Islands: A Novel

"This is another personal novel. When I was 9, I used to visit the Education Museum that was across the road from my school. I would go multiple times a week and stay for ages. The reason I went was because Dr Sleigh was the curator of that museum and I absolutely adored him. I would go and talk to him and he would tell me all kinds of stories about the history of South Africa, and about different fashions and gadgets and ideas. Years later, when his novel came out, I was surprised. I had not known that he was working on a novel, nor that it was such an impressive work. Looking at the novel’s almost 800 pages and small font, one can feel quite daunted. But what Dr Sleigh—I can never bring myself to call him Dan!—managed to do was to create a compelling narrative out of a painful and problematic history, doing so with nuance and sensitivity, yet never relinquishing the historical facts. Dr Sleigh was a historian, and an admirable one at that. As a historian he took a very no-nonsense approach. He sought the facts. In his fiction, he took the same approach. Where there are gaps in the record, Dr Sleigh would fill them by researching further and making informed decisions. He did not give way to flights of fancy or fantasy – something that perhaps happens too often in historical fiction these days."