Fiela's Child (Modern Women Writers)

by Dalene Matthee (Author), Cathy Poole (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.44

  Specially selected by Maura Healy, this series aims to offer an innovative and adventurous collection of texts that demonstrates the best of women's writing, both black and white. Complete texts reflecting a range of genres as well as different cultures and experiences are offered and the volumes contain study material and assignments at a range of levels to deepen pupils' enjoyment and understanding of literature. A reading log is also included with ideas for group and individual assignments to help pupils find their way around the texts. This is the story of a three-year old, lost in the African forest. He is found and cared for by a family he comes to regard and love as his own. He becomes Felia's cild. The fact that she is black and he is white is irrelevant. Irrelevant, that is, until white bureaucrats and the mechanism of white law get to work. The series is intended for 14-16 year olds sitting GCSE English and English Literature and adults taking English examinations and overseas students. It is suitable for those taking GCSE-LEAG, NEA, SEG and MEG examinations.

• Used

  Paperback
  1992

  $14.14

  Set in nineteenth-century rural Africa, Fiela's Child tells the gripping story of Fiela Komoetie and a white, three-year old child, Benjamin, whom she finds crying on her doorstep. For nine years Fiela raises Benjamin as one of her own children. But when census takers discover Benjamin, they send him to an illiterate white family of woodcutters who claim him as their son. What follows is Benjamin's search for his identity and the fundamental changes affecting the white and black families who claim him.

  Everything a novel can be: convincing, thought-provoking, upsetting, unforgettable, and timeless. --Grace Ingoldby, New Statesman

  Fiela's Child is a parade that broadens and humanizes our understanding of the conflicts still affecting South Africa today. --Francis Levy, New York Times Book Review

  A powerful creation of time and place with dark threads of destiny and oppression and its roots in the almost Biblical soil of a storyteller's art. --Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian

  The characters in the novel live and breathe; and the landscape is so brightly painted that the trees, birds, elephants, and rivers of old South Africa are characters themselves. A book not to miss. --Kirkus Reviews
  

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $22.87

  In Africa a child wanders too far into the Knysa Forest and never returns. Nine years later, two government officials think they have found the child living on the other side of the forest. They take him from stricken Fiela, who has brought him up, and give him back to his 'original' family.