Overview

The life of Hannah Zeeman becomes entangled in multiple plots which unfold sinuously in a world where the boundaries between faith, reason, race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and sexuality start collapsing inexorably as the dawn of a new age sweeps away all ancient verities and customs. It is also an exotic story of revolution and love between women. Hannah Zeeman's journey begins in the 1950s at City Deep, a mining village located in the southern suburbs of Johannesburg South Africa. City Deep was one of the first gold mines developed in the late 1880s in Johannesburg. By the late 1950s City Deep goldmine has reached the end of its useful life as a goldmine and for this reason, and also for other reasons which will become disclosed in the novel, the Zeeman family relocate from City Deep to the small mining town of Stilfontein situated on newly discovered gold fields located about 100 km west of Johannesburg. These gold fields first became operational in the late 1950s. From Stilfontein the family moved to the mining town of Hotazel located next to a massive and deep opencast manganese mine. Hotazel is situated in the Kalahari Desert. As an adolescent girl in Hotazel, she becomes aware of her nascent erotic attraction for women. From her high school years and onwards her adventure into the universe of lesbianism begins. It is an adventure that becomes theologically, philosophically and politically entangled with her revolutionary engagement in the struggle against apartheid. As a Marxist and Communist, she finds herself having to negotiate all kinds of conflicts and contradictions regarding her double life as an underground revolutionary and a nightclubbing lipstick lesbian. It is also an exotic story of love between women. Erotic entanglements are negotiated with genuine care and sensitivity in a world fraught with all kinds of risks and uncertainties about the future. And inevitably the dark shadow of betrayal transforms the new world order into a bleak wilderness, exposing the futility of politics and revolution. This is also a novel that belongs to the literary genre of confessional-autobiographical-writing. Augustine of Hippo is one of the earliest founders of this literary genre and Henry Miller's work represents the quintessential modern version of fictionalized-confessional-autobiographical writing with no political commitment whatsoever. The saga of Hannah Zeeman lies somewhere between Augustine and Henry Miller and Che Guevara.