Epic tale of early mission work in the Eastern Cape honoured

Marguerite Poland’s latest book, A Sin of Omission, the sweeping story of a Xhosa Anglican priest set in the 19th century in what is today the Eastern Cape, has been shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, one of the largest literary awards in the UK.  

Publisher Penguin Random House marketing representative Frieda le Roux, who hosted the launch of the book in Nelson Mandela Bay in November, announced the news of the shortlisting this week.

Poland — whose great-great-grandfather, the Rev Charles Taberer, established the Holy Trinity mission at Nondyola before taking over St Matthew’s in Keiskammahoek, the first Anglican mission in the Amathole — said on Wednesday she was honoured.

“Writing A Sin of Omission has been a long, difficult and demanding project for me for a number of reasons but one with transcendent moments during research, and in the company of others, that made the writing of it the journey of a lifetime.”

She said she had first heard the story as a 14-year old, told to her by a great uncle.

“A fragment of history which lodged in my heart followed by a long gestation served by every other work I have written.

“In writing the book, I hope to have witnessed, in some small and personal degree, a history, culture and language that, for centuries, have suffered from the insidious sins of omission born of deceit, paternalistic patronage and outright repression.

“Mostly, I hope that in creating the fictional character, Rev Stephen Malusi Mzamane, I have honoured and respected the real man on whom he is based, the known fragments of whose life might have remained obscure forever but whose story, I believe, reflects  the lives of legions of his fellow countrymen and women whose names ‘are only known to God’.”

Set in the second half of the 1800s, A Sin of Omission follows the journey of Mzamane, a Xhosa boy who was taken in by the Anglican Church during the great famine.

He is sent to Canterbury in England to train as a priest and when he returns he is sent to a remote mission station.

There he has to confront his role within the church and society and to deal with his Xhosa heritage and the way his upbringing has estranged him from the culture into which he was born.

The other titles on the shortlist are The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Parisian by Isabella Hammad, To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek, Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor and The Redeemed by Tim Pears.

The winner of the 2020 edition of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is due to be announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland on June 12. The winner receives £25,000 (R556,000).