A Sin of Omission

A powerful novel about innocent faith and an abuse of trust

Torn from his parents as a child, Stephen Mzamane is picked by the Anglican church to train at the Missionary College in Canterbury and then sent back to southern Africa's Cape Colony to be a preacher.

He is a brilliant success, but troubles stalk him: his unresolved relationship with his family and people, the condescension of church leaders towards their own native pastors in the 1870s, and That Woman—seen once in a photograph and never forgotten. And now he has to find his mother and take her a message that will break her heart.

In this raw and compelling story, Marguerite Poland employs her massive experience as a writer and African linguist to recreate the polarised, duplicitous world of Victorian colonialism and its betrayal of the very people that it claimed to be enlightening.