Despite all the plaudits, and the weight of expectation that lies upon a history-making book, Olive Schreiner's "The Story of An African Farm" is a novel that remains immensely readable. Although nearly 150 years lie between the book's first publication and my reading of it, Schreiner's writing still retains the power to move.

"It is delightful to be a woman, but every man thanks the Lord that he isn't one," remarks Lyndall, the book's articulate young heroine.

Lyndall’s wry comment is a striking one. Schreiner was probably one of the first authors to dare to frame such a sentiment; the pity of it is that the statement is still a true one. We may live in the 21st century, but universal suffrage for women is not yet a reality, and in South Africa, violence against women is part of daily life.

Which just goes to show how far ahead of her time Olive Schreiner was. It’s incredible to think that one of the most influential feminist works of the nineteenth century was written by a poorly-educated governess on the very margins of Victorian society, in rural South Africa.

"The Story of An African Farm" is set on a desolate Karoo farm whose inhabitants are thrown together largely by circumstance. Three orphaned children — Lyndall, Em and Waldo — grow up under the wary gaze of Tant Sannie, Em’s stepmother and the farm’s mistress. It’s a difficult life, and the orphans become firm friends as they face an increasingly uncaring world. A conman, Bonaparte Blenkins, succeeds in ruining almost everyone’s lives with his venality before he is finally thrown off the farm.

We next meet the friends after an interval of some years. Lyndall returns from boarding school, pregnant but determined not to marry her lover; Waldo leaves the farm in order to learn something of the wider world, and Em contemplates marriage.

But their hopes come to nothing; Em discovers that her fiancé is in love with Lyndall, and Waldo finds that salaried work is little better than slavery. Lyndall, who has always been the most determined of the three, dies shortly after the birth of her child.

Schreiner’s novel, so daring for its time, challenges conventional ideas of gender and sexuality, is outspoken about the role of women in society, and articulates the budding movement towards free thought and agnosticism, away from conventional religious faith.

Which makes her characters’ attitude to race all the more surprising. Lyndall, the boldest of the three, reflects that a distant African man “is the most interesting and intelligent thing I can see just now… Will his race melt away in the heat of a collision with a higher?”

Lyndall and Waldo defy social conventions in so many areas that their adherence to European ideas about race comes across as crude and even brutal. And possibly that was Schreiner’s intention — although readers should also remember that the word “Kaffir” was far more acceptable a century ago. But she’s also an author who’s very difficult to pin down — at times antisemitic, at others mounting a passionate defence of the Jews. Similarly, she was opposed to the Boer war, but was not averse to caricaturing Boers in her fiction.

In the end, one simply has to take “The Story of An African Farm” on its own terms.

Title: The Story of An African Farm
Author: Olive Schreiner
Publishers: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-283664-1