Check out our Most Anticipated Books for 2025

Book Summary and Reviews of Blessed Are the Dead by Malla Nunn

Blessed Are the Dead by Malla Nunn

Blessed Are the Dead

A Novel

by Malla Nunn

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Jun 2012, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

Emmanuel Cooper's life is finally back on track when a request comes from Colonel van Niekerk that he report to the local police station in Balgowan, a small trading post in the Natal Midlands. When Cooper arrives, he learns of the disappearance of an adolescent Zulu girl in the wild foothills of the Drakensberg - and the local police are reluctant to search for her.

Sensing that something terrible has happened out on Little Flint Farm, Cooper plunges into the class driven life of transplanted English aristocrats and the traditional world of the old Zulu chiefs. He must break the silence of the opposing communities and dig through their buried secrets to find out what happened to the girl, and why… no matter the cost.

Paperback original

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Gripping and thoughtful... Nunn brilliantly combines character and fair play clues." - Publishers Weekly

"A disturbing book with a morally compelling hero." - Booklist

"Historical hindsight may make readers a bit more self-congratulatory about recognizing the evils of apartheid, but it won't help them see around the curves Nunn has plotted or rise above her insight into the enduring dilemmas of her separate-and-unequal world." - Kirkus Reviews

"An engrossing and compelling read... saturated with the feel of 1950s South Africa." - Mike Nicol, author of the Revenge trilogy

This information about Blessed Are the Dead was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Malla Nunn Author Biography

Malla Nunn grew up in Swaziland before moving with her parents to Perth in the 1970s. She attended university in Western Australia, and then the US. In New York, she worked on film sets, wrote her first screenplay, and met her American husband-to-be, before returning to Australia, where she began writing and directing short films and corporate videos.

Fade to White, Sweetbreeze and Servant of the Ancestors have won numerous awards and have shown at international film festivals from Zanzibar to New York. Malla and her husband live in Sydney with their two children.

Author Interview

Other books by Malla Nunn at BookBrowse
  • A Beautiful Place to Die jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more mysteries...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Sequel
    The Sequel
    by Jean Hanff Korelitz
    In Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel, Anna Williams-Bonner, the wife of recently deceased author ...
  • Book Jacket: My Good Bright Wolf
    My Good Bright Wolf
    by Sarah Moss
    Sarah Moss has been afflicted with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa since her pre-teen years but...
  • Book Jacket
    Canoes
    by Maylis De Kerangal
    The short stories in Maylis de Kerangal's new collection, Canoes, translated from the French by ...
  • Book Jacket: Absolution
    Absolution
    by Jeff VanderMeer
    Ten years ago, the literary landscape was changed forever when Jeff VanderMeer became the "King of ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

X M T S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.