ISBN 9781946395566 | paperback | $17.99 | publication date Jan 2022
Set in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility—told with empathy, generosity, and a light touch—is an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer.
Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But why has Emil’s life turned out so different from his parents’, who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it?
Continuing the interconnected stories she began in her award-winning novel The Theory of Flight, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu explores decades of history through the eyes of one man on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war. With sympathy, complexity, and penetrating insight, The History of Man explores what makes a man, a father, and a nation.
Praise for The History of Man
Windham-Campbell Prize Recipient, 2022
Shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times CNA Literary Awards (South Africa)
“The Best Books to Read in January” —BuzzFeed
“63 Anticipated African Books of 2022” —Brittle Paper
“[The History of Man] braids the social and the personal. Her style is deceptively simple as she describes the great mysteries of how we come to be who we are. Through the figure of Emil, a white man on the wrong side of Zimbabwean liberation history, she paints a fine-grained portrait of lost forms of Rhodesian city life.” —Jeanne-Marie Jackson, The New York Times
“Ndlovu impresses with a fresh and astute perspective on colonialism, race, and family that focuses on white South African-born civil servant Emil Coetzee, who appeared in the author’s debut, The Theory of Flight. […] Ndlovu deserves credit for her brilliant and meticulous characterization. This leaves readers with much to think about.” — Publishers Weekly
“With rhythmic prose and sly humor, The History of Man tells the story of one man’s inevitable failure to live up to his potential.” —Foreword Review
“[A] truly stunning novel” –Book Riot
“Ndlovu takes on the challenge of exploring what has turned Emil Coetzee, a white civil servant in an unnamed African country (but clearly Zimbabwe), product of a beloved childhood in the savanna, into a middle-aged man with blood on his hands during its war for independence, and she does this with remarkable grace. If Doris Lessing and Jane Austen had a book baby together this might be it […] Ndlovu has that same extraordinary talent as Austen for skewering society without dogmatism and that’s no small talent. I couldn’t put it down.” — Anne Korkeakivi, author An Unexpected Guest and Shining Sea
“A transfixing story of the corrosive stains of racism and colonialism.” — Financial Mail (South Africa)
“The ego and paradox of the well-meaning colonizer, and the ways they naively deny the fallacies and violence of colonization, are at the heart of Ndlovu’s exuberant tale. In Emil Coetzee, Ndlovu paints a nuanced portrait of a man whose ambition and desires blind him to truths he refuses to reckon with. This sentient history is one a reader won’t soon forget.” —Anjali Enjeti, author of The Parted Earth
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The History of Man allows the reader to feel and sympathize with an unlikeable protagonist, which, in itself, is a feat in storytelling. The History of Man is not just a history of man but a history of a country and colonialism as told by an unapologetic and sensitive writer who loves the place they write about. —Zukiswa Wanner, author London Cape Town Joburg
“Yes, Emil Coetzee is no Pontius Pilate; the handwashing ritual that begins this extraordinary novel has its prototype, not in the New Testament, but in Shakespeare’s bloody play, “Macbeth”. Coetzee, the novel’s protagonist, a product of settler subculture, a chartered company, takes it upon himself to provide the humiliated indigenous people of an unnamed African country with a History. Ironically, the veld with its singing elephant grass and its wide blue sky – Coetzee’s sanctuary – is where the real history of “Man” begins, where our first mother stood up and walked.
Siphiwe Ndlovu’s unique voice, unclassifiable, takes us to a time and space which is all time, all space; where we find ourselves, never bullied or cajoled, but caressed, beguiled – so subtle is her point of view – from laughing out loudly to breathing in quietly; from condemning settlers as perpetrators, to considering that they too, may be victims of history. For Emil Coetzee is no stereotype. His creator has a kind heart and she, indirectly, poses a solution to colonial and postcolonial conflict, slow-brewing, in the love of Coetzee’s life, the enigmatic Marion, the girl with a blue-and-white scarf.” —John Eppel
“Ndlovu’s perceptive portrayal of her central character at once highlights both the complexities and subtleties of the colonial endeavour. Her strength is enabling her readers to feel both anger and sympathy for him, for he is a real character and certainly no stereotype. Ndlovu looks beyond the limits of race, revealing the sadness, the vulnerability, the sheer joy of being human.” — Bryony Rheam, author The September Sun
“In her prize-winning debut novel The Theory of Flight, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu surprised and delighted readers and critics with her ingenious excavation of the post-colonial moment in an unnamed Zimbabwe-esque Southern African country. In The History of Man, her second novel, she turns her attention back in time to the colonial era, in the same country. While quite different in tone, more linear and less obviously touched by folklore and magic, it shares its predecessor’s intriguingly slippery relationship with history, and its author’s skilful execution.” — Sunday Times (South Africa)
“This novel is no less than an act of extraordinary grace by the author. […] The History of Man is not just an excellent book; it is a necessary one. Read it.” —LitNet
“A suburb piece of writing” — The Witness (South Africa)
The Author
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, she worked as a teacher in Johannesburg before returning to Bulawayo. Her first novel, The Theory of Flight won the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize in South Africa. In 2022, Siphiwe was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.