Marguerite Poland's A Sin of Omission evokes the repercussions of colonialism in 19th-century South Africa

A heart-wrenching story elevated through luminous writing, Marguerite Poland’s fictional tribute to a historical Black South African missionary was shortlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize in its original edition.

In 1880, Stephen Malusi Mzamane, deacon at Nodyoba, a remote mission in the hills of the Eastern Cape, prepares for a difficult journey to inform his mother about his older brother’s death. Most of the novel, though, looks back to reveal the circumstances leading him to this point. Found in the Donsa bush while foraging for food at age nine, the boy baptized “Stephen” is educated at the Native College in Grahamstown and later sent to the Missionary College in Canterbury, England, as part of the Anglican church’s plans to “Christianise the native.”

Though Stephen excels with his assignments, Poland depicts, in evocative words ringing with truth, how his progress in the Church and life is agonizingly held back by the bitter, systemic effects of colonialism. As a member of the “heathen” Ngqika people granted the rare privilege of a British education, he must simultaneously confront others’ high and low expectations for his conduct.

Readers can’t help but be moved by the internal conflict Stephen feels and his reactions to the burden of gratitude weighing him down. He also feels torn because his parishioners are from a different nation than he, and his superiors assume this doesn’t matter.

All relationships are depicted with nuance: the two friendships Stephen cherishes across great distance; his challenging bond with brother Mzamo, once a promising scholar himself; and his preoccupation with a mysterious woman from a photograph. Respectful of her subject and his culture, Poland highlights the importance of Xhosa names and the language itself in Stephen’s world.

Remarkable on a sentence level and as a fully realized portrait of an honorable man, this is literary historical fiction of a high order.

A Sin of Omission was first published by Penguin Books South Africa in 2019, and the ebook version (which I had purchased) is available on Amazon (US). It was subsequently published by the British publisher EnvelopeBooks last month.  I reviewed it for the Historical Novels Review in May. In addition to the Walter Scott Prize shortlisting, the novel won the 2021 Sunday Times award for fiction.

This story is not quite biographical fiction. Stephen is based on a real person whose history was known to members of the author's family, prompting her interest and further research into his life.  Read more at the Sunday Times (South Africa) as well as Wanda Wyporska's interview with the author at the Historical Novel Society's website.