The Story of an African Farm

Spanning the childhood and burgeoning adulthood of three young people, this stunning evocation of 19th-century South Africa is a coming-of-age classic and an early feminist and modernist novel

Lyndall is a feisty young girl with an independent spirit who is frustrated by the limited options open to her as a girl in South African society. She is the polar opposite of her cheerful, chubby cousin Em, who aspires to get married and settle down. The third child in the trio is Lyndall’s best friend, Waldo, a thoughtful little boy who questions everything about the world around him except his affection for Lyndall. The children’s bucolic lives on the veld are disrupted by the arrival of Bonaparte Blenkins to the farm, a confidence trickster who is keen to seduce Em’s stepmother in order to take over the farm. Only Lyndall has the self-confidence to stand up to Bonaparte’s cruelty, but ultimately his actions will echo throughout their lives forever. As the children grow up, they fall in love, move away, move back, and ultimately find meaning in their lives, despite the tragedies they endure. An instant bestseller on its publication in 1883, this book was far ahead of its time in its portrayal of women in society, and it retains its power more than a century later. Tackling themes of religion, philosophy, unrequited love, and fate, it helped transform the shape and course of the late Victorian novel and is a classic of South African literature.