Knot of Stone

Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history is a 2011 historical murder mystery written by South African/Dutch author Nicolaas Vergunst.

The carved sandstone knot comes from Belem Tower, an early 16thC fort at the old entrance to Lisbon harbour. Photograph by José Gomes Ferreira.

Plot summary

In 1510, when the Cape of Good Hope was still revered as the Portal to the Indies, the Viceroy of Portuguese India was led ashore, slain and hurriedly buried in a shallow grave. For the next five centuries the death of Dom Francisco de Almeida was invariably blamed on a clan of retaliatory Khoikhoi herders.[1] However, based on new research and fresh leads, the author proposes that the conflict was orchestrated in order to carry out the execution of Viceroy D'Almeida. According to the book, this was more than an ambush, it was an assassination.

Knot of Stone is a tale of historical detection in which a Dutch historian, Sonja Haas, and an Afrikaans archaeologist, Jason Tomas, find themselves drawn together after discovering a five-century-old skeleton at the foot of Table Mountain. Their search for new evidence leads them north to ancestral burial sites, remote mountain sanctuaries, sacred springs, medieval monasteries and rare museum artefacts. Via various roadside encounters, including the revelations of a sangoma (a healer empowered by the ancestors), they reconstruct the past and their own identities, with divergent consequences.[2]

The book's revision of actual events departs significantly from mainstream historical writing, both in and beyond South Africa, in that it draws on dreams, oral traditions and ancestral voices.

Reception

According to historian and author Harrie Salman, "Knot of Stone is a splendid example of a new genre—the karmic novel."[3]

Reviews
  • Joseph Nthini (October 19, 2011). "Knot of Stone: a murder mystery, a sangoma and history rewritten", The South African.
  • Paulo Figueiredo (October 30, 2011). "Nó de Pedra o assassínio de Dom Francisco de Almeida", LUSA.
  • Harrie Salman (September 2011). "Knot of Stone: the day that changed South Africa’s history", New View.
  • Janet Williamson (November 2011). "Knot of Stone", Historical Novel Society.
  • Rachel Willis (January 2012). "Revisiting the Past: ancestral voices and the karmic novel", Lightworker.
  • Dave Kirby (March 1, 2012). On the Bookshelf.
  • Don McMaster (October 1, 2012). "Knot of Stone: not your ordinary mystery", Amazon.
  • Robert Shell (March 2013). "The 500th+ anniversary of the D'Almeida killing", Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa.

References
  1. Robert Shell (March 2013). Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa Archived 2015-04-12 at the Wayback Machine vol.67 no.1, pp.8-11.
  2. Joseph Nthini (October 28, 2011). The Archival Platform
  3. Harrie Salman (September 2011). New View Archived 2001-04-06 at the Wayback Machine, pp.78-80.
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