The Broken Land

By Ian McDonald
First Published: 1992
Grandfather was a tree, Father grew trux, in fifteen colours. Mother could sing the double-helix song, sing it right into the hearts of living things and change them…

The Land is a living, breathing, sentient world, where careful skills and talent can manipulate its very substance into a myriad different shapes and forms.

This is the world in which Mathembe Fileli grows up, until the conflicts tearing her country apart shatter her village, her home and her family and scatter them to the four winds. Can Mathembe reunite her family in a world full of angels, talking trees, squalor and glory?

Highly-acclaimed and award-winning author Ian McDonald pens a powerful novel about political and religious oppression, set in a far-future Earth that bears startling resemblances to our own. This riveting world-building novel offers a haunting allegory for the bitter strife tearing apart such places as South Africa and Northern Ireland.