The Afrikaans of East Nissouri
(1899, Beaverton Press)

Without a doubt, Afrikaans was Emily Chesley's "breakthrough" novel, if any one book of hers could be considered so. Like so many of Chesley's works, this book anticipated much that would happen in the 20^th Century, not only in terms of science and geopolitics, but in literature as well.

Afrikaans is probably one of the first "post-modern" stories. In structure, it is similar to some of Milan Kundera's works; the interweaving of character, story, and internal dialogue are years ahead of anything written at the time. In plot, the book is pure Chesley.

The main story takes place in Southwestern Ontario, circa 1899. (The year that the book was actually published, by Dog's Leg Press, in Mitchell.) The Boer War is raging, and the British set up a "concentration camp" in East Nissouri. Minnie Chesterton is a lonely school-marm who lives on the outskirts of "Flattown", which is probably modeled after Thamesford. She passes by the concentration camp every day, where she notices the figure of Karl, who follows her every move. Eventually she plucks up the courage to talk to him, and they have an illicit affair through the fence.

This story is interposed with the "alternate reality" of the near future, in which the Afrikaans not only beat the British Empire, but took it over. In this dark future, Chesley anticipates a number of 20^th Century atrocities: gas warfare, totalitarianism, and genocide. And in this future, Karl is not a downtrodden prisoner, but a homicidal maniac who rules all of Southwestern Ontario.

The story is resolved in a devastating choice faced by the figure of Minnie, who is central to both stories.

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Note:
This novel came out of an earlier short story, The Afrikaners of East Nissouri, which was unpublished until recently, when it appeared in Would That It Were.