Another Country by Karel Schoeman
Another Country by Karel Schoeman - The 1734th greatest fiction book of all time
Hardcover, ISBN 9781856190497
Publisher: Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd, 1991
Used - Very Good+. This book is in very good condition. The cover have some very limited signs of wear and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.
This is an exceptional book and speaks to my soul. It's set in the 1870s in Bloemfontein and follows a solitary Dutch man who comes to South Africa, like many other Europeans at the time, for health reasons. The dry air of the veld is regarded as the best climate for those suffering with Tuberculosis. It raises questions of class, colonialism, language, death and dying. For me, Schoeman, like other Afrikaans writers, but even better, describes the Karoo in its most magical, solitary, infinite, beautiful alluring way.
Just like the vastness of the Karoo, Schoeman's small tale is majestic and awe-inspiring.
Translated by David Schalkwyk from the Afrikaans edition. From the fly-leaf: “Can a white man, a settler from another country, become an African?” An epic novel infused with the spirit of Africa.
South African Schoeman makes his American debut with a novel of high purpose—one that movingly explores that other country that for his ailing hero is both Africa and death. As stately as a Bach fugue, the novel tells the story of Versluis, a wealthy Dutchman who travels to South Africa in the 1870's in search of a cure for his tuberculosis. The long journey from the coast to Bloemfontein—then capital of the Boer republic of the Orange Free State, and noted for its healthy climate—almost kills him, but he gradually recovers over the summer. The townspeople, a cosmopolitan mix, are solicitous, but Versluis- -affected by a lonely childhood and fears of dying—rebuffs their friendship and withdraws into himself and his illness. Nonetheless, Versluis is compelled on occasion to join local society: He dines with the hospitable Hirschs, a family that exudes vitality; reads poems for a German literary society; and finds himself increasingly drawn to Pastor Scheffler and his crippled sister. The town is surrounded by empty veld—symbolic here of the emptiness of death, and of Africa itself. It's an alien place, the Pastor suggests, for Europeans torn between two worlds who, unasked, ``brought civilization and dumped it as if Africa were some kind of trash- heap''—a place ``we see only at a distance, beyond the lace- curtains.'' Scheffler's sister, born in Africa, feels no such dichotomy; for her, Europeans must become Africans. Winter comes, and Versluis realizes he is dying, but he's strangely comforted by an encounter with a fellow-countryman. On a hill overlooking the veld, Versluis can finally embrace the emptiness without fear: ``The emptiness absorbed you, the unfamiliar land grew familiar— the journey had been completed.'' One of those quietly powerful and beautifully written books that wrestles with all the great questions without ever slighting the ordinary men and women who ask them. A distinguished debut.
