A Few Months with the Boers – Sophia Izedinova

R240.00

Condition: Very good
Format: Hardcover
Published: 1977 (Perskor)
Pages: 254
ISBN: 0628011865

Out of stock

Description

A Few Months with the Boers – Sophia Izedinova

“. . . I began to feel a real love for South Africa, the land and its peoples, a love i which linked me with them, their interests and their destiny. The source of my feeling of attachment was, no doubt, the impression which I had occasion to describe many times when asked by the Boers how I liked their country and what did I think of it, namely that it reminded me of Russia. And with all the differences of climate, vegetation and animal life, that was indeed so. Of all the foreign landscapes I have seen, there is nowhere save in the South African veld that I have experienced the familiar awareness of space, of the scarcely visible village roads, of the open horizon and of the sparsely-populated agricultural lands.”

These words by Sister Izedinova, the Russian nursing sister, are indicative of the sympathy and love she felt towards this remote country in Africa to which she came with the Russo-Dutch ambulance during the Boer War. Her sentiments echo those of her countrymen, who, together with the rest of Europe, had nothing but admiration for the gallant struggle of the tiny Boer republics against Imperial Britain at the turn of the century. Her reminescenses, hitherto untranslated, and unknown outside Russia, were published in St Petersburg in 1903. They describe her experiences during the war, including some famous battles and many of the outstanding personalities of the day whom she had met.

About Sister Izedinova herself little is known, but she will immediately strike the reader as an extremely intelligent, well-travelled and articulate observer. The book was salvaged from obscurity by Mr C. Moody of the Department of Russian studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, who not only translated and edited the work, but also provided it with footnotes and added letters by other Russian participants in order to provide a broader historical perspective.