About this item
Highlights
- The second in Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's highly acclaimed book series centered on an unnamed Southern African country, but a standalone novel in its own right, The History of Man sketches decades of history through the eyes of Emil Coetzee, on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war.
- Author(s): Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
- 320 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
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About the Book
The second in Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's highly acclaimed book series centered on an unnamed Southern African country, but a standalone novel in its own right, The History of Man sketches decades of history through the eyes of Emil Coetzee, on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war. With empathy and a gentle touch, Ndlovu explores what makes a man, a father, and a nation.Book Synopsis
The second in Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's highly acclaimed book series centered on an unnamed Southern African country, but a standalone novel in its own right, The History of Man sketches decades of history through the eyes of Emil Coetzee, on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war. With empathy and a gentle touch, Ndlovu explores what makes a man, a father, and a nation.Review Quotes
""The Best Books to Read in January" -BuzzFeed
"63 Anticipated African Books of 2022" --Brittle Paper
"60 Notable Books of 2022" --Open Country Magazine
"A truly stunning novel." -- BookRiot
"[The History of Man] braids the social and the personal. Her style is deceptively simple as she describes the great mysteries of how we come to be who we are. Through the figure of Emil, a white man on the wrong side of Zimbabwean liberation history, she paints a fine-grained portrait of lost forms of Rhodesian city life." --Jeanne-Marie Jackson, The New York Times
"With rhythmic prose and sly humor, The History of Man tells the story of one man's inevitable failure to live up to his potential." --Foreword Review
"The History of Man extracts the history and beating heart of an unnamed African country, seen through the eyes of one man, Emil Coetzee, a white male in his fifties, on the eve of his country's ceasefire. Emil reflects on his life, from boyhood to adulthood, and Ndlovu reveals it with empathy, generosity, and unflinching truth." --The Rumpus
"Ndlovu impresses with a fresh and astute perspective on colonialism, race, and family that focuses on white South African-born civil servant Emil Coetzee, who appeared in the author's debut, The Theory of Flight. [...] Ndlovu deserves credit for her brilliant and meticulous characterization. This leaves readers with much to think about." -- Publishers Weekly
"Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is both a chronicler and a conjurer whose soaring imagination creates a Zimbabwean past made of anguish and hope, of glory and despair: the story of the generations born at the crossroads of a country's history." -- 2022 Windham Campbell Prize committee"Ndlovu convincingly pictures the absurdity and pettiness and uselessness of colonial power, its means and its moral foundations, and the psychological motivations for excessive violence within the state, while at the same time presenting us with an absorbing and intriguing, very human story. An impressive accomplishment." -- Africa Book Link"In her prize-winning debut novel The Theory of Flight, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu surprised and delighted readers and critics with her ingenious excavation of the post-colonial moment in an unnamed Zimbabwe-esque Southern African country. In The History of Man, her second novel, she turns her attention back in time to the colonial era, in the same country. While quite different in tone, more linear and less obviously touched by folklore and magic, it shares its predecessor's intriguingly slippery relationship with history, and its author's skilful execution." -- Sunday Times (South Africa)
"From the author of The Theory of Flight, this book is a remarkably insightful and sensitive 'excursion into the interiority of the coloniser' - at once a psychological exploration and a searing political examination, but at its core intensely human and filled with empathy and pathos." -- Jet Club (South Africa)
"[A] superb piece of writing, and a troubling and thought-provoking book." -- The Witness (South Africa)
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's The History of Man allows the reader to feel and sympathiz