On one side of the mountain, in the Lange Kloof, lives Fiela Komoetie, devoted to her foundling -- given to her by the Lord -- one night when she found him as a three-year-old standing and crying at her door. On the other side of the mountain, in the Forest, live the woodcutter Elias Van Rooyen and his wife Barta, whose three-year-old child went missing. One child is Benjamin Komoetie, the other Lukas Van Rooyen. Are they the same person? Could a small child have walked so far, from the Forest to the Lange Kloof? The question is unearthed nine years later by two census-takers who travel through the Lange Kloof and find the white child with blue eyes among the coloured people. And years later, it is the question Benjamin himself asks: Who am I? He must know, otherwise the woman he has come to love can never be his. At the heart of the novel from the Knysna-forest world, lies a dark, impenetrable mystery.
On one side of the mountain, in the Lange Kloof, lives Fiela Komoetie, devoted to her foundling -- given to her by the Lord -- one night when she found him as a three-year-old standing and crying at her door. On the other side of the mountain, in the Forest, live the woodcutter Elias Van Rooyen and his wife Barta, whose three-year-old child went missing. One child is Benjamin Komoetie, the other Lukas Van Rooyen. Are they the same person? Could a small child have walked so far, from the Forest to the Lange Kloof? The question is unearthed nine years later by two census-takers who travel through the Lange Kloof and find the white child with blue eyes among the coloured people. And years later, it is the question Benjamin himself asks: Who am I? He must know, otherwise the woman he has come to love can never be his. At the heart of the novel from the Knysna-forest world, lies a dark, impenetrable mystery.