The Story of an African Farm by Joseph Bristow and Olive Schreiner (1999, Paperback)

This book was recommended to me via the printed page by a distant relative who died in the 1920s! It was his opinion that, if you wanted to learn how to write, you could hardly do better than read Schreiner's remarkable book. I took a chance on this and ordered a copy (the Virago edition, purchased on eBay, but not specifically mentioned among the more than 35 entries for this book in this Review section). To put it in modern parlance (the book dates from 1881) I was blown away.

It won't be everybody's cup of tea, but this finely written, at times densely-packed text can indeed be used as a sort of primer for budding writers (my distant cousin was a journalist and father of a poet daughter and a novelist son). It certainly inspired me on many levels. The subtle, almost incantatory prose deftly weaves itself around some of the best-drawn characters I have come across in literature. Schreiner was an early feminist and one who questioned all sorts of things that were quite taboo in her day, including the attitude to religion and race relations. A joy to read, and also a privilege to get to know Schreiner's Lyndall, one of the most outstanding and memorable of fictional characters.