I’ve been reading a lot in the past couple of weeks. When I was a lot younger, I think maybe 12 or 13, my uncle and his partnet gave me a stack of books by this author, Wilbur Smith. You may have heard of him — he’s more well-known than I thought. He’s written countless books, most of them centered around his homeland, Africa. He has also written about the Middle East.
Typically, his books about Africa are based around their struggle for a voice and for independance, namely against the terrible crime of apartheid. He is an amazing author, and his words draw you in so quickly all of a sudden you’ve read a 1000 page book in 10 hours.
When they gave me these books (and there are a lot of them, most of them from his series about the ‘Courtney‘ family, a fictitious, wealthy, white, influential family that in his novels spans most of the continents at the time, with some members in Great Britain, the Middle East, and Africa, mostly South Africa) I started to read some of them and lost interest very quickly. Only one of them, Warlock, stood out to me and I read it very quickly, and re-read it many times throughout my teenage years. Some of his books (most of them, actually) have scenes of very intimate & hot sex, which as an early teenager, was not only exciting but encouraged me to actually read the entire book, scouring for a scene that had some of this erotica in it. At the time I was basically slobbering over it, but I was raised on books (we rarely had cable) and I still appreciated how well-written it was.
However, in my recent quest to find some good reading material (I’ve been craving a good book), I opened up one of the many boxes in my room, and finally dug out one of his books, not sure what to expect. I remembered reading some of the Courtney series and being rather disinterested — it seemed like one of those books that goes into way too much detail, and the sentences just go on and on, never really adding any depth to the paragraph, but rather just repeating themselves over and over, and it seemed quite useless for my then-reading appetite, and the style of the writng was rather verbose — the sentences were very repititious and quite taxing to read; you find youself asking the author, will this sentence ever end? (sorry, I had to do it). But when I picked up Rage and started reading it — I was stunned. How could I have passed up such wonderful and well-written literature?
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| Rage by Wilbur Smith |
Rage is set in post-colonial South Africa, where the main Courtney character, Shasa Courtney, is a semi-influential man, living in a palatial estate called Weltevreden (Afrikaans for “Well Satisfied”), with, naturally, a whole contingent of black servants to serve his and his family’s every need. They also tend to the large vineyards, which produces some of the best wine in the country.
His counterpart, Moses Gama, is a middle-aged man from the Ovambo tribe of South Africa. He has the rage of the people burning inside him, the flames constantly licking at his soul, and it threatens to destroy him. However, he has the patience of his people, and the intelligence to match that of his rival, Shasa Courtney (who, although is somewhat portrayed as a bad person, you can’t help feeling some empathy toward him — he doesn’t have any direct resentment toward the black population; however he does participate in the policy of apartheid so he’s not all good either), which surprises people and attracts them to him like moths toward light. He speaks the languages of almost all the tribes in the area, as well as English and Afrikaans, making him well-suited to bring the people together in a revolution against the white man. He has a storied history, and incidentally knew Shasa when he was a young man working at the Courtney family diamond mine, the H’ani Mine, which was then owned by Shasa’s ruthless, cunning yet extraordinarily intelligent and often benevolent mother and matriarch of the Courtneys — Centaine Courtney-Malcomess. It is worth noting that the entire Courtney fortune in Africa, the diamond mine, discovered by Centaine Courtney when she was pregnant and living in the desert with the nomadic Bushmen tribe, has lead to their family being extremely well-respected and more and more influential and wealthy.
So the stage is set for what seems to be the inevitable and beautifully just revolution of the African people, pulled together across tribal lines under the almost incredible zeal and patient guiding of Moses Gama, against the Courtney family and their allies within the government, in which Shasa is a member of the opposition. However, power tempts Shasa to cross the floor and join the Afrikaner-dominated ruling government party — whose sole mission is to enforce apartheid and to further the interests of the Afrikaner nation. (As an aside, for those of you that don’t know what an Afrikaner is — Afrikaans is a patois of Dutch; the Dutch had a very large part in developing South Africa, but they were overthrown by the English, and then the remaining whites overthrew the English and became a separate country, albeit in the Commonwealth. Afrikaners had a similar rhetoric to Hitler’s — they are the chosen of God, blessed with the promised land, the perfect race to overcome all others, chosen to ‘protect’ and keep separate the ‘savage black man’ for the ‘greater good’ of both races, etc.)
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| A young Nelson Mandela |
However, the reader slowly becomes aware of how twisted and cruel Moses Gama is, and something that seemed as important and inevitable as the black man standing up for his rights slowly starts to be dreaded by the reader — because they need a better leader than this man who can stir up the warrior blood of any man and talk him into murder without so much as lifting a finger! The only opposition within the black peoples’ political party is a younger Nelson Mandela (yes, a lot of the book is based on real people and events); however, Mandela is preaching peace and Gama violent, bloody revolution, in which he sees himself as king of his people. Gama has such a base of influence that he is quickly outstripping Mandela in support, and it seems impossible for any man to stop him. Not to mention, he is sleeping with Shasa Courtney’s wife, Tara, and using her for her access to the Houses of Parliament.
Wilbur Smith weaves such a grandiose and powerful tale, that when things suddenly are revealed to not be as they seem, the reader is truly taken aback and just as surprised at anyone would be if they were experiencing thses things first-hand.
This plot synopsis hardly even scratches the surface — the book contains a huge multitude of secondary and supporting characters, each with an intricately woven back story that is all helping to convince us of their loyalty, either to the Courtneys or to Gama. I cannot stress enough how incredible this book is. Even if you have no interest in the history of South Africa (which I doubt that anyone COULDN’T have!), the book gives us so much more than that. It gives us a rare and uncensored look into the depths of the human soul, and human emotion. It slowly tempers the sword that is the rage of the African people, and as you watch the sword descend toward the neck of the white man, so many different elements and so many amazingly detailed stories come into play that you cannot help but be totally engrossed. This is one of those books that I just could not put down! I would stay up so late that I would literally be passing out, trying so hard to catch the words, and waking up so groggy the next morning, only to pick it up and read for hours before I head to work.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in history, or an engrossing story of such complex dimensions that you end up having to read the whole series! It is amazing and stunning and beautiful, all at once; the language of the author is definitely Universty-level, but don’t let that hold you back! It is written so smoothly and the tale is told with such dexterity and skill that you’ll enjoy it no matter your preference.
I’m not usually one to give recommendations, so this is a rarity… go check it out!!
