One of 500 specially bound copies

Well I don’t think you can ever enter into reading a James A. Michener book lightly.
I had this book on the to be read shelf for the last 10 years, and last week I saw there were elections in South Africa and I decided to give the book a try.
I clearly knew nothing of the founding of South Africa, the Dutch and British influence, Calvinism, the Old Testament, the different tribes that were already in the area, who the Boers were, how a people became Afrikaner. This book is wildly in depth and extremely fascinating.
In some ways it’s good that it came out in 1979 because while it doesn’t cover the last 40 years which have been significant in South Africa’s history it does do some detailed and accurate predicting.
Just like many of his other books prepare to learn so much along the way, and plan to have some late nights since the paperback edition is small print and 1200 pages.
This is an excellent book. It is too bad now still writes this type of book anymore.
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Great storytelling and well researched, per usual for Michener. Some conflict surrounds the book: Errol Lincoln Uys, researcher for Michener, said he wrote much of it ( )

The epic saga of the settling of South Africa by the Javanese and British; of course, native Africans already lived there. This was violent and gory from the beginning and didn't get much better, finishing in 1980. Unfortunately, most of the book was the battle between the Dutch and the English. About 250 pages in the middle depicted the once brilliant, but ultimately mad-man, Shaka Zulu. Although I know skin color was very important as pertains to how South Africa became "South Africa", much of the book repeated the same story of how the browns looked down on the black, the mixed looked down on the browns, etc. I could have substituted names and the events were identical. I did learn some South African history, but this work of Michener's was not as enjoyable as other sagas that I have read. (Chesapeake, Texas, Hawaii) 1200 pages ( )

Read for the second time and still a wonderful epic Michener saga. Beginning with the early San peoples of the region and ending with the story of Apartheid, this covers the history of South Africa through several families: one Dutch (Afrikaner, one English, one native). Over 1200 pages cover a lot of territory, but there are few details that I would have omitted as this is an excellent blend of fictional characters painted over the factual history of the nation of South Africa. ( )