Islands

A major work of literature, and one of the most important novels to have come out of South Africa.

Islands covers the first half-century or so of Dutch settlement at the Cape, opening with a view from inside a Khoi nation, the Goringhaicona, under the leadership of Autshumao. For the indigenous peoples it is the beginning of the end of a way of life in close interaction with the subcontinent, its seasons and rhythms, its harshness and abundance. It was during Autshumao’s time that the first key woman of South Africa’s post-colonization story makes her appearance; Krotoa, brought into Commander Van Riebeeck’s household as Eva, go-between and interpreter between the Europeans and the Khoi. It is her mixed-race child, Pieternella, who becomes the pivot of all the action in this unforgettable epic.

Through the life stories of key male figures, yet all of them defined in one way or another by Pieternella, the reader is offered an understanding of the vast historical forces at work in the shaping of the world in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Behind these “little men” lies the shadowy Dutch East India Company which, ultimately, decides the fate of all the millions ruled by it; it is as inexorable and as mindlessly cruel as Nature itself.