THE SANDS SHALL WITNESS

Williamson presents a tale of early-20th-century German South West Africa (now Namibia), told from a white colonist’s point of view.

In 1903, a young German named Conrad Huber receives the position of commissioner’s aide at the German Colonial Office in South West Africa. There, he stays in Commissioner Leutwein’s home in Windhoek, where he meets Sybille, who works in the commissioner’s office and is the daughter of Samuel Maharero, leader of the local Herero people. Due to ongoing struggles between Leutwein and Maj. Dietrich Baumhauer, the leader of the local militia, Conrad and Sybille are sent to negotiate with Maharero. Conrad soon rushes back to Leutwein, leaving Sybille with plans to reunite in Windhoek later, and he soon finds himself in the midst of a rebellion that results in Leutwein’s resignation and Conrad’s promotion to the Colonial Office’s Chief Expert under Gen. Lothar von Trotha. A battle with the Herero then ensues; Conrad receives a debilitating leg injury and is saved by his cousin Georg, who’s stationed in Windhoek. Von Trotha employs aggressive, inhumane tactics: “The Hottentots are savage and cowardly dogs,” he says at one point, employing an offensive term for the local inhabitants. “Murderous, villainous cannibals that must be put down!” Meanwhile, Conrad uses his new authority to track down the missing Sybille. Overall, Williamson deftly weaves an engaging story of adventure while taking care not to minimize the horrors inflicted upon the region’s people by Western European colonists. Readers may take exception to the fact that the story is told entirely from Conrad’s viewpoint; the author, in an afterword, notes this: “I have attempted to use my own lens to turn the white knight trope upside down and show how utterly helpless, out of place and unwanted such a ‘hero’ is.” The story’s structure is easy to follow, and although the author employs a certain amount of creative license to sustain the plot (the real-life Maharero didn’t have a German wife and a daughter named Sybille, for instance), it’s still firmly anchored in historical fact, including the horrific Battle of Waterberg, in which thousands of Herero soldiers and their families were killed.

A fast-paced, easily digestible historical epic.