When We Become Men

The tensions of Naomi Mitchison's new novel spring from her setting - Bechuana Land, separated by the high barbed fence from South Africa - and also from the problems surrounding the loyalties and loves of her characters. In her earlier books she has got inside the skins of Spartans and Gauls; now she has done the same for the Batswana who have accepted her as one of themselves. If she has got it right, and the Batswana think she has, this is current and blazing history.

It is also, in particular, the story of Isaac, a political refugee from the republic of South Africa who is granted asylum by the chief on the other side of the border. But the chief dies and police spies infiltrate the frontier. The ripples widen, and Isaac becomes just one of the many problems confronting the young chief who arrives from London in time to prevent a schism in the tribe. Both men face acute personal danger and violence, both find difficulties in the path of love and ultimately both have to answer opposite questions about the new Africa in which they live: can Isaac afford to accept the traditional benefits of a tribe forever or can the young chief afford to let them disappear?

Here, from the inside, is the fear and hatred, the courage and generosity of the African struggle for freedom: Naomi Mitchison has succeeded in presenting love and politics, kindliness and violence as they are seem through the dark Batswana eyes of her people by adoption.