11 h 31 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 11 h 31 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
On a lonely South African farm, a girl demands freedom and a boy questions everything he is taught.
In Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, the dry, stony Karoo holds a small household and large questions. Lyndall wants an education and a life of her own. Waldo searches for honest answers about religion. Around them, Tant Sannie rules with stubborn certainty and little patience for learning.
Then Bonaparte Blenkins arrives, full of grand claims and skilled at flattering those in power. As the story moves from childhood into later years, Lyndall challenges the limits placed on women, while Waldo questions the faith he takes so seriously. Their struggles give this novel of ideas its personal stakes: how to think honestly and live on your own terms.
What you’ll discover
- A mind that refuses limits Meet Lyndall, whose hunger for knowledge meets a world that allows girls so little.
- Faith put to the test Follow Waldo as he questions inherited beliefs and searches for answers he can trust.
- A stark Karoo landscape Enter a lonely farm where wide, stony land surrounds a small household.
- Power behind grand words Watch Bonaparte Blenkins use boastful stories and flattery to win his place.
- Kindness amid stubborn certainty Find gentleness in Em and Otto alongside the household's resistance to questioning.
Who will love it
Readers who love big questions about faith and truth, strong young heroines, sharp comedy and the light-filled landscape of South Africa will feel at home here.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- One farm holds separate worlds
- Silence wounds Waldo's faith
- Lyndall sees learning as freedom
- Flattery opens the farmhouse door
- Borrowed authority becomes open cruelty
- Nature opens beyond lost belief
- Truth reaches beyond one lifetime
- Lyndall questions women's hidden power
- Their lives keep fundamental questions open
Who’s who
- WaldoThe overseer's dreamy, clumsy son, who herds sheep, invents things, carves wood, and cannot stop asking why the world is as it is.
- LyndallAn orphan of fierce intelligence and elfin beauty who is determined to learn everything and refuses to let anyone rule her.
- EmLyndall's plump, kind cousin, heir to the farm, who gives her love freely and expects little in return.
- OttoThe gentle old German overseer, who trusts everyone, shelters strangers, and tells the children tales by the fire.
- Tant SannieThe enormous Boer widow who runs the farm, fears ghosts, loves coffee, and keeps hunting for a new husband.
- Bonaparte BlenkinsA boastful, red-nosed stranger who tells tall tales to win a bed, a job, and a rich widow.
- Gregory RoseA sentimental young Englishman who rents half the farm, writes long letters to his sister, and falls in love easily.
- DossWaldo's small, wise sheepdog, who guards his master and later attaches himself to Lyndall.
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The Story of an African Farm
by Olive Schreiner · 1883
A boy lays his lunch on a stone altar in the karoo sun and waits for fire from heaven.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEnglish
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In short
What would you do if you believed that every tick of a watch meant a person dying? In The Story of an African Farm, a small boy named Waldo lies awake in the dark and hears exactly that.
The Story of an African Farm at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 45 min5 h 20 min fast, 8 h slow
- Length
- 96,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1883by Olive Schreiner
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A moonlit farm holds five different sleepers
The book opens on a wide plain under a full moon. A hill of ironstones rises from the sand, and at its foot stand a brick house, stone sheep pens and a wagon house. Five sleepers lie on this farm, and each lives in a world of his or her own.
Tant Sannie, the Boer woman who owns the place, sleeps in her clothes and dreams of the sheep's feet she ate for supper. In the next room lie her stepdaughter Em and Em's small orphan cousin Lyndall. Elsewhere lies the German overseer, old Otto, and his son Waldo, who has woken in the dark.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1883
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7 h 30 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-story-of-an-african-farm.
Schreiner, O. (2026). The story of an African farm. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-story-of-an-african-farm (Original work published 1883)
Schreiner, Olive. The Story of an African Farm. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-story-of-an-african-farm.
@book{schreiner2026story,
author = {Schreiner, Olive},
title = {The Story of an African Farm},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-story-of-an-african-farm},
note = {First published 1883}
}
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What is The Story of an African Farm about?
It follows three children, Waldo, Lyndall and Em, raised on a lonely South African sheep farm. They face a cruel stranger, lose their trusted old friend, and grow into adults who question faith, truth, love and the role of women.
Who is Bonaparte Blenkins in the novel?
He is a talkative, red-nosed stranger who arrives on foot, tells grand lies about his noble relatives, charms the household, and wins a post as schoolmaster. He then uses his new power to harm the people who helped him.
Is The Story of an African Farm a true story?
It is fiction, though Olive Schreiner drew on the farms and the people of the Cape she knew in childhood. She published it in 1883 under the pen name Ralph Iron, and it is regarded as an early feminist novel.
The author
Olive Schreiner
1855–1920 · South African novelist
Olive Schreiner was a South African writer and social critic, best known for her novel The Story of an African Farm and for her outspoken advocacy of women's rights. Woman and Labour, her 1911 treatise, became a touchstone of the early feminist movement.
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