The Dead Will Arise is the story of Nongqawuse, a young Xhosa girl whose prophesy of the resurrection of the dead lured an entire people to death by starvation. The Great Cattle-Killing, which she initiated, is one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood events in South African history.

Jeff Peires was the first historian to take fill account of all available sources, ranging from oral traditions and obscure Xhosa texts to the private letters and secret reports of police informers and colonial officials. He has thus been able to explain for the first time the role, not only of Nongqawuse herself, but of Mhlakaza, her uncle, and Sir George Grey, the ruthless and cold-blooded Governor of the Cape, in bringing about these terrible events.

The original edition of The Dead Will Arise won the 1989 Alan Paton Sunday Times Award for non-fiction. This new edition of the classic work includes a comprehensive and updated ‘afterword’ by the author.

Jeff Peires used to be a lecturer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. In 1994 he was elected as an African National Congress representative to South Africa's first democratic Parliament. He is now a senior official with the Eastern Cape Provincial Government.