About the Book

Olive Schreiner’s novella tells the story of one of Cecil John Rhodes’s soldiers, Trooper Peter Halket. Peter loses the rest of his troop one evening and spends a cold, blustery night alone on a Koppie in what is now Zimbabwe. There he encounters a man who the reader slowly begins to realise is none other than … well, that would be giving the story away. Perhaps one of the most controversial elements of the publication of the book in 1897 was the inclusion of the frontispiece photograph. This image shows, in graphic detail, three ‘Matabele’ ‘spies’ hanging from a tree in the main street of Bulawayo while Rhodes’ men look on.

Despite being a best seller in the UK, Schreiner felt that it had largely been ignored. She wrote to her brother William, stating: ‘if I were dead, I would like them to write on my grave: “She wrote Peter Halket’ — nothing else.”’

About Olive Schreiner

Olive Schreiner is, along with JM Coetzee, South Africa’s most famous novelist. Her first novel, The Story of an African Farm, was an international best seller. She was born in 1855 to a German-English missionary couple at the Wittebergen mission in the Cape Colony.

She fought for social justice and equality for all races for most of her life. What many have forgotten is her fight against the injustices of Cecil John Rhodes. In her attempt to unseat Rhodes from power, she wrote Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland.