John Murray lands secret history of South Africa in 12-hour pre-empt

John Murray has pre-empted Cato Pedder’s Moederland: The Secret History of an Afrikaans Family.

Georgina Laycock, non-fiction publisher, pre-empted world English rights from Veronique Baxter at David Higham Associates within 12 hours. Moederland will be published by John Murray in spring 2024.

Moederland is described by the publisher as “a history of South Africa like no other.” Pedder is the great granddaughter of Jan Smuts, the prime minister who paved the way for apartheid: this, her first book, explores the very different lives of the women in her family, asking what they were doing as white supremacy was created.

The publisher goes on: “Sitting brilliantly at the borderline between personal history and memoir, her fascinating, unflinching and forensic book travels the centuries from the 1600s, when Cape Town was a remote outpost of the Dutch East India Company, to the kraal of a Zulu king in the 1800s to her English Quaker aunt who defies the law and her family story to marry across the colour line. As anti-racism campaigners call out the statue of Jan Smuts in Parliament Square, Cato painstakingly excavates the long-forgotten stories of the women of her Afrikaans heritage and their surprising legacies.”

Pedder, a former newspaper reporter with 15 years experience in South Africa and the UK, says: "Writing Moederland was a compelling, if not always comfortable, journey through the lives of others, towards an understanding of where we are today. I am deeply grateful that as venerable and well-respected a publishing house as John Murray has chosen to help these stories continue that journey out into the world."

Laycock added: “If women had written history, rather than being written out of it, today’s world would be a very different place. Moederland gives you a taste of what could have been. I loved it from the first line and it just gets better and better. Cato is a huge talent and her book is wonderful, deeply thought-out and always interesting.”