Makanna

1834 novel

Front cover of Makanna

Makanna; or, the Land of the Savage is an anonymous 1834 novel. It is a captivity narrative that received mixed reviews in the press.

## Synopsis

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Paul Laroon (a French operative of ambiguous or mixed ethnicity[1]) and Makanna (a character based on the prophet Makhanda ka Nxele) jointly fight against British imperial ambitions.[2] Makanna is the leader of the Amakhossae (Xhosa), and together they save Bertha Falkland, the daughter of a British official.[3]

## Publication

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Makanna was first published anonymously in 1834[4] by Simpkin & Marshall in London.[5] It was published in three volumes,[6] and received a second edition.[4] Scholars do not know the identity of Makanna's author, although they did publish another novel called Picaroon.[7]

## Reception

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Upon its release, the novel received a mixed review in the Literary Gazette, which complained that the writing was "as a whole ... incongruous, forced, and extravagant".[6] A writer for The Athenaeum positively reviewed the work, writing that the author "has made that region" – the southern tip of Africa and the Indian Ocean – "his own", although the writer complained about extraneous prefatory information that was included in the first edition.[8] One article in Leigh Hunt's London Journal understands the novel as "defective in artifice of management, but very interesting on the whole", particularly for its descriptions of the rhinoceros, which the article describes as "a sort of hog-elephant, or mixture of elephant, hog, tapir, and cattle-mouth, cased in compartments of armour".[9]

Literary scholar Ian Glenn understands Makanna as a captivity narrative that ultimately reads as a "conventional romance".[10] He describes it as the "first substantial South African novel".[11]

## References

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### Citations

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1. ^ Van Wyk Smith 2009, p. 108.
2. ^ Shaw 2020, pp. 115–116.
3. ^ Glenn 2019, p. 71.
4. ^ a b Shaw 2020, p. 115.
5. ^ Makanna 1834, cover.
6. ^ a b Literary Gazette 1834, p. 210.
7. ^ Glenn 2019, p. 70.
8. ^ The Athenaeum 1834, p. 195.
9. ^ Leigh Hunt's London Journal 1834, p. 44.
10. ^ Glenn 2019, pp. 70, 75.
11. ^ Glenn 2007, p. 24.

### Works cited

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* Glenn, Ian (2007). "Classical black". English in Africa. 34 (2): 19–33\. JSTOR 40239076.
* Glenn, Ian (2019). "Captivity novels as critique of South African colonialism". English in Africa. 46 (2): 67–84\. doi:10.4314/eia.v46i2.4. JSTOR 48563142. S2CID 204474782.
* Shaw, Dan (2020). "Makanna, or, the Land of the Savage: Makhanda ka Nxele in English literature". English Studies in Africa. 63 (2): 112–122\. doi:10.1080/00138398.2020.1852700. S2CID 231588680.
* Van Wyk Smith, Malvern (2009). "'The affections of a man of feeling in the midst of the wilderness': François Le Vaillant on the South African border". English in Africa. 36 (2): 99–111\. ProQuest 194935622.
* "A rhinoceros hunt". Leigh Hunt's London Journal. 7 May 1834. pp. 44–45\. ProQuest 2565113.
* "Makanna; or, the Land of the Savage". Literary Gazette. 22 March 1834. p. 210\. ProQuest 5224351.
* Makanna; or, the Land of the Savage. Vol. 1\. London: Simpkin & Marshall. 1834. Gale XDYZDN727877505.
* "Makanna; or, the Land of the Savage". The Athenaeum. 15 March 1834. pp. 195–197\. ProQuest 8917680.