The action of The History predominantly occurs in a fictitious town on the West Coast of South Africa. The town, Soutbek, is distinctly divided into the upper and lower town and these divisions represent the division between wealth and poverty. The poor are relegated to the upper town, while the wealthy live in the lower town and have the benefit of a view of the bay. The main characters of The History are Pieter Fortuin, the mayor of Soutbek and former upper towner; his wife Anna Fortuin; and then to a lesser extent, Sara, a teenage runaway and Willem, a young man from the upper town. The relationships between these four characters form the bulk of the narrative. Mayor Fortuin's great hope and aim for Soutbek is to make it famous and 'put it on the map.' In order to achieve this goal, the mayor decides to compile a history of the area with the assistance of retired history professor, Terence Pearson. The subsequent account of the Soutbek region calls into question the standard history of the early colonisation of South Africa. Pages of The History of the Soutbek Region are interspersed throughout the novel proper, with the consequence that interesting parallels and relationships become evident to the reader. The result is a novel which explores notions of identity, history, myth and reality, as well as the way that human beings choose to treat each other. Much research has been put into both the pages of The History of the Soutbek Region and the novel proper.
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Department of English Language and Literature