A children’s novel about apartheid
At the end of last year I published a children’s novel set in the apartheid period of South Africa, called Of wheels and witches.
It hasn’t attracted a vast readership; I could probably count the number of readers on the fingers of one hand, and they include my wife who read it in manuscript to tell me if she found any obvious plot holes and things like that.
So why did I write a “political” novel for children?
I’ve partly explained my reasons for writing the book here, in a review of reviews: Apartheid and racism in children’s literature | Khanya
And it’s not all political, as it’s mainly an adventure story. The difference from most children’s adventure stories is that the apartheid government is the villain of the piece. That, of course, would have made it unpublishable at the time, at least in South Africa. It is set in 1964, when the apartheid regime had been in power for 16 years, and had been tightening its grip on power by passing more repressive legislation every year.
The children in the story range in age from 9-12, three white and one black. The white children are largely unaware of the political set-up in which they lived, as were most white children at that time. That was part of “white privilege” — if you were white, you could be quite unaware of the situation until it impinged directly on you.
The story also has a variety of other elements, some verging on fantasy — witchcraft, ikons and hints of a spiritual world lurking behind the outward appearances of things.
- If you’d like to know more about how I came to write it, go here: Apartheid and racism in children’s literature | Khanya
- If you’d like to buy it (as a Christmas present for your godchildren, perhaps), go here: Smashwords – Of Wheels and Witches – a book by Stephen Hayes or here Books2Read: Of Wheels and Witches
- If you’d like to review it, or read other people’s reviews of it, go here: Goodreads | Of Wheels and Witches by Stephen Hayes — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
You can download the first few chapters as a free sample, to see if you like it — like browsing in a physical bookshop.
Read this if you have a proprietary e-book reader like Kindle, Kobo or Nook
If you don’t buy an e-book from the manufacturer of your e-reader (eg Amazon in the case of Kindle), you will need to “sideload” it on to your reader. So if you buy The Year of the Dragon from Smashwords, you will need to “sideload” it. Instructions for sideloading are given at the following links:
Khanya 
Logged into Goodreads, can’t figure out how to read some sample chapters. Heeelp!
You won’t find sample chapters on GoodReads, but you will find them here Of Wheels and Witches.