8 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 2011 | 4/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Knot of stone first recorded battle in south african history
Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history is a 2011 historical murder mystery written by South African/Dutch author Nicolaas Vergunst.
Contents
Knot of stone the day that changed south africa s history
Plot summary
In 1510, when the Cape of Good Hope was still revered as the Portal to the Indies, the Viceroy of Portuguese India was led ashore, slain and hurriedly buried in a shallow grave. For the next five centuries the death of Dom Francisco de Almeida was invariably blamed on a clan of retaliatory Khoikhoi herders. However, based on new research and fresh leads, the author proposes that the conflict was orchestrated in order to carry out the execution of Viceroy D'Almeida. According to the book, this was more than an ambush, it was an assassination.
Knot of Stone is a tale of historical detection in which a Dutch historian, Sonja Haas, and an Afrikaans archaeologist, Jason Tomas, find themselves drawn together after discovering a five-century-old skeleton at the foot of Table Mountain. Their search for new evidence leads them north to ancestral burial sites, remote mountain sanctuaries, sacred springs, medieval monasteries and rare museum artefacts. Via various roadside encounters, including the revelations of a sangoma (a healer empowered by the ancestors), they reconstruct the past and their own identities, with divergent consequences.
The book's revision of actual events departs significantly from mainstream historical writing, both in and beyond South Africa, in that it draws on dreams, oral traditions and ancestral voices.
Reception
According to historian and author Harrie Salman, "Knot of Stone is a splendid example of a new genre—the karmic novel."