South Africa's literature is remarkable for the fact that its women writers are better than the men. The best South African biography is Sarah Gertrude Millin's Cecil Rhodes; the best novels, Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and Pauline Smith's The Beadle (1926). Publication of The Fire-Raisers brings another woman novelist into the front rank of South African fiction.
Jean Heather Marris Murray, daughter of a Scottish emigrant father and a South African mother, was born in Pretoria. An Oxford scholarship took her to England, where she worked as a free-lance journalist throughout World War II. The Fire-Raisers is...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
