Author Description

"African Apocalypse is a tale within a tale.". "The remarkable story of the prophet Nontetha began to take shape in the eastern Cape of South Africa in 1918, when the disastrous influenza epidemic was sweeping the world. Nontetha had a series of visions convincing her that the flu was a punishment from God and that she must lead her people to reform their ways. Her preaching alarmed government officials, who sought to silence her by committing her to a nearby mental asylum, eventually relocating her to a Pretoria asylum some six hundred miles from her home.". "The other tale takes place six decades after Nontetha's death in that Pretoria asylum and her burial in an unmarked pauper's grave in 1935. Over the years, a historian and frequent visitor to South Africa, Robert Edgar, gradually learned of Nontetha's story, which he recorded. Inspired by the devotion of her followers, he then led a search for her remains and, with Hilary Sapire, arranged for their return to her home village for reburial among her people.". "Thanks to Edgar and Sapire's persistence and illuminating scholarship, this striking account of the life of a singular African woman provides an insightful record of South Africa's past that would otherwise have gone untold."--BOOK JACKET.