The Spiral House
Book description
Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker's apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Spiral House as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
For every dreaming rebel. This novel weaves together two tumultuous periods in history–the last decades of slavery and the start of grand apartheid–and the stories of two women bursting the seams of their existence.
In 1794, Katrijn van der Caab, a freed slave, finds herself on a farm where the master’s obsession with experimentation reflects a growing fixation with racial classification. In 1961, Sister Vergilius, a nun in rural South Africa, wants to escape the confines of her order even as the political and social strictures of the time hem her in still further.
This complex book demands commitment from…
From Helen's list on Historical novels by Southern African women.
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