A Sin of Omission

"There’s no getting away from it: the story of Stephen (Malusi) Mzamane is difficult. Found starving in the South African scrub, he and his brother Mzamo are adopted by the Anglican missionary establishment and trained for the missionary life themselves. Blighted hopes and wrenching loyalties follow as both, in different ways, are ensnared in and betrayed by prejudices hard-wired into the Anglican church of the late eighteenth century. In the hands of a careless writer, A Sin of Omission might have been an impossible read, but Marguerite Poland’s restraint, whilst not sparing us, beckons us on. We trust her, and when you trust an author, you enjoy being absorbed into the world being offered, whatever the delights or otherwise of that world itself. And so, though sorrowing for Stephen, we can enjoy Unity Wills, a woman called to be a soldier of Christ yet only a “Sunday worshipper in her best bonnet”; Mfundisi Turvey, who has learned Xhosa “and not only in the imperative”; and most of all, enjoy being swept from the Donsa bush to Shropshire, from Grahamstown to Canterbury in prose that rings like a bell—subtle, bold, unafraid. I personally was drawn to historical fiction because in my family, history was always more ‘story’ than ‘history’. Not much difference was made between ‘then’ and ‘now’. But there is a difference between then and now. I find it fascinating, for example, that during this Covid-19 outbreak, boredom is as prevalent as fear. Was it the same during the plague? I don’t think so. And then today, dying is deemed the worst thing that can happen to you, even though until perhaps the nineteenth century, the worst thing was to die unshriven. Yet at the same time, stories set in the past offer that essential commodity, hope, history by definition being an account of things that have come and gone. An excellent time, then, to turn to historical fiction. But if you’re fed up of being exhorted to read, here’s something just to ponder: 200 years from now, how will the story of the 2020 pandemic be told? Would we recognise ourselves, or would we be saying, ‘You think that’s how it was? Well, let me tell you . . .’"