identity in skin colour, in place, in names, in those who love us? How do we know who we are and how and where we belong? “South African authors tend to be overlooked in favour of global bestselling authors” My mom was a high school Afrikaans teacher to English-language pupils. I was a sickly child and so I would often be put on a blanket in the corner of my mom’s classroom and I would listen to her teach. Fiela’s Child was one of the prescribed texts she taught. I was completely enthralled by the way she brought the story to life and read out the different characters and the different worlds they inhabited. It might sound dramatic, but it is almost as though that book is in my blood – because of having grown up with it. But why might it appeal to other readers? I would say the strengths of the novel lie in the powerful characterisation, the human-ness of the people and their beliefs, their flaws, their actions. One of the important things to remember about the past is that we are all tourists when we try to access it. We cannot know it completely; we can only hope to get some idea of it. Dalene Matthee is an extraordinary tour guide, taking us into the past and allowing us to live there with her characters, experiencing life as though we are one of them."