GENRE: Young adult / Romance
PUBLISHER: WDA Publishing
BLURB
Samson Zondi is just 15 when his carefree teen-life becomes a nightmare. His parents die of Aids, and he becomes the sole support and provider for his three younger brothers.He has to face a hostile community determined to ostracize them, and discover the murderer of several members of his Church. His only ally is a girl he hates: Nelly, the daughter of his Father’s betrayer, and the ultimate cause of his family’s tragedy…Samson will have to use all the cunning and courage of his ancestors - Tshaka's fabled warriors - to defeat a hidden enemy, and make common cause with the lovely but irritating Nelly to unravel a mystery, and uncover the truth.Set in the lovely hills of Zululand, “SAMSON” is a revelation and a hymn to the lyrical Zulu Culture; a cry for help for the millions of Aids orphans in Africa, and above all a great read for the young and mature reader alike.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Author Danie Adendorff was born and raised in the stunning landscape of the ancient Zulu Kingdom in current day KwaZulu-Natal, and he walked the very land of the Bambatha Rebellion (Samson’s famous ancestor).
Danie Adendorff was a witness and a participant in a watershed moment of South African History, and has synthesized that experience and his love and respect for the Zulu Culture into a fierce, heart-rending epic called SAMSON.
CONTACT DETAILS
Danie. adendorff@wdapublishing.com
EXCERPT
The
humid air is sluggish; hazy with heat. In the distance the Masinga Mountains
are veiled with mist, their blue outlines blurred to dirty grey and sinister
pall overlays the region.
Inside
the kraal - the family’s compound- the huts look like ant hills visited by a marauding
Aardvark: shattered, weatherworn, derelict.
His
father’s and mother’s hut stands empty. Already the east side of the roof has
caved in, and only the section that overhangs the door still stands. There, two
pairs of bull’s horns hang. Blowflies buzz and glut on the blood clotted at the
base of the horns. They are still gory, still fresh—only two days old.
His
youngest grief is only two days old, though he cannot remember its beginning,
nor foresee its end.
These
are the horns from the bull slaughtered for his mother’s funeral.
These
huts were once the mirror of his family’s pride: neat, with whitewashed walls.
One hut had been for his parents, one hut for the children, and one for
storage; one for guests, and one for the kitchen.
In
the last days of his mother’s life she had slept in the guest hut. Samson had
wanted to repair her hut, but she had refused.
“Samson,
we are guests in this world, and I am soon to journey to my Maker, I need no hut.” She had known she hadn’t long to live.
Samson
stares blindly at the rubbish dumped at the door of the hut. His father had
become too weak to clear it, then his mother; and as the rubbish dump had grown
in height, so had their troubles.
He
watches two empty plastic bottles roll down the putrid hill to clank to a stop
against a rusted tin.
The
cattle kraal is empty too, the goat enclosure vacant. His very soul is empty.
He
looks at the graves. The only full things in this place are graves. Two forlorn
heaps, two unmarked heaps of dust, all which is left of his former life.
Two
chickens cluck past him, pecking idiotically at the dry soil. Loud wailing and
curses suddenly fill the air, and the startled chickens squawk and flutter away
in alarm. It sounds again: like the fearful wailing of a duiker-fawn caught in
the clutches of a caracal, it is a horrible, hopeless cry for help.
“Why Bhaba?
Why? Why? Mama why? Why? Why God? Why?” he screams.
It is
his own scream, this sound. His.
Cries
of hopeless pain tear at his throat, and he cries until there is nothing left;
no tears. His grief leaves him dry, dry and barren; like the land without rain,
he is left without tears or breath. Desperately he gasps for air. Trails of
tears meander down his dust-covered skin. Bone-tired, worn out by a burden of grief
beyond his young strength, he slumps down on to the ground and falls asleep.
It is
the second day after his mother’s funeral.
It is
the second day of the death of his heart, his pride. It is the second day of
his birth into a new life.
***
Every
Zulu child is given two names at birth: a Zulu name and a Bible name. His
father had baptised him Samson Ndlovu - meaning Elephant - Zondi: the strong,
the great. His father had been very proud of his first born son. He, that was
Samson, had carried his name with great pride.
“Samson
Ndlovu Zondi, you are the oldest son of Petrus Zeblon Zondi, fourth generation
and a descendent of Bambatha Zondi; the country’s first freedom fighter. There
has been a freedom fighter in this family in every generation after him, and
you must follow in their footsteps.” His dad had told him this, again and again
during his childhood, and again in his grief clouded dream, he hear these
words.
He
must fight. It his Fate, it is written in his name, and it flows in his blood.
Thanks for being part of the tour, we at WDA Publishing appreciate it. <3
ReplyDeleteA pleasure Lynelle
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