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Promised Land
Pour George, ce voyage en Afrique du Sud était la promesse d'un retour sur les terres de ses ancêtres afrikaners. Mais dans l'immensité du veld, ce ne sont pas seulement des souvenirs qui resurgissent. Entre la peur, le silence et la ruine du monde " d'avant ", le retour du fils prodigue tourne très vite à l'étouffement. Pour ces familles de paysans délaissées par l'histoire, George représente tout à la fois. L'étranger et l'enfant du pays. Le passé et l'avenir. Un rôle qui va s'avérer bien vite trop lourd à porter.
" Écrit en 1972, en pleine fureur ségrégationniste, ce roman allégorique débusque les fantômes de l'apartheid avec une prose mesurée, scandée, lancinante : un office des ténèbres dans des paysages saccagés à l'heure du couvre-feu. "
André Clavel, Lire
" Écrit en 1972, en pleine fureur ségrégationniste, ce roman allégorique débusque les fantômes de l'apartheid avec une prose mesurée, scandée, lancinante : un office des ténèbres dans des paysages saccagés à l'heure du couvre-feu. "
André Clavel, Lire
- GenresFictionSouth Africa
205 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
4 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Karel Schoeman
104 books25 followersSchoeman is one of a handful of Afrikaans authors who has achieved real greatness in his own lifetime. His prizes include the Hertzog prize for prose three times (1970, 1986, 1995), the CNA prize (1972), the Helgaard Steyn prize (1988), the W.A. Hofmeyr prize and the Old Mutual prize for literature/fiction (1984, 1991). His work investigates the existence of the Afrikaner in Africa, especially those that came from Europe.
After completing his schooling in Paarl, he went on to study a B.A. at the University of the Free State before going to a Catholic Seminary in Pretoria. In 1961 he joined the Franciscan Order in Ireland as a noviciate for priesthood, but then returned to Bloemfontein to continue studying Librarianship. Before returning to South Africa for good in 1983, he was a librarian in Amsterdam as well as a nurse in Glasgow. Back in South Africa he continued writing and working as a librarian in Cape Town. He currently lives in Trompsburg.
After completing his schooling in Paarl, he went on to study a B.A. at the University of the Free State before going to a Catholic Seminary in Pretoria. In 1961 he joined the Franciscan Order in Ireland as a noviciate for priesthood, but then returned to Bloemfontein to continue studying Librarianship. Before returning to South Africa for good in 1983, he was a librarian in Amsterdam as well as a nurse in Glasgow. Back in South Africa he continued writing and working as a librarian in Cape Town. He currently lives in Trompsburg.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 11, 2018
In 'n alternatiewe werklikheid, met 'n onduidelike mag wat Suid-Afrika oorgeneem het en die lewe moeilik maak vir die groep wat voorheen beheer gehad het (blanke Afrikaanses), kom 'n jong man terug na sy familieplaas. Die reis bring vrae op oor identiteit, oor waar 'n mens behoort, oor wat jou doel en verantwoordelikhede is, oor die sin van die lewe, oor gemeenskap en samelewing en regverdigheid. Schoeman se teks is tegelyk vaag en konkreet: die lewensomstandighede van die Hattinghs op hul plaas word baie konkreet en werklik, maar die redes daarvoor is vaag en dus soveel meer bedreigend. Hulle leef saam met 'n gevaar wat onvoorspelbaar en ondeurgrondbaar is en dus daarom soveel meer onbeheerbaar en onafwendbaar is. Kenmerkende prosa van Schoeman, met kenmerkende idees en frases en woordkeuse ("nouliks", selfs in die mond van die jong Paultjie!). Tog is die apokaliptiese aard van die teks iets nuuts in sy werk, 'n nuwe manier om te kyk na die buitestander, die onbetrokkene, die soeker na lewensin. Ook nuut vir my is die satiriese uitbeelding van sommige karakters, soos tant Miemie en die onderwysers Bettie en Fanie.
Dit is interessant om te kyk na die verfilming van die roman, Promised land (2002). Die visuele styl vang Schoeman se lang, deinende sinne deeglik vas. Hoewel die geweld in die rolprent hoogstens gesuggereer word deur Schoeman, is die manier waarop die verhaal ontwikkel het van roman na draaiboek na rolprent vir my oortuigend en meesleurend.
Schoeman writes a new kind of novel here: he still looks intensely at the outsider, but places him in a post-apocalyptic South Africa with people previously in power now disenfranchised and threatened. The vagueness of the threat makes it stronger; the concrete reality of the miserable life on the farm colours the experience convincingly. The film version, Promised land (2002), develops the story into one of resistance and violence which is merely suggested by Schoeman; yet the filmmakers capture Schoeman's style almost perfectly in the visual representation of the story.
Dit is interessant om te kyk na die verfilming van die roman, Promised land (2002). Die visuele styl vang Schoeman se lang, deinende sinne deeglik vas. Hoewel die geweld in die rolprent hoogstens gesuggereer word deur Schoeman, is die manier waarop die verhaal ontwikkel het van roman na draaiboek na rolprent vir my oortuigend en meesleurend.
Schoeman writes a new kind of novel here: he still looks intensely at the outsider, but places him in a post-apocalyptic South Africa with people previously in power now disenfranchised and threatened. The vagueness of the threat makes it stronger; the concrete reality of the miserable life on the farm colours the experience convincingly. The film version, Promised land (2002), develops the story into one of resistance and violence which is merely suggested by Schoeman; yet the filmmakers capture Schoeman's style almost perfectly in the visual representation of the story.
November 15, 2022
Dit is 'n interessante roman in die genre van "alternatiewe geskiedenis". Dis nie heeltemal duidelik wat in die verlede gebeur het nie, maar in die Suid-Afrika wat George, die hoofpersoon, besoek, het boere (en dalk andere) hul status verloor. Baie mense het emigreer (ook die ouers van George), en die mense wat gebly het, leef in moeilike omstandighede. Veral die laaste deel van die boek, 'n partytjie met mense wat sy oorlede moeder en grootouers geken het, is 'n besonders treffende beskrywing van die Suid-Afrikaanse plaaslewe en lê in die gesprekke wat die hoofpersoon met amper stereotipiese plaasbewoners het, 'n deel van die misterieuse voorgeskiedenis bloot.
August 23, 2013
This novel imagines a future in which apartheid went “the other way,” so that Afrikaans people were dispossessed or forced into poverty. The book declares itself as an allegory early on by the way Schoeman sticks to generalities.
I found the first ten or twenty pages interesting; after that I found it implausible, unpleasant, and finally infuriating.
1. Interesting
The book is well translated and I can imagine the Afrikaans is equally simple and clear. The ultimate model here is Kafka, and there is an echo of this in Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians.”
2. Implausible
The sun never shines in this novel, and toward the end one of the characters even comments on that. Everything is gray and dismal. Interiors are often described as dark, and Schoeman overuses a device in which it’s so dark people almost can’t be seen. All that serves his purpose of painting a dismal, undefined future. The people the narrator meets in the country are all reticent, and they don’t talk about what has happened to them. It’s meant to conjure a hopeless future in which some Afrikaans people stayed in their homelands, but most fled.
But at a certain point it all becomes implausible. I don’t know any dispossessed or repressed people who don’t talk continuously about the details of their repression and their repressors. It’s of course plausible that people wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger, especially when (as it turns out in the novel) they are plotting a rebellion, but that’s not what Schoeman describes. He paints a number of scenes in which characters simply refuse to think about the past; some seem to have no specific thoughts about it. One character wants to live in the present; another lives for an imaginary future; a third lives in the past, but it’s a static past, fixed in her dementia. The lack of specificity serves the allegory of an indefinite catastrophe but not any psychological or political truth I know. (At the end of the book there are isolated acts of violence, and some stories that obliquely describe rape and killing -- pp. 184, 191 -- but they are exceptions.)
It’s relevant that this book was recommended to me in South Africa, and I read part of it there and the rest in Uganda. I was traveling in the villages in Uganda, and hearing endlessly about corruption, illegal actions by politicians, and specific injustices. People were fixated on local and national government and they were very specific about the people they held responsible for their problems. Several times, for different reasons, people didn’t want to tell me certain things: I’d expect that. But the free-floating, supposedly timeless nature of the disaster that has befallen the people in “Promised Land” is more like the undefined nature of the nuclear apocalypse in mystical books like “The Road.” The uniform gray dialogue and listless, affectless characters begins to appear more as a failure of imagination than a device to sustain an allegory.
3. Unpleasant
I understand that a certain attachment to the land (as in the book’s title) is a central concern of the book, and that in certain contexts it is an identifiably Afrikaans quality. The most emotional moment in the middle of the book is the narrator’s discovery that nothing remains of his family farm, which he left as a young child. (The farm is named Reitvlei, which I have been told is made of two words that mean “high grass” and “cow dung”--which is the state of the farm when the narrator finally visits.)
There is a deep, tenacious attachment to land throughout the book, made even deeper by the fact that the land is painted as desolate and unattractive. One character says to the narrator that he should see it in the winter, when in effect it’s even more desolate, in order to appreciate its beauty. I felt the grip of that passion, on Schoeman’s part, throughout the book. But it’s a very unpleasant emotion, because underneath it I can feel a tremendous hatred, anger, and fear (on Schoeman's part, and at the end of the book in his characters). The relentless evenness and lack of emotion on the part of the characters is exactly what reveals the force and depth of that anger and the fear that the land itself might somehow be taken away.
4. Infuriating
All this is irritating, or perhaps I should say infuriating, because the vagueness of the allegory shows that the author has not, in fact, experienced any such thing as the catastrophe he describes. In fact apartheid “came out” differently. I wonder if this book has been read by anyone who continues to suffer in townships even after apartheid. I can imagine such a reader getting very angry at the privilege, the lack of experience of real suffering, that suffuse this book. I finished this book in Uganda, surrounded by real poverty and real injustice, and those things also involve bright sunlight (the sun does shine on people who suffer) and many hundreds of everyday events that break through any self-indulgent dream of imaginary suffering.
I found the first ten or twenty pages interesting; after that I found it implausible, unpleasant, and finally infuriating.
1. Interesting
The book is well translated and I can imagine the Afrikaans is equally simple and clear. The ultimate model here is Kafka, and there is an echo of this in Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians.”
2. Implausible
The sun never shines in this novel, and toward the end one of the characters even comments on that. Everything is gray and dismal. Interiors are often described as dark, and Schoeman overuses a device in which it’s so dark people almost can’t be seen. All that serves his purpose of painting a dismal, undefined future. The people the narrator meets in the country are all reticent, and they don’t talk about what has happened to them. It’s meant to conjure a hopeless future in which some Afrikaans people stayed in their homelands, but most fled.
But at a certain point it all becomes implausible. I don’t know any dispossessed or repressed people who don’t talk continuously about the details of their repression and their repressors. It’s of course plausible that people wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger, especially when (as it turns out in the novel) they are plotting a rebellion, but that’s not what Schoeman describes. He paints a number of scenes in which characters simply refuse to think about the past; some seem to have no specific thoughts about it. One character wants to live in the present; another lives for an imaginary future; a third lives in the past, but it’s a static past, fixed in her dementia. The lack of specificity serves the allegory of an indefinite catastrophe but not any psychological or political truth I know. (At the end of the book there are isolated acts of violence, and some stories that obliquely describe rape and killing -- pp. 184, 191 -- but they are exceptions.)
It’s relevant that this book was recommended to me in South Africa, and I read part of it there and the rest in Uganda. I was traveling in the villages in Uganda, and hearing endlessly about corruption, illegal actions by politicians, and specific injustices. People were fixated on local and national government and they were very specific about the people they held responsible for their problems. Several times, for different reasons, people didn’t want to tell me certain things: I’d expect that. But the free-floating, supposedly timeless nature of the disaster that has befallen the people in “Promised Land” is more like the undefined nature of the nuclear apocalypse in mystical books like “The Road.” The uniform gray dialogue and listless, affectless characters begins to appear more as a failure of imagination than a device to sustain an allegory.
3. Unpleasant
I understand that a certain attachment to the land (as in the book’s title) is a central concern of the book, and that in certain contexts it is an identifiably Afrikaans quality. The most emotional moment in the middle of the book is the narrator’s discovery that nothing remains of his family farm, which he left as a young child. (The farm is named Reitvlei, which I have been told is made of two words that mean “high grass” and “cow dung”--which is the state of the farm when the narrator finally visits.)
There is a deep, tenacious attachment to land throughout the book, made even deeper by the fact that the land is painted as desolate and unattractive. One character says to the narrator that he should see it in the winter, when in effect it’s even more desolate, in order to appreciate its beauty. I felt the grip of that passion, on Schoeman’s part, throughout the book. But it’s a very unpleasant emotion, because underneath it I can feel a tremendous hatred, anger, and fear (on Schoeman's part, and at the end of the book in his characters). The relentless evenness and lack of emotion on the part of the characters is exactly what reveals the force and depth of that anger and the fear that the land itself might somehow be taken away.
4. Infuriating
All this is irritating, or perhaps I should say infuriating, because the vagueness of the allegory shows that the author has not, in fact, experienced any such thing as the catastrophe he describes. In fact apartheid “came out” differently. I wonder if this book has been read by anyone who continues to suffer in townships even after apartheid. I can imagine such a reader getting very angry at the privilege, the lack of experience of real suffering, that suffuse this book. I finished this book in Uganda, surrounded by real poverty and real injustice, and those things also involve bright sunlight (the sun does shine on people who suffer) and many hundreds of everyday events that break through any self-indulgent dream of imaginary suffering.
June 20, 2019
Translated from Afrikaans to English, this book is a dystopian imagination of South Africa in a world in which white people have had to flee towns and barricade themselves on farms. An exile returns and finds what he thought would feel like home, did not at all. He cannot understand the psyche. It’s fascinating to read now, 40 years later. One can compare the imagined future with what has really transpired. Possibly it reflects the subconscious fear of people who knew they were wrong? But also, it creates a charged atmosphere, a mystery, characters that you won’t forget.
May 31, 2017
The story is a straightforward one: George Neethling, an Afrikaner born in South Africa, spends only the first few years of his life in his native country. Now, decades later, George’s mother has died and he has inherited the farm they left behind in South Africa. The novel begins with George’s return to the country of his birth, where he hopes to sell the farm. He stops to ask directions from a local family of farmers, the Hattinghs, and they invite him to stay with them—they remember his mother, and they tell him that there’s nothing much worth seeing at the farm he inherited, but that they will take him there in the morning if he wants.
The rest of the novel details the days George spends with the Hattinghs and their neighbors, an insular community of whites who feel like persecuted exiles in a land they once led. They are suspicious and bitter, they cling to memories of the “old days” before “the troubles,” and they yearn for the lost past of their heroic ancestors. The younger generation is ignorant and confused, having grown up with a sense of entitlement to the fairy-tale kingdom of the old, good world, the world where their inherent superiority was recognized and valued and rewarded with power. George is unsettled, but also fascinated. This could have been his fate. He tries to convince the Hattinghs and their neighbors that he is one of them, but they’ll have none of it. One of the Hattingh daughters, Carla, tells George early on: What difference does it make who your mother was or where you were born? What matters is what you yourself are, and you’re certainly not one of us. You come from abroad, your work, your home, your whole life is there. You know nothing about us, we’re strangers to you, this country is only a place where you’ve come for a few days to visit people who happen to speak a language you understand.
George spends much of the novel trying to reconcile his imagined South Africa with the one he visits. His parents spoke of the homeland with great reverence, they taught him the language and history they thought he would need to keep the place they were exiled from alive in his heart. But the world they gave him was not a real one. He thinks to himself: “This was, after all, the promised land, possessed by birth and inheritance, the land about which so much had been spoken and dreamed, the object of such endless longing, for which so much had been endured—even exile and death.”
The farm that George inherited lies in ruins because the caretaker his parents regularly sent money to did not do what he was supposed to. “Someone’s cheated you nicely,” Hattingh says, then reveals his opinion of the people who now hold power: “They enjoy it, they’re only too pleased if they can get something from us. You’ve got to be on your toes in this country, I’m telling you.”
Carla (who is roughly George’s age) and her younger brother Paul are members of the generation that has only the vaguest memories of life in a world where their people had power. Paul, more sensitive than his sister (he even writes poetry), sometimes dares to dream about another kind of life, and he is particularly drawn to speculation about the world beyond the farm. He is fascinated by George, whose presence both highlights the limitations of farm life and gives him a desire to know more: “Tell me that there is something else. Tell me that another world exists, otherwise there’s no point in going on.” Carla is more suspicious and cynical, and she doubts the power of words: “It’s the old people who want to sit and talk, my parents and Aunt Miemie, but words don’t help.” Paul begs George to take him with him when he departs, but all George can think to do is give Paul what money he happens to have in his wallet. For Carla, though, he is willing to do more: he offers to marry her and bring her with him, but she refuses, saying it wouldn’t be a different world, just a change of scenery: “You’re trapped in the web of the past, all of you, here and over there. . . . But it’s senseless, worthless, useless; it’s devoid of any meaning. If I could only believe in it like my parents do, it would at least be tolerable, but it’s words: that’s all—words. There’s nothing at all.” Carla reveals to him that she has plans to leave on her own, that she doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s heading toward, but that she will not let this life hold her back anymore.
The last third of the novel is mostly taken up with a party held in George’s honour, a chance for the neighbours to remember his mother’s life before exile, an opportunity for everyone to revel in their memories of the good old days. Some of the more openly political neighbours approach George and ask him not to return to Europe. They tell him, “We need men who love their country and their people, who are willing to dare much for them, to fight and if need be to die for them.” Later that night, police break into the home: "George couldn’t quite see what was happening but suddenly the man struck the teacher across the face so that he toppled and fell, slowly and silently, like someone moving under water. The police who had remained standing at the door laughed, but George only saw their wide-open mouths: he could distinguish no sound."
The police arrest three men (two of them the eldest Hattingh brothers) and leave. At first, the Hattinghs insist that the men were arrested randomly, that they had done nothing, but eventually George learns that the men had been collecting weapons—indeed, he learns that the farm he inherited was destroyed by police who discovered it was being used as a hide-out and as a place to stash weapons and supplies to be used against the government.
The rest of the novel details the days George spends with the Hattinghs and their neighbors, an insular community of whites who feel like persecuted exiles in a land they once led. They are suspicious and bitter, they cling to memories of the “old days” before “the troubles,” and they yearn for the lost past of their heroic ancestors. The younger generation is ignorant and confused, having grown up with a sense of entitlement to the fairy-tale kingdom of the old, good world, the world where their inherent superiority was recognized and valued and rewarded with power. George is unsettled, but also fascinated. This could have been his fate. He tries to convince the Hattinghs and their neighbors that he is one of them, but they’ll have none of it. One of the Hattingh daughters, Carla, tells George early on: What difference does it make who your mother was or where you were born? What matters is what you yourself are, and you’re certainly not one of us. You come from abroad, your work, your home, your whole life is there. You know nothing about us, we’re strangers to you, this country is only a place where you’ve come for a few days to visit people who happen to speak a language you understand.
George spends much of the novel trying to reconcile his imagined South Africa with the one he visits. His parents spoke of the homeland with great reverence, they taught him the language and history they thought he would need to keep the place they were exiled from alive in his heart. But the world they gave him was not a real one. He thinks to himself: “This was, after all, the promised land, possessed by birth and inheritance, the land about which so much had been spoken and dreamed, the object of such endless longing, for which so much had been endured—even exile and death.”
The farm that George inherited lies in ruins because the caretaker his parents regularly sent money to did not do what he was supposed to. “Someone’s cheated you nicely,” Hattingh says, then reveals his opinion of the people who now hold power: “They enjoy it, they’re only too pleased if they can get something from us. You’ve got to be on your toes in this country, I’m telling you.”
Carla (who is roughly George’s age) and her younger brother Paul are members of the generation that has only the vaguest memories of life in a world where their people had power. Paul, more sensitive than his sister (he even writes poetry), sometimes dares to dream about another kind of life, and he is particularly drawn to speculation about the world beyond the farm. He is fascinated by George, whose presence both highlights the limitations of farm life and gives him a desire to know more: “Tell me that there is something else. Tell me that another world exists, otherwise there’s no point in going on.” Carla is more suspicious and cynical, and she doubts the power of words: “It’s the old people who want to sit and talk, my parents and Aunt Miemie, but words don’t help.” Paul begs George to take him with him when he departs, but all George can think to do is give Paul what money he happens to have in his wallet. For Carla, though, he is willing to do more: he offers to marry her and bring her with him, but she refuses, saying it wouldn’t be a different world, just a change of scenery: “You’re trapped in the web of the past, all of you, here and over there. . . . But it’s senseless, worthless, useless; it’s devoid of any meaning. If I could only believe in it like my parents do, it would at least be tolerable, but it’s words: that’s all—words. There’s nothing at all.” Carla reveals to him that she has plans to leave on her own, that she doesn’t know where she’s going or what she’s heading toward, but that she will not let this life hold her back anymore.
The last third of the novel is mostly taken up with a party held in George’s honour, a chance for the neighbours to remember his mother’s life before exile, an opportunity for everyone to revel in their memories of the good old days. Some of the more openly political neighbours approach George and ask him not to return to Europe. They tell him, “We need men who love their country and their people, who are willing to dare much for them, to fight and if need be to die for them.” Later that night, police break into the home: "George couldn’t quite see what was happening but suddenly the man struck the teacher across the face so that he toppled and fell, slowly and silently, like someone moving under water. The police who had remained standing at the door laughed, but George only saw their wide-open mouths: he could distinguish no sound."
The police arrest three men (two of them the eldest Hattingh brothers) and leave. At first, the Hattinghs insist that the men were arrested randomly, that they had done nothing, but eventually George learns that the men had been collecting weapons—indeed, he learns that the farm he inherited was destroyed by police who discovered it was being used as a hide-out and as a place to stash weapons and supplies to be used against the government.
July 21, 2018
For a book that was meant to commenting on serious and (at the time) important social subjects, it was surprisingly bland. The main character had no personality traits and was presumably there for the reader to connect to as an outsider.
However the family he visits was far more interesting. Their struggles were engaging and how that effected them made them seem very human.
Really the book should have focused on them.
However the family he visits was far more interesting. Their struggles were engaging and how that effected them made them seem very human.
Really the book should have focused on them.
October 30, 2023
Retour au pays bien-aimé est un roman d’auteur connu d’Afrique du sud, qui a écrit des romans en afrikaans – la langue qui est parlé par une majorité d’afrikaners, un peuple qui ont l’origine au Pays-Bas. L’intrigue se déroule en 1972, l’époque d’apartheid en Afrique du sud.
George Neethling est rentré au son pays, après avoir grandi presque toute de sa vie en Suisse pour voir la ferme ou il est né, la ferme de famille Neethling à Rietvlei en Afrique du sud. En route, il s’arrête chez la famille Hattingh et il est informé qu’il n’y a plus rien à Rietvlei car sa mère (Anna Neethling) à quitté il y a très longtemps et personne ne s’est occupé de la ferme. Il est accueilli dans la famille de Hattingh et tout le monde dans sa famille sont intéressé.e.s à savoir différentes choses parce qu’il n’ont jamais vu quelqu’un d’étranger ou quelqu’un qui a vécu à l’étranger. Les conversations entre Carla (la fille d’Hattingh) et George était mon favori, avec des dialogues très fortes dans les deux côtés. Un autre point fort que j’ai bien aimé était le fête organisé pour George, où chacun a eu ses propres raisons pour danser avec George pour savoir quelque chose.
L’auteur a exploré beaucoup d’émotions humaines qui se passent partout dans le monde, comme nostalgie avec George, où il a dépensé trop d’argent pour venir en Afrique du sud même si il a eu peu d’espoir que le pays sera mieux que lequel sa mère a quitté, et également les valeurs familiales avec Hattingh et ses ami.e.s. Il y a avait également l’air de mystère, soit avec George, soit avec la famille Hattingh et ses ami.e.s pour deux tiers du livre, que j’ai trouvé intéressant. Le contraste entre quelqu’un de la campagne et quelqu’un de la ville a été bien vu également, particulièrement entre les conversations entre Carla et George, lorsque où la première a dit qu’ils parlent les mêmes mots, mais pas la même langue. Une autre facette du livre que j’ai bien aimé était la description du paysage et les villages et je me suis senti vraiment être en Afrique du sud en 1972. Le roman a aussi touché beaucoup de la politique même si l’auteur n’a jamais précisé que c’est du politique – il a juste évoqué le sujet en utilisant les autres personnages comme Gerhad qui a parlé d’un devoir de George vers ses ancêtres et « son pays ». Même la transformation de George était intéressant, où il s’est senti comme chez lui au début mais à la fin, il a commencé à s’identifier comme un étranger.
Un problème peut-être pour les lecteur.ice.s est le fait qu’on a besoin d’un contexte, le roman est écrit pour les afrikaners en Afrique du sud et si on ne connait pas l’histoire du peuple afrikaner ou du pays, ça sera difficile pour apprécier certains subtilités et parfois ennuyeux également. C’était un remarque fait par une moitié des participant.e.s dans mon club de lecture où on a discuté le roman et je comprends leur point de vue.
En bref, j’ai adoré le livre, c’était bien écrit où l’auteur a évoqué beaucoup de sujets complexes malgré la petite taille du roman (que 250 pages dans mon édition de poche). Alors, je donnerai le roman une note de quatre sur cinq.
George Neethling est rentré au son pays, après avoir grandi presque toute de sa vie en Suisse pour voir la ferme ou il est né, la ferme de famille Neethling à Rietvlei en Afrique du sud. En route, il s’arrête chez la famille Hattingh et il est informé qu’il n’y a plus rien à Rietvlei car sa mère (Anna Neethling) à quitté il y a très longtemps et personne ne s’est occupé de la ferme. Il est accueilli dans la famille de Hattingh et tout le monde dans sa famille sont intéressé.e.s à savoir différentes choses parce qu’il n’ont jamais vu quelqu’un d’étranger ou quelqu’un qui a vécu à l’étranger. Les conversations entre Carla (la fille d’Hattingh) et George était mon favori, avec des dialogues très fortes dans les deux côtés. Un autre point fort que j’ai bien aimé était le fête organisé pour George, où chacun a eu ses propres raisons pour danser avec George pour savoir quelque chose.
L’auteur a exploré beaucoup d’émotions humaines qui se passent partout dans le monde, comme nostalgie avec George, où il a dépensé trop d’argent pour venir en Afrique du sud même si il a eu peu d’espoir que le pays sera mieux que lequel sa mère a quitté, et également les valeurs familiales avec Hattingh et ses ami.e.s. Il y a avait également l’air de mystère, soit avec George, soit avec la famille Hattingh et ses ami.e.s pour deux tiers du livre, que j’ai trouvé intéressant. Le contraste entre quelqu’un de la campagne et quelqu’un de la ville a été bien vu également, particulièrement entre les conversations entre Carla et George, lorsque où la première a dit qu’ils parlent les mêmes mots, mais pas la même langue. Une autre facette du livre que j’ai bien aimé était la description du paysage et les villages et je me suis senti vraiment être en Afrique du sud en 1972. Le roman a aussi touché beaucoup de la politique même si l’auteur n’a jamais précisé que c’est du politique – il a juste évoqué le sujet en utilisant les autres personnages comme Gerhad qui a parlé d’un devoir de George vers ses ancêtres et « son pays ». Même la transformation de George était intéressant, où il s’est senti comme chez lui au début mais à la fin, il a commencé à s’identifier comme un étranger.
Un problème peut-être pour les lecteur.ice.s est le fait qu’on a besoin d’un contexte, le roman est écrit pour les afrikaners en Afrique du sud et si on ne connait pas l’histoire du peuple afrikaner ou du pays, ça sera difficile pour apprécier certains subtilités et parfois ennuyeux également. C’était un remarque fait par une moitié des participant.e.s dans mon club de lecture où on a discuté le roman et je comprends leur point de vue.
En bref, j’ai adoré le livre, c’était bien écrit où l’auteur a évoqué beaucoup de sujets complexes malgré la petite taille du roman (que 250 pages dans mon édition de poche). Alors, je donnerai le roman une note de quatre sur cinq.
April 21, 2025
George kom lê besoek in die geliefde land van sy ouers af. Hy is op soek na sy grootouers se opstal van destyds, maar verdwaal en beland op 'n buurplaas. Die Hattinghs is vriendelik en verwelkomend genoeg, maar alles is nie pluis nie. Hoekom is almal so versigtig? Wat het in hierdie land gebeur? En hoekom is George se familie plaas opgeblaas en vernietig deur die regering? Hierdie boek het my soos 'n maaghou getref en met stof vir nadenke gelos.
March 23, 2020
Schitterend op plekken, en goed geschreven, maar ook te mild op plekken. Het boek draait om onbegripn, maar behandelt dit alleen op een soort myopische manier binnen de Afrikaner gemeenschap. Aan de ene kant werkt dit goed omdat het het principe verstikkende gemeenschapszin op de kaart zet, maar aan de andere kant mist het boek daardoor ook een soort groter verhaal over haar context.
October 18, 2023
Published in 1972, this dystopian novel is set in the near future in South Africa in a remote part of the country where defeated Afrikaners are still hanging on. An exceptionally powerful and gripping work; one I couldn't put down. It is a real pity that more of his novels haven't been translated into English
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