‘The Adventures of Bill Tooley’ is perhaps best described as picaresque or baroque in tone. Hilton-Barber’s fertile historical imagination has crafted a fascinating exploration of the relations between history and biographical fiction, story-telling, and fact. The sub-title, A Novel Way of Looking at History is likely to arouse a reader’s curiosity. Who is Bill Tooley? What’s a ‘novel’ way of looking at history? It doesn’t sound like an historical novel, so what is it? There’s nothing quite like this in local historico-literary works, with the possible exception of the late Shaun Johnson’s Native Commissioner.
Tooley’s adventures and his times are captured as a succession of varying snapshots, a series of short article-length snapshots. The author is an accomplished writer who demonstrates his skill at producing prose, which is consistently clear and fluent, making this manuscript an engaging read. - Bill Nasson, Emeritus Professor in History, Stellenbosch University.