The Dead Will Arise tells the story of Nongqawuse, the young Xhosa girl whose prophecy of the resurrection of the dead lured an entire people to death by starvation. The Great Cattle-Killing of 1856–57, which she initiated, is one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood events in South Africa's history. Jeff Peires was the first historian to draw on all available sources, from oral tradition and obscure Xhosa texts to the private letters and secret reports of police informers and colonial officials, and the original edition of The Dead Will Arise won the 1989 Alan Paton Sunday Times award for non-fiction.
