A sin of omission: a brilliant historical novel set in 19th-century South Africa

A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A historical novel that gives one a real insight into the history, with a vivid sense of time and place. The characters are detailed and believable, and this is a classic of South African literature.

An Anglican deacon, Stephen Malusi Mzamane, is on his way to tell his mother, whom he has not seen since he was a small child, of the death of his elder brother. The story of his life, and how he came to this point, is told in a series of flashbacks. He was based at Trinity Mission at Nodyoba, near Fort Beaufort, in the 1870s, where he had to serve alone, without a resident priest.

The flashbacks tell the story of his life -- how he and his elder brother were found starving after the cattle-killing of 1858, rescued by an Anglican priest and sent to school. There he was called to the ordained minister of the Anglican Church, and sent to St Augustine's Missionary College in Canterbury, England, for training. At the college his best friend is Albert Newnham, who is also destined to serve in the eastern Cape Colony. They dream of working together, but this dream is never realised, and circumstances conspire to keep them apart for most of the time.

It is those circumstances, the setting and the people, that put obstacles in their way. One of the themes of the story is their friendship, which should have supported both of them in their ministry, but did not.

One of the themes of the story is the tension between the call to Christian ministry, and the ties of family and cultural background that undermine it. Stephen feels the tension initially with his elder brother; Albert with his wife. But it is part of a wider social setting, and it comes out quite strongly in the book -- the Xhosa-speaking clergy are painfully aware of the tensions between their Christian faith and secular Xhosa culture; the English-speaking clergy, whether colonial or from overseas, are, with one or two exceptions, not aware of the tension between their Christian faith and their own British secular culture.

Of course this is fiction, and the author chooses how to portray such things and write them into the story, but I believe, from my own study of history and experience of church life in South Africa, that her portrayal is spot on. She tells it like it was, and in some ways still is.

Poland portrays the relationship between the Xhosa-speaking clergy and the English-speaking clergy very well indeed, and at times I get the feeling that this could me, because it could be describing my experience, as a South African Orthodox Christian vis-à-vis Greek clergy. 

As a missiologist, I also think that this is the kind of book I would like to have prescribed to my students. Occasionally one finds novels that help to make a missiological point -- another one is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, but I think this one is even better. 

One interesting, and perhaps telling sldelight is that in its submission guidelines Penguin South Africa says it will not usually accept fiction manuscripts dealing with religion, so this one must have been pretty unusual to jump over that hurdle and be accepted.

It is a sad story, but well told, and well worth reading.

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