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In the mid-nineteenth century, in the village of Qolorha on the easternCape coast, a girl called Nongqawuse brought a message from the ancestors to theamaXhosa people: to slaughter their cattle and destroy their cropts, so that theancestors would return from the dead, bringing with them new cattle and crops,and drive the white colonists into the sea. People were divided betweenBelievers, who slew their cattle, and Unbelievers, who did not. The propheciesdid not come true, and the power of the amaXhosa people was shattered. Onehundred and fifty years later, the feud between the Believers and theUnbelievers still festers in Qolorha, as the villagers take opposing sides onevery issue. When the village is faced witha plan to build a casino and holidayresort, the feud threatens to erupt into open conflict. Moving betwen the worldsof contemporary characters and their nineteenth-century ancestors, Zakes Mda'snew novel is a triumph of imaginative and historical writing, showing how thepast continues to live in the present.… (more)
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Now in the present day, the learned man Camagu, born in South Africa but exiled and educated in America, comes to Qolorha-at-Sea, where he lands in the middle of an ongoing battle between the Believers and Unbelievers about whether the development of the lands by the whites' companies is good for their village. There is also a mysterious yet satisfying love story.
Heart of Redness is beautifully written, and Zakes Mda has been compared to the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Chinua Achebe. This is a book that you will devour because it's so well written, and yet it will stay with you as you ponder the pros and cons of the characters' situations.