Untold Tales and Occluded Histories

Abstract

The Herero Nama Genocide is a painful period in Namibian history and yet it is the period about which several novels have been written in the past ten years. This article examines one of the novels of this period, The Lie of the Land by Jasper Utley, with a view to exploring the ambivalence in its writing. Using witness bearing and the concept of the ‘Other’ in postcolonialism, I investigate the narrator’s language and lay bare the ambiguities in the novel. I trace the path of the eponymous hero from being a witness to the Nama Genocide to an active involvement in the rescue of a Nama woman whom he falls in love with.