First of December is set in the momentous week leading up to midnight on 1 December 1838, the day that South Africa’s slaves were finally emancipated.
Karen Jennings’ compelling novel tells this story of history in the making. It follows the lives of three characters battling their own personal circumstances.
There is the slave, the mother of a still-born baby, who decides to run away to Cape Town to find her lover. There is Caroline, the convalescent English bride, who loathes both her husband James and this ramshackle outpost to which he has brought her. And there is James himself, desperate to make his fortune in the colony after he has run through Caroline’s dowry.
First of December is about the unexpected twists and turns of history. Its drama is born from the strivings of its characters to find a better life amid every kind of turmoil. From the moment the bells strike midnight, setting the slaves free, the world they inhabit will be irreversibly changed.
andFirst of December
This is an extraordinary novel. It is shattering, almost bearable, yet—so good, so clear—it is unputdownable.’
‘Absolutely brilliant and proof again…that fiction can tell us more about our human condition than most journalism can…an amazing book with an incredible story at the heart of it.’
‘An unsparing, yet profoundly beautiful novel.’
‘Thoroughly absorbing… a small but powerful book, with the reach of a more capacious work, compounding merciless political critique and allegory rendered in tender prose.’
