SOURCE: "Veldanschauung," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 3888 September 17, 1976, p. 1147.

In the following review of An Instant in the Wind, Pike presents an outline of the elements of the novel and comments on its success in evoking an historical period.

Reminiscent of; if not inspired by Patrick White's Voss, this ambitious work takes the few recorded facts of an episode of the past to evoke the history and character of a country through the relationship of two individuals. In 1751, Elisabeth Larsson returned to Cape Town accompanied only by a runaway slave, Adam Mantoor, having set out nearly two years earlier on an expedition into the interior of the Cape of Good Hope with her newly married husband, the Swedish traveller Erik Larsson, an incompetent guide, and a complement of ox wagons and Hottentot bearers. The guide shot himself after a quarrel, most of the oxen were stolen, the bearers...