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Keepers of the Earth is an elegy to the land and the indigenous people who first inhabited it.
A collection of six quietly moving stories drawn from archival fragments and dramatized in the graphic medium, it explores belonging, loss, and the forces that drive human beings to conquer and destroy one another. Set in South Africa between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, its relevance cuts across time and place—a reminder that the land itself is a witness to history’s unfinished wrongs.
Richard Conyngham is the South African-born, Mexico-based author of the graphic history All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa. In Keepers of the Earth, he and eight of southern Africa’s finest comic artists deliver a spellbinding work of creative non-fiction, blending historical fact and archival record with indigenous myth and lore.
Praise for related graphic history by Richard Conyngham, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa 1910-1948
"Writer and historian [Richard] Conyngham found — and has brought to life — the extraordinary legal struggles of working-class South African men and women who defied government and corporate oppression. [...] The volume is rich in diverse resistance cases." — Sunday Times (South Africa)
“Perfect and detailed glimpses into real-life historical events.” — 2022 VLA Graphic Novel Diversity Award Committee, selected as an Overfloweth honoree
“An innovative and impactful way to tell our history. This is the history book I didn't know I needed!” — Dr. Sithembile Mbete, University of Pretoria
“Keepers of the Earth is a vivid, thoughtful, and often beautiful book. What Conyngham and his collaborators have done for the history of conquest in the lands that would become South Africa is poignant and enormously valuable.” — Jonny Steinberg, author of Winnie and Nelson and A Man of Good Hope
“Comics are a compelling medium for inquiry and creation. Keepers of the Earth masterfully demonstrates this, presenting art as a unique way to understand, imagine, and question the past. Not to be missed.” — Marcelo D’Salete, author of Angola Janga and Run for It
“A stunningly evocative, richly imagined book in which indigenous South African histories of anticolonial struggle, loss, survival, and resistance are rendered in a combination of marvelous imagery, rapid dialogue and beautiful prose. A deeply moving work about the past that is very much of, and for, the present." — Nadia Davids, author of Cape Fever and An Imperfect Blessing
Richard Conyngham is a graphic novelist and historian whose work uncovers remarkable true stories buried in the historical record, reimagining them as richly researched graphic narratives. His first book All Rise earned a Kirkus star and was shortlisted for several literary awards. Originally from South Africa, Richard lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.