Items related to Unconfessed
A 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award finalist: "Impossible to put down, this work deserves a place beside such classics as Toni Morrison's Beloved and Edward P. Jones's The Known World."—Library Journal (starred review)
Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed—and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 19th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour de force.
They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave of Jacobus Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay, in the colony of South Africa. They called her murderer, and demanded that she explain her terrible violence. A woman fit for hanging...condemned to death on April 30, 1823, only to have her sentence commuted to a lengthy term on the notorious Robben Island.
Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape Town's streets or cleaning the Warden's house. Her fierce, sometimes tender voice recalls the dramatic events of her life—as well as its small, precious moments and pleasures. Unconfessed is an epic novel that connects the reader to the unimaginable through the force of poetry and a far-reaching imagination. Reading group guide included inside this edition.
Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed—and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 19th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour de force.
They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave of Jacobus Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay, in the colony of South Africa. They called her murderer, and demanded that she explain her terrible violence. A woman fit for hanging...condemned to death on April 30, 1823, only to have her sentence commuted to a lengthy term on the notorious Robben Island.
Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape Town's streets or cleaning the Warden's house. Her fierce, sometimes tender voice recalls the dramatic events of her life—as well as its small, precious moments and pleasures. Unconfessed is an epic novel that connects the reader to the unimaginable through the force of poetry and a far-reaching imagination. Reading group guide included inside this edition.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Yvette Christiansė was born in South Africa under apartheid and emigrated with her family via Swaziland to Australia at the age of eighteen. She is the author of the 1999 poetry collection Castaway. She teaches English and postcolonial studies at Fordham University and lives in New York City. Unconfessed, her first novel, was honored as a 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award finalist.
Review:
Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW
A gorgeous, devastating song of freedom that will inevitably be compared to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. But it deserves to stand on its own.
Publishers Weekly
Poet Christiansė (Castaway), born in apartheid-era South Africa and now living in New York City, channels the torturous history of South African slavery in her debut novel. Sila van den Kaap, whom Christiansė discovered in an early 19th century document, is a slave serving hard labor at the Robben Island prison colony after murdering her own son, Baro. As Sila breaks and hauls stones, evades the attentions of the prison guards and cares for her small children, she casts her mind back to the daily indignities, fleeting pleasures and larger injustices that have defined her life since, as a young girl, she was brought to South Africa from Mozambique. Addressed primarily to the spirit of her deceased son, Sila's absorbing, lyrical narrative is circular: she alternates between exhausted lament, seething rage and scripture-tinged poetic soliloquy ("their sins are like unto a plague of locusts that eat not fields but bodies and hearts"), and returns repeatedly to the broken promise of her freedom, granted in the will of one of her mistresses, Oumiesies ("old Missus"), and disregarded by Oumiesies's cruel son, Theron. After many passionate digressions, Sila alights, finally, on the death of Baro. In the final pages, she movingly addresses "the daughters and sons of my generations"—those now living with slavery's legacy.
Library Journal STARRED REVIEW
The story unfolds in fits and starts and reads like a confession to a soulmate. This stream-of-consciousness style gives readers an intimate if disturbing peek into the mind of a fierce 19th-century slave woman...Impossible to put down, this work deserves a place beside such classics as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World. Highly recommended.
ForeWord This Week
...Unconfessed by Yvette Christiansė takes place in South Africa in the Dutch-speaking Cape Colony in the 1820s. Sila was taken from Mozambique to South Africa as a child. She was promised freedom in the will of her mistress Oumiesies. But at her death, her cruel son Theron refuses to honor his mother’s wishes.
Sila is sold to a series of cruel masters and is eventually imprisoned for murdering her son, Baro. As she works in the rock quarry on Robben Island prison, she speaks to Baro, telling him her disjointed life story and the details of her days in the prison. Gradually through Christiansė’s poetic stream-of-consciousness narrative, the reader learns how she came to be in her situation and the guilt she feels at the thought of her children’s suffering.
Booklist
Little has been written about what it was like to be a slave in South Africa under the early white settlers. This debut novel tells it through the first-person, present-tense narrative of Sila, once a slave, now a prisoner on Robben Island off Cape Town in the 1820s....the history is authentic, and Sila's brave, desperate voice reveals the vicious brutality as well as surprising discoveries of love and friendship. Readers of Toni Morrison's classic Beloved will recognize the story of a mother driven to save her children at any cost.
Historic Novels Review
Sila is a strong, likable character who survives adversities that would destroy most people. She has a few happy times to remember, but of course the tone of any book about slavery is mainly distressing. Readers who prefer a linear storyline may struggle to puzzle out the sequence of events, as Sila’s memories come and go in a poetic, stream-of-consciousness fashion. Christiansė’s word choice and syntax effectively convey that Sila is not an English speaker, without distracting the reader.
Slavery in the United States has often been chronicled in historical fiction. Books about African slavery of the same period are much less common, and I appreciated being enlightened about slavery from a new perspective.
People
Born under apartheid, South African poet Christiansė (Castaway) dug up a horrific real-life crime in her homeland and used it as the basis for this breathtaking novel. Condemned in 1823 to a notorious African prison colony called Robben Island for the murder of her son, slave Sila van den Kaap refuses to explain her actions. Instead, in rich, lyrical prose, the captive unveils the terrible truth of her life to the spirit of her dead child. Defiant, loving and fierce, van den Kaap recalls her years in bondage and how the brutality she and her family suffered and the lies they were forced to accept particularly one promising her freedom eventually shattered them. Christiansė's novel isn't just a stunningly intimate, heart-wrenching history of slave life in Africa. Her protagonist's furious yearning for freedom ("Wishes are sometimes just stories that have nowhere to go") becomes a haunting meditation on love, loss and the stories we choose to tell in order to survive. Gorgeous and tragic, Unconfessed ultimately reveals a confession almost too terrible to bear and impossible to forget.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
It's a compelling story and a remarkable book...Even at the novel's conclusion, as Sila's memories become more clear, the circumstances of how her son died are still equivocal. That makes the novel even more compelling; Sila's story is far more powerful than abstractions like guilt vs. innocence or even slavery vs. freedom.
Curled Up with a Good Book
Unconfessed is Sila's story, the tale of one woman's pain and suffering. It is the story of a mother's love, of desperation, and the cruelty of slavery. Yvette Christiansė's haunting tale pierces the heart in this powerful novel about a broken and angry woman hanging on by a thread. However wounded, Sila is undeniably a strong woman.
Having been born and raised in South Africa during apartheid, the author is close to the history she writes about in Unconfessed. The novel is almost poetic; the writing is style lyrical at times and full of symbolism. Although as the novel goes on, the narrative becomes slightly disorganized, it fits well with the story and the direction that the main character is going. She brings her characters, particularly Sila to life — her anger and despair bleed from every page.
New York Times Book Review, Uzodinma Iweala
...Christiansė is able to create an enveloping air of mystery in her slow revelations of the specific nature of Sila's crime and punishment. This mastery of suspenseful plotting shows in both the present action and the flashbacks...The pages of Unconfessed are full of powerful images of an institution capable of engendering horrendous evil; yet it is one that cannot entirely defeat hope and love.
Ms. Magazine
"[A] beautifully written historical novel."
Ebony Magazine
In Unconfessed, first-time novelist Yvette Christiansė tells the story of Sila van den Kaap, a South African slave who was sentenced to death on April 30, 1823, following the chilling murder of her son. Based on a true story, with information culled from actual court documents dating back to the 19th century, readers are introduced to Kaap, whose death sentence is commuted. She is serving out a lengthy sentence on Robben Island, the notorious South African prison island, the primary setting of the novel. But much of the evocative novel is spun from the protagonist's memory, which reveals the sad and powerful story of the life of a slave woman in the South African outback in the early 1800s. Christiansė, an associate professor at Fordham University in New York City and a scholar in African-American literature and postcolonial studies, was raised in South Africa under apartheid and moved to Australia when she was 18.
A gorgeous, devastating song of freedom that will inevitably be compared to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. But it deserves to stand on its own.
Publishers Weekly
Poet Christiansė (Castaway), born in apartheid-era South Africa and now living in New York City, channels the torturous history of South African slavery in her debut novel. Sila van den Kaap, whom Christiansė discovered in an early 19th century document, is a slave serving hard labor at the Robben Island prison colony after murdering her own son, Baro. As Sila breaks and hauls stones, evades the attentions of the prison guards and cares for her small children, she casts her mind back to the daily indignities, fleeting pleasures and larger injustices that have defined her life since, as a young girl, she was brought to South Africa from Mozambique. Addressed primarily to the spirit of her deceased son, Sila's absorbing, lyrical narrative is circular: she alternates between exhausted lament, seething rage and scripture-tinged poetic soliloquy ("their sins are like unto a plague of locusts that eat not fields but bodies and hearts"), and returns repeatedly to the broken promise of her freedom, granted in the will of one of her mistresses, Oumiesies ("old Missus"), and disregarded by Oumiesies's cruel son, Theron. After many passionate digressions, Sila alights, finally, on the death of Baro. In the final pages, she movingly addresses "the daughters and sons of my generations"—those now living with slavery's legacy.
Library Journal STARRED REVIEW
The story unfolds in fits and starts and reads like a confession to a soulmate. This stream-of-consciousness style gives readers an intimate if disturbing peek into the mind of a fierce 19th-century slave woman...Impossible to put down, this work deserves a place beside such classics as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World. Highly recommended.
ForeWord This Week
...Unconfessed by Yvette Christiansė takes place in South Africa in the Dutch-speaking Cape Colony in the 1820s. Sila was taken from Mozambique to South Africa as a child. She was promised freedom in the will of her mistress Oumiesies. But at her death, her cruel son Theron refuses to honor his mother’s wishes.
Sila is sold to a series of cruel masters and is eventually imprisoned for murdering her son, Baro. As she works in the rock quarry on Robben Island prison, she speaks to Baro, telling him her disjointed life story and the details of her days in the prison. Gradually through Christiansė’s poetic stream-of-consciousness narrative, the reader learns how she came to be in her situation and the guilt she feels at the thought of her children’s suffering.
Booklist
Little has been written about what it was like to be a slave in South Africa under the early white settlers. This debut novel tells it through the first-person, present-tense narrative of Sila, once a slave, now a prisoner on Robben Island off Cape Town in the 1820s....the history is authentic, and Sila's brave, desperate voice reveals the vicious brutality as well as surprising discoveries of love and friendship. Readers of Toni Morrison's classic Beloved will recognize the story of a mother driven to save her children at any cost.
Historic Novels Review
Sila is a strong, likable character who survives adversities that would destroy most people. She has a few happy times to remember, but of course the tone of any book about slavery is mainly distressing. Readers who prefer a linear storyline may struggle to puzzle out the sequence of events, as Sila’s memories come and go in a poetic, stream-of-consciousness fashion. Christiansė’s word choice and syntax effectively convey that Sila is not an English speaker, without distracting the reader.
Slavery in the United States has often been chronicled in historical fiction. Books about African slavery of the same period are much less common, and I appreciated being enlightened about slavery from a new perspective.
People
Born under apartheid, South African poet Christiansė (Castaway) dug up a horrific real-life crime in her homeland and used it as the basis for this breathtaking novel. Condemned in 1823 to a notorious African prison colony called Robben Island for the murder of her son, slave Sila van den Kaap refuses to explain her actions. Instead, in rich, lyrical prose, the captive unveils the terrible truth of her life to the spirit of her dead child. Defiant, loving and fierce, van den Kaap recalls her years in bondage and how the brutality she and her family suffered and the lies they were forced to accept particularly one promising her freedom eventually shattered them. Christiansė's novel isn't just a stunningly intimate, heart-wrenching history of slave life in Africa. Her protagonist's furious yearning for freedom ("Wishes are sometimes just stories that have nowhere to go") becomes a haunting meditation on love, loss and the stories we choose to tell in order to survive. Gorgeous and tragic, Unconfessed ultimately reveals a confession almost too terrible to bear and impossible to forget.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
It's a compelling story and a remarkable book...Even at the novel's conclusion, as Sila's memories become more clear, the circumstances of how her son died are still equivocal. That makes the novel even more compelling; Sila's story is far more powerful than abstractions like guilt vs. innocence or even slavery vs. freedom.
Curled Up with a Good Book
Unconfessed is Sila's story, the tale of one woman's pain and suffering. It is the story of a mother's love, of desperation, and the cruelty of slavery. Yvette Christiansė's haunting tale pierces the heart in this powerful novel about a broken and angry woman hanging on by a thread. However wounded, Sila is undeniably a strong woman.
Having been born and raised in South Africa during apartheid, the author is close to the history she writes about in Unconfessed. The novel is almost poetic; the writing is style lyrical at times and full of symbolism. Although as the novel goes on, the narrative becomes slightly disorganized, it fits well with the story and the direction that the main character is going. She brings her characters, particularly Sila to life — her anger and despair bleed from every page.
New York Times Book Review, Uzodinma Iweala
...Christiansė is able to create an enveloping air of mystery in her slow revelations of the specific nature of Sila's crime and punishment. This mastery of suspenseful plotting shows in both the present action and the flashbacks...The pages of Unconfessed are full of powerful images of an institution capable of engendering horrendous evil; yet it is one that cannot entirely defeat hope and love.
Ms. Magazine
"[A] beautifully written historical novel."
Ebony Magazine
In Unconfessed, first-time novelist Yvette Christiansė tells the story of Sila van den Kaap, a South African slave who was sentenced to death on April 30, 1823, following the chilling murder of her son. Based on a true story, with information culled from actual court documents dating back to the 19th century, readers are introduced to Kaap, whose death sentence is commuted. She is serving out a lengthy sentence on Robben Island, the notorious South African prison island, the primary setting of the novel. But much of the evocative novel is spun from the protagonist's memory, which reveals the sad and powerful story of the life of a slave woman in the South African outback in the early 1800s. Christiansė, an associate professor at Fordham University in New York City and a scholar in African-American literature and postcolonial studies, was raised in South Africa under apartheid and moved to Australia when she was 18.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherKwela Books
- Publication date2007
- ISBN 10 0795702582
- ISBN 13 9780795702587
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages352
- Rating
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