Handful of Earth
His a moving novel, the story of Abraham de Bruyn and his wife Stella’s struggle to bring up a family during the 1930s and 40s. He is a carpenter who tries to make extra money by growing vegetables on a rented piece of land near George, in the Southern Cape. He loves the soil and the fruit and vegetables he grows on it: “The soil is like humans. Everything begins there and ends there.”
When World War II breaks out in 1939, Abraham is picking honeybush tea high up in the Outeniqua mountains.
He is a man struggling for survival, one of a people disempowered both by poverty and by race.
The central theme is his hope for a piece of land of his own, from which he can never be driven away but the forces of white domination betray him time and time again.
He marries Stella, but only after he has learnt to read and write; she had flatly refused to marry a man who could not write his name.
He enlists to fight against the Germans because the people who recruited him promised him that “coloured” soldiers would be given a plot of their own in return for serving their country.
While fighting against the Italians in Abyssinia, he sees a beautiful sideboard, which becomes a symbol of Stella’s beauty and the love he feels for her, a symbol of the life he wants to build with her.
He is wounded at El Alamein and returns home to find that there is no piece of land for him after all.
Refusing to give up, he carves a sideboard like the one he saw during the war and this becomes the centrepiece of their home.
The National party wins the election in 1948 and the family are again driven out of their home, this time by apartheid, to a house that is too small to house the precious sideboard.
His pain is almost too much too bear, and the author’s historical research adds a contextual dimension to the tale of Abraham’s suffering.
The language is powerful and sometimes crusted with rage, but this story never descends into an unredeemable bitterness and is always leavened by hope.
Abraham eventually finds a haven, a home of sorts, outside George, against all the odds stacked against him in his difficult life.
The author, Simon Bruinders, was one of 10 children and grew up in George; he has been an actor in movies and many South African television series. He is married with four children and now lives in Johannesburg.
This is a small, wonderfully written masterpiece about human endurance. It was originally written in Afrikaans, and has now been translated into English and Dutch. It has also been performed on stage as
Highly recommended.
Abraham eventually finds a haven, a home of sorts, outside George, against all the odds