Summary

In the mid-nineteenth century, in the village of Qolorha on the easternCape coast, a girl called Nongqawuse brought a message from the ancestors to theamaXhosa people: to slaughter their cattle and destroy their cropts, so that theancestors would return from the dead, bringing with them new cattle and crops,and drive the white colonists into the sea. People were divided betweenBelievers, who slew their cattle, and Unbelievers, who did not. The propheciesdid not come true, and the power of the amaXhosa people was shattered. Onehundred and fifty years later, the feud between the Believers and theUnbelievers still festers in Qolorha, as the villagers take opposing sides onevery issue. When the village is faced witha plan to build a casino and holidayresort, the feud threatens to erupt into open conflict. Moving betwen the worldsof contemporary characters and their nineteenth-century ancestors, Zakes Mda'snew novel is a triumph of imaginative and historical writing, showing how thepast continues to live in the present.