Dirk Aruseb was seventeen years old when Abraham Morris fetched him from the Pella orphanage to join the Bondelswarts. Dirk couldn’t wait to conquer the accursed Schutztruppe alongside legendary Kaptein Jakob Marengo, successor to Hendrik Witbooi and Jonker Afrikaner. But when he arrived at Schansvlakte deep in Namaland, Dirk was warned that he first had to master many life skills before he could join the war: be humble, be patient, be merciful. Find your eland, tame your butcherbird.

But for Dirk war was an adventure – as long as he could kill the German enemy, he was content. It didn’t matter what commander Nana Kruiper, or Klara Morris, her second in command, tried to teach him: that the liberation struggle of the Bondelswarts meant more than protecting Namaland – their promised land – at all costs.

Crimson Sands is set in Namaland – from German-South-West Africa to the Cape Colony – from 1904 to 1922, when thousands of Bondelswarts were shot down by Jan Smuts’s fighter planes. It is an epic, panoramic war novel, traversing southern Africa from Tsumeb to Upington, from internment camps in Windhuk to the dry riverbeds of the Fish River Canyon. Jeremy Vearey conjures a mesmerising tale across an arid landscape of sand, shrub and dune, evoking voices and stories long gone.