| Fiela se Kind (Fiela's Child) |
|
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Dalene Matthee |
| Original title | Fiela se Kind |
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | Afrikaans |
| Genre(s) | Drama |
| Publisher | Tafelberg Publishers Ltd |
| Publication date | 1985 |
| Published in English |
1986 |
| Media type | Hardcover/Movie |
| Pages | 314 |
| ISBN | 0394552318 |
| OCLC Number | 13003348 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823 19 |
| LC Classification | PR9369.3.M376 F5 1986 |
Fiela's Child is a South African novel written by Dalene Matthee and published in 1985. The book was originally written in Afrikaans under the name Fiela se Kind, and was later translated into not only English, but French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Icelandic, among others.
The story is set in the forests of Knysna in South Africa in the nineteenth century, and tells the story of a Cape Coloured woman, Fiela, and her family who adopt an abandoned white child. Nine years later the child is taken away from the Fiela and forced to live with a white family of woodcutters who claim he is their lost son. It is ironic that his living conditions with the white people are actually much worse than with his coloured family who are seen as lower class because of their race. The climax of the story unfolds a few years later when the boy forces his "mother's" guilt to confess he is not actually her son and he returns to Fiela and family whom he chooses as his own.
The book was made into a movie in 1988. [1] The ending is changed as Fiela gets her child back.