A fiercely poetic literary debut re-creating the life of an 18th-century slave woman in South Africa. <BR>Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed--and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 18th-century court records, "Unconfessed" is a breathtaking literary tour de force. <BR>They called her Sila van den Kaap, slave woman of Jacobus Stephanus Van der Wat of Plettenberg Bay, South Africa. A woman moved from master to master, farm to farm, and--driven by the horrors of slavery to commit an unspeakable crime--from prison to prison. A woman fit for hanging&#133; condemned to death on April 30, 1823, but whose sentence the English, having recently wrested authority from the Dutch settlers, saw fit to commute to a lengthy term on the notorious Robben Island. <BR>Sila spends her days in the prison quarry, breaking stones for Cape Town's streets and walls. She remembers the day her childhood ended, when slave catchers came "whipping the air and the ground and we were like deer whipped into the smaller and smaller circle of our fear." Sila remembers her masters, especially Oumiesies ("old Missus"), who in her will granted Sila her freedom, but Theron, Oumiesies' vicious and mercenary son, destroys the will and with it Sila's life. Sila remembers her children, with joy and with pain, and imagines herself a great bird that could sweep them up in her wings and set them safely on a branch above all harm. "Unconfessed" is an epic novel that connects the reader to the unimaginable through the force of poetry and a far-reaching imagination.

"Poet Christians (Castaway), born in apartheid-era South Africa and now living in New York City, channels the torturous history of South African slavery in her debut novel. Sila van den Kaap, whom Christians discovered in an early 19th century document, is a slave serving hard labor at the Robben Island prison colony after murdering her own son, Baro. As Sila breaks and hauls stones, evades the attentions of the prison guards and cares for her small children, she casts her mind back to the daily indignities, fleeting pleasures and larger injustices that have defined her life since, as a young girl, she was brought to South Africa from Mozambique. Addressed primarily to the spirit of her deceased son, Sila's absorbing, lyrical narrative is circular: she alternates between exhausted lament, seething rage and scripture-tinged poetic soliloquy ('their sins are like unto a plague of locusts that eat not fields but bodies and hearts'), and returns repeatedly to the broken promise of her freedom, granted in the will of one of her mistresses, Oumiesies ('old Missus'), and disregarded by Oumiesies's cruel son, Theron. After many passionate digressions, Sila alights, finally, on the death of Baro. In the final pages, she movingly addresses 'the daughters and sons of my generations' — those now living with slavery's legacy." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A fiercely poetic literary debut re-creating the life of an 18th-century slave woman in South Africa. Slavery as it existed in Africa has seldom been portrayed--and never with such texture, detail, and authentic emotion. Inspired by actual 18th-century court records, Unconfessed is a breathtaking literary tour de force.

Yvette Christiansë was born in South Africa under apartheid and emigrated with her parents via Swaziland to Australia at the age of eighteen. She is the author of the 1999 poetry collection Castaway. She teaches English and postcolonial studies at Fordham University and lives in New York City. Unconfessed is her first novel.