The King's Assegai: A Matabili Story

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Set in the turbulent early 1800s before British colonisation in South Africa, The King's Assegai(1894) is a gripping narrative of a young Zulu warrior's passage through crisis. Together with an army of fellow Zulus, Untuswa flees the harsh rule of the Zulu king, Shaka, to establish a new nation under a new leader, Umzilikazi. Untuswa quickly earns the King's favour and is appointed his chief messenger, emboldened by this honour, he asks the King's permission to marry. Laughing, the King promises to give Untuswa not only permission to marry, but also his assegai--his spear, which in his hand is symbol of his authority--but only if Untuswa performs a deed braver and bolder than any he has heard of. Untuswa, determined to claim performance of this promise, fights ferociously against enemy tribes, confronts the terrifying magic of the witch-doctors, and risks death at the hands of cannibals in the mountains. But these dangers are nothing compared to the fate that awaits him when he does the unthinkable--elope with the King's intended bride. The first of Bertram Mitford's tetralogy of historical Zulu novels, The King's Assegai is remarkable for being a novel written by a white man, but peopled entirely by African characters. Based on Mitford's own experiences in South Africa and local oral tradition, *The King's Assegai* is not simply a great British novel about Africa, but, as Gerald Monsman argues in his introduction, a great African novel. Long out of print and neglected, The King's Assegai deserves a place alongside H. Rider Haggard's Nada the Lily as precursor to later established African classics such as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.