3 Review(s)

'Of the Trappist enterprise in nineteenth-century South Africa, with all its passionate personal rivalries and Byzantine internal politics, Michael Cawood Green has made a work of history cum fiction that will grip and sometimes amaze the reader.' J M Coetzee The narrator of this extraordinary tale is witness to a story that ranged from Austria to Bosnia, Natal to East Griqualand. Aptly named after Joseph of Cupertino, the Holy Fool and Gaper, his attempt at proclaiming the sins of others and confessing his own draws the reader into a vivid sense both of the silent life of the Trappists and the storm that breaks as Mariannhill drifts into the world of words. Here faith, contemplation and grace become intimately intermingled with demonic possession, madness even murder.