Dreaming the Karoo: A People Called the /Xam

by Julia Blackburn

A spellbinding new book by the much-acclaimed writer, a journey to South Africa in search of the lost people called the /Xam - a haunting book about the brutality of colonial frontiers and the fate of those they dispossess.

In spring 2020, Julia Blackburn travelled to the Karoo region of South Africa to see for herself the ancestral lands that had once belonged to an indigenous group called the /Xam.

Throughout the nineteenth century the /Xam were persecuted and denied the right to live in their own territories. In the 1870s, facing cultural extinction, several /Xam individuals agreed to teach their intricate language to a German philologist and his indomitable English sister-in-law. The result was the Bleek-Lloyd Archive: 60,000 notebook pages in which their dreams, memories and beliefs, alongside the traumas of their more recent history, were meticulously recorded word for word. It is an extraordinary document which gives voice to a way of living in the world which we have all but lost. 'All things were once people', the /Xam said.

Blackburn's journey to the Karoo was cut short by the outbreak of the global pandemic, but she had gathered enough from reading the archive, seeing the /Xam lands and from talking to anyone and everyone she met along the way, to be able to write this haunting and powerful book, while living her own precarious lockdown life. Dreaming the Karoo is a spellbinding new masterpiece by one of our greatest and most original non-fiction writers.

Genres: Travel, South Africa, Memoir, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

Published June 16, 2022

About the author

Julia Blackburn is the author of several other works of nonfiction, including Charles Waterton and The Emperor’s Last Island, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her most recent book, Old Man Goya, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Blackburn lives in England and Italy.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I might try branching out and reading a different kind of book from those I’m used to. Unfortunately I don’t think I was the right kind of reader for this one. It’s an unusual mixture of a description of a now-disappeared ethnic group from South Africa, mixed in with the author describing her feelings during the COVID pandemic.

She explains that as far back as 1974 she discovered a book in the London Library called Specimens of Bushman Folklore, by William Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, published in 1911. She became so fascinated by the contents that she re-borrowed it continuously from November 1974 to January 1979! She returned to the book more recently.

The book featured interviews with the members of a Khoe-sān group, the /Xam. The Khoe-sān used to be referred to as Khoisan, but it seems the approved orthography has changed. In any case the author calls them Bushmen, as that is the name generally applied within South Africa. The Khoe-sān peoples were the original inhabitants of southern Africa before the Bantu-speaking peoples migrated from Central Africa 1500-2000 years ago, and before the Dutch arrived at the Cape in the mid-17th century. They are considered the direct descendants of the first modern humans to inhabit southern Africa, and are noted for the (to our ears) remarkable click consonants used in their languages. These can’t be rendered into Latin script, and the clicks are usually denoted by symbols such as the one featured at the start of /Xam. The author advises that the “X” is pronounced as in the ch sound used in Scotland for “loch”.

The /Xam featured in the Bleek/Lloyd archive were people who experienced the end of the world as they knew it, and the author seeks to present their story through their own eyes. Much of the book is therefore taken up with extracts from the interviews conducted by Bleek and Lloyd. Their archive is a priceless record of a lost culture and of course the author deserves credit for allowing a modern audience to once again hear the stories of the /Xam. The quotes used range from grimly realistic descriptions of killings and beatings, to dreamlike stories from /Xam culture. In respect of the latter, my worldview is too different from that of the /Xam for me to relate well to the text.

I also found it difficult to relate to the author’s thoughts during the pandemic. She had travelled to Cape Town and the Karoo to visit the places mentioned in some of the interviews. Unfortunately she went there at the beginning of March 2020 and of course had to cut short her trip to avoid being stranded. The book mixes in memories of the trip to the Karoo with her subsequent experiences of writing this book during the pandemic. Much of this will of course be familiar to all of us - the restrictions on travel and the separation from friends and family. However the author seemed to have a heightened sense of anxiety during the pandemic, a feeling multiplied by worries about other worldwide issues like climate change. She even wonders whether it is the beginning of the end of the world, and I speculated whether in making that comment she was drawing a parallel with what happened to the /Xam.

I suppose most of us had some worries during the pandemic, if only for the welfare of friends and relatives, but I can’t say as I experienced the feelings the author describes. Perhaps it was because I live in a rural area where the scattered nature of the population provided some protection from being infected.

I will say that the book was an easy read – it’s not “dry” in any way. The author has a very distinctive style, even though it’s not quite for me. I think she also deserves credit for her ambition in recovering the stories of the /Xam.

[Anneliese Tirry · Rating 4 out of 5]

***(*)
Het heeft even geduurd eer ik helemaal mee was op de golven van dit boek, eer ik gewoon was aan de vreemde poëtische vertellingen van de /Xam die in dit boek worden gebruikt.
En ook voor de auteur lijkt de start moeilijk. Terwijl ze in Zuid-Afrika is om de plaatsen uit de verhalen van de /Xam te bezoeken, breekt de corona-pandemie uit en dient ze hals-over-kop terug te keren naar de UK.
Net zoals zovelen onder ons dat eerste coronajaar maakt deze gebeurtenis haar zeer onzeker en dat voel je in het boek. Ze voelt zich onveilig, verschillende van haar vrienden sterven aan het virus, ze mist haar kinderen.
We volgen dit eerste coronajaar en ondertussen vertelt ze over de /Xam, een stam die in harmonie leeft met de natuur en met alle levende dingen. Hun verhalen gaan over die natuur, hun verering voor de dieren die ze doden om te eten. We leren over de Boeren die hun landen innamen, zich het water toe-eigenden, de dieren doodden omdat ze ze beschouwden als ongedierte, hoe ze de schapen introduceerden . Ze vernielden de wereld van de /Xam.
Er worden dan ook parallellen getrokken met wat er hier en nu gebeurt. Bij verschillende gebeurtenissen van nu worden korte verhalen geplaatst verteld door een /Xam dat er perfect bij past.
Ook kunnen we niet anders dan zien hoe ook wij als mens het contact met wat ons omringt verliezen, hoe we onze omgeving vernietigen en hoe alles verdwijnt.
Veel lof ook voor Lucy Lloyd en Dr. Bleek die op gezette tijden verschillende /Xam-leden in huis namen en de taal leerden en hun verhalen noteerden.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at the Cape Town airport bookshop ahead of two long flights home, largely on the strength of my previous encounters with the author (one of my all-time favorite non-fiction writers), but also as I thought it might help me process our visit to South Africa, including a little time spent at the edge of the Karoo. I'm not sure I have ever read a book quite like it--shifting seamlessly across the centuries in a dreamlike state as the ruthlessly exterminated /Xam were conjured back to life via a series of archival snippets of text and sketches. Life during COVID was woven into the mix, adding to the cautionary nature of the tale, and all that has been lost in the world. I found this all quite compelling, and it reminds me to seek out several more of Julia's books that I am yet to read.

[Nic Groen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though probably very well documented and researched, a rather depressing account of a writer in her old age during Covid is what stays behind after reading. The quotes and drawings of the Xam and the dramatic history of Lucy Lloyd are overclouded by small personal drama.

[Gerard de Bruin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb

[Carol Griffiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual combination of Covid memoir and history of the Bushmen of the Karoo in South Africa. Blackburn writes in a quirky and entertaining style and includes fascinating (and sometimes horrifying) descriptions of what has happened to the various Bushman groups over the years.

[Errol Orhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think this book is for everyone, but it might just be for you. I thought it was a real ride. Another reader called it 'unusual' and that it surely is. Reading 'Dreaming the Karoo' is an experience, and I thought it was a magical one.

[Elisabeth Millenaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prachtig- maar je moet ervoor open staan en meedromen, ook al word je geconfronteerd met een pijnlijke erfenis. Julia Blackburn schrijft eerlijk, open, soms kwetsbaar, daar moet je in mee kunnen gaan. Dan lees je een poëtisch verslag van een persoonlijke ervaring.

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Possibly because of the effects on her of the pandemic, this book did not seem to me as well written as the others. The whole fid not hang together as well. I think it did need more research. Some pieces are clearly very well known to her but I did not feel their power or that they were really quite integrated.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unusual book I found this slow and often very sad. I has poems folklore intertwined into a diary style story that were beautiful. The pace was calming and restful to read it felt gentle and warm, but also it had a very upsetting depth within the History of the Karoo. This book was missing something though, a bit more sparkle at bit more excitement a better ending.

[Firoze Cassim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected much more from this book. I anticipated learning much more about the Xam people. However, the book was more about the authors experiences with brief stories about the Xam. Disppointing!

[Geert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her books all have this startling quality of hitting me somewhere deep in unexpected ways, and here she does it again. At some points, I am almost ashamed not to be a Xan, but a dumb ruthless westerner. To be digested very slowly because of the horror that the white Boers committed. Killing, beating, slavery. It's sadly a common trend, comparable to what white Americans did to the true americans and the imported blacks. I cannot read this unmoved, and feel deeply ashamed. I remember my grandmother supported the Boers - we do speak related languages - but that was against the British, doubtlessly the worst and most ruthless colonizers.