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Set on the border, between South Africa and an unnamed country, "A Blade of Grass" tells the story of Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned and newly wed, who comes to live with her husband Ben on their new farm.
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Lewis De Soto's debut novel, A Blade of Grass, tells the story of Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned, who has moved with her new husband Ben to a remote farm on the contested borderland between South Africa and an unnamed country. When Ben is killed by a bomb in an act of guerilla warfare, she decides to stay on and run the farm. Alone in the world, she befriends Tembi, the daughter of her black housemaid, who has also been killed, in an accident. Struggling to transform herself as the surrounding countryside descends into bloody conflict, Marit finds herself caught between the fear and prejudices of the local Afrikaner community and the shifting loyalties and growing feeling of entitlement of the indigenous black workers. When first the Afrikaners and then the blacks flee the area, and the outside world starts to encroach menacingly on the isolated farm, Marit is stripped of everything that gave her a sense of self and a sense of belonging to this place.
About the Author:
A Blade of Grass is a delicate, if at times naively sentimental, exploration of the arc of a courageous relationship between two women from different societies, each an outcast from her own, during the death throes of apartheid: from the rigid structure of master and servant, through the tenderness of the shared experience of aloneness and defiance in the face of societal pressures, to betrayal. De Soto has transformed the quiet immensity of the South African veldt into spare, luminous prose. He contains everything--repression and ownership, belonging and loss, humiliation and hope--in the small gesture, the seed, the blade of grass. The story's brutality is barely graphic in its depiction, but the terror is present nonetheless, lurking insistently beneath the surface, waiting at the edge of the farm. --Diana Kuprel, Amazon.ca
Lewis DeSoto was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to a family that arrived from Europe in the eighteenth century. His writing has been published in numerous journals, and he was awarded the Books in Canada/Writers' Union Short Prose Award. A past editor of Literary Review of Canada, Lewis DeSoto lives with his wife in Normandy and Toronto.
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- PublisherHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 073227835X
- ISBN 13 9780732278359
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages432
- Rating
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A Blade of Grass
Published by
HarperCollins Publishers Australia
(2005)
ISBN 10: 073227835X
ISBN 13: 9780732278359
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Paperback
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 419 pages. A beautifully captured story of two women's lives in the turmoil of Africa. Set on the border between South Africa and an unnamed country, A Blade of Grass tells the story of Marīt Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned and newly wed, who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their new farm. As the days pass by peacefully in this idyllic setting, th e old traditions are maintained: Ben and Marīt manage the farm, a nd their black workers cultivate the fields and tend the animals. But when guerrilla violence and tragedy visit their lives, Marīt finds herself in a tug of war between the local Afrikaner commun ity that surrounds the farm and the black workers who live on it. Frightened and confused, she turns to the only person who can of fer her friendship, a person who is also alone in the world: her maid, tembi. When Marīt stubbornly determines to run the farm wit h tembi s help, the encroaching civil war brings out their confli cting loyalties. the fight for the farm becomes a fight for their lives. As the novel proceeds to its devastating conclusion, it r eveal a tale that is both terrifying and hopeful, offering a prof ound perspective on what it means to be black and white in a coun try where both live and feel entitlement. A Blade of Grass resona tes with lyricism and deep insight, moving beyond its own time an d place to become a universal story of the price of freedom. Seller Inventory # 726t
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