Fellow Dutch South African writer Nicolaas Vergunst (signing copies below) describes his great 436 page historical novel, ‘Knot of Stone,’ (subtitled ‘The day that changed South Africa’s history’), as follows: “The book begins with the chance discovery of several skeletons on an old beach below Table Mountain. ‘Knot of Stone’ is a tale of historical detection in which the main protagonists, an Afrikaans archaeologist named Jason, and Sonja, a Dutch historian (second picture), both try to reconstruct what happened five centuries ago when a high-ranking official, Francisko d’Almeida, was ambushed and murdered by the indiginous Khoikhoin. They find themselves on the trail of a lost Aristotelian manuscript, crisscrossing Europe in a vintage coupé and chasing down every possible clue, while being pursued by a zealous mercenary themselves.” At the launch of the book in London on 5th September 2011, James Farrell of Arena Books said: “We are very proud of having had the opportunity to publish ‘Knot of Stone,’ which we feel is a remarkable novel in a category of its own. I say this because, like Melville’s ‘Moby Dick,’ it is a novel which can be interpreted on several different levels. It is clearly a story on an epic scale, and as the author remarks in his Preface, the book ‘straddles different genres.’ It is primarily a work of historical fiction, but in its search for facts about a murky episode in South Africa’s history, it seeks to reveal a number of underlying truths of existence which touch us all.” Comparisons have been drawn with the works of Umberto Eco, Dan Drown and Paolo Coelho. The psychiatrist Laurence Olivier calls it a Karmic novel. In her review of the book, Ruchama Hagenaar writes,“I have just read the last pages of ‘Knot of Stone.’ As a novel it brings together an incredible wealth of knowledge, all written in a rich language. It is a true voyage of discovery through history and the world; and also above this world (as in the clairaudient material from Laurence Oliver/El Aurenx).” About those clairaudient episodes the Cape Town metaphysical counsellor and dream analyst Martin de Robaix says: “It is a rare, dreamlike phenomenon, more usually encountered in a somnolent state of mind halfway between sleep and full wakefulness.” A central theme of ‘Knot of Stone’ is the idea of the ‘eternal return’; namely, that we return to live again and again with the same friends, family and foes. This is demonstrated via several tabulated karmic biographies. The reader may, or may not take all the karmic information given in the book for granted, but re-incarnation is an old and persuasive idea, with both Egyptian and European roots. Rituals to bring back the dead were, for instance, performed at Newgrange at the time of the Grooved Ware People. As in all literature about spiritual matters, the readers are asked to develop their inner sense of truth.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 01:24:13 +0000
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