André Brink Books In Order

An Instant in the Wind

The year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas&’s final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master& s vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother& s funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death. Then he flees to South Africa& s veld. There he comes to the rescue of Elizabeth, a white woman, and the only person to survive her husband& s expedition in the vast South African interior. Alone and terrified, she pleads with the runaway slave to bring her back to the Cape and her home. Adam agrees because he believes by rescuing Elizabeth, he will be awarded his own freedom. & &This, then is the stunning story of their trek together, how they find in each other their mutual need and humanity, and finally how their days together turn into an unforgettable, tender love story. &&Shortlisted for the 1976 Booker Prize&

Rumours of Rain

Martin Mynhardt seems invincible. Violence surrounds him, yet he remains unscathed: a woman asks him the time, then leaps in front of a train; after a mine riot, he watches hoses sweep scattered body parts off the floor. Just before the shocking violence that brings South African apartheid to an end, Martin decides to return to the family farm for a weekend. A highly successful businessman and Afrikaans Nationalist, he hopes to sell the property to the government in a deal both highly profitable and corrupt. The moment he steps onto the farm, his plans are derailed. The repercussions of a society’s endemic violence catch up to him, and shake the relationships that frame his life. His closest friend, a brilliant, idealistic lawyer, is sentenced to prison for his anti apartheid ‘terrorist’ activities in part because Martin refused to help him. His son, recently returned from the Angolan war, is in silent revolt against the values of his father and his nation. His mistress, Bea, an intelligent, strong willed woman who offers Martin the hope of redemption through her own capacity for empathy, is also caught up in the gathering political storm. This is Andre Brink’s story of a society on the edge of collapse, spurred to profound self realization.

A Dry White Season

As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, Andr Brink’s classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.

Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies& 8212until the sudden arrest and subsequent ‘suicide’ of a black janitor from Du Toit’s school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man’s death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair& 8212a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

A Chain of Voices

On a farm near the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century, a slave rebellion kills three and leaves eleven others condemned to death. The rebellion’s leader, Galant, was raised alongside the boys who would become his masters. His first victim, Nicholas van der Merwe, might have been his brother. As the many layers of Andre Brink’s novel unfold, it becomes clear that the violent uprising is as much a culmination of family tensions as it is an outcry against the oppression of slavery. Spanning three generations and narrated in the voices of both the living and the dead, A Chain of Voices is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!; it is a beautiful and haunting illustration of racism’s plague on South Africa.

Cape of Storms

He is the chieftain leader of the Khoikhoi, a nomadic people derogatorily called Hottentot by European colonists. She is a white woman left behind by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s crew when they rounded Africa s southern tip in 1498. Their romance is the core of this powerful novella. According to Portuguese myth, Zeus turned Adamastor into the rocky cape of the South African peninsula. Andr Brink s parable suggests that white Europeans have punished native Africans in the same way. With this novel, Brink takes us to the heart of the relationships that define South Africa smodern history. Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn: Andr Brink must be considered with that class of writer. Guardian

On the Contrary

The South Africa of 1739 provides the backdrop for the picaresque escapades of wandering adventurer Estienne Barbier as he searches for a lost treasure, seduces women, fosters rebellion, and tries to deal with the hypocrisy of the colonial leaders.

Imaginings of Sand

When expatriate Afrikaner Kristien M ller hears of her grandmother’s impending death, she ends her self imposed exile in London and returns to the South Africa she thought she’d escaped. But irrevocable change is sweeping the land, and reality itself seems to be in flux as the country stages its first democratic elections. Kristien’s Ouma Kristina herself is dying because of the upheavals: a terrorist attack on her isolated mansion has terminally injured her. As Kristien keeps vigil by her grandmother’s sickbed, Ouma tells Kristien stories of nine generations of women in the family, stories in which myth and reality blur, in which legend and brute fact are confused, in which magic, treachery, farce, and heroism are the stuff of the day to day. Imaginings of Sand is the passionate tale of a nation discovering itself and of the women who pioneered that discovery.

Devil’s Valley

When Flip Lochner, a seedy, tired journalist fleeing a failed marriage, sees a beautiful woman with four breasts in Devil’s Valley, he thinks it’s a mirage. But then a man called Lukas Death stands before him. So begins Lochner’s search for ‘the truth’ first hinted at by a young student in Capetown who was mysteriously killed. Lochner meets Lukas Death’s clan, where righteousness prevails by day and depravity by night, where punishment for misdemeanors is summary, yet brutal murderers walk unscathed. Everyone has a story, and yet no one tells the story, the story of Little Lukas and Emma, the woman with the four breasts the uneasy reminder of a secret hidden collectively by the valley people. Nothing in Devil’s Valley is as it seems: the supernatural is an ingredient of everyday, the living and the dead are never quite separate, the grotesque coexists with the banal. Vibrant and darkly humorous, Devil’s Valley is splendid entertainment from a master storyteller.

The Rights of Desire

Ruben Olivier leads an isolated existence in a Cape Town suburb. His wife has died, one of his sons has settled in Australia, and the other wants to emigrate to Canada. The only constants in Ruben’s life are the old family home, the ghost of a seventeenth century slave girl who haunts it, and Magrieta, the elderly housekeeper who comes in to look after him. When Ruben’s neighbor and best friend is brutally murdered by marauding gangs, the subtle yet pervasive threat of violence hovering over life in Cape Town becomes frighteningly real. All agree that taking in a boarder might be a good idea, and Ruben is pleasantly surprised when young Tessa Butler walks in out of the rain one Saturday night. She restores passion and intrigue to his life, but he has little time to enjoy the infatuation, for soon Ruben finds himself in a web of deceptions, manipulations, disappearances, and lies. This extraordinary novel is at once a rich story of enigmatic characters and a boldly disquieting meditation on the attempt to build a future of hope and promise from the legacy of the past.

The Other Side of Silence

With years of abuse behind her and a bleak future ahead, a young German woman dreams of her country’s colony in South West Africa. When she learns of the women being transported to the colony to attend to the needs of male settlers, Hanna X takes the leap. In Africa she is confronted with the harsh realities of colonial life. For resisting the advances of a German officer, she is banished to Frauenstein, a phantasmagoric outpost that is at once a ‘prison, nunnery, brothel, and sh*ithouse.’ When the drunken excesses of visiting soldiers threaten the young girl who has become her only companion, Hanna revolts. Mounting a ragtag army of women and native victims of brutality, she sets out on an epic journey to take on the German Reich. Combining the history of colonialism with the myths of Africa, this is an exquisitely written tale of suffering, violence, revenge, and, simply, love. 20030608

Before I Forget

Chris Minaar is a distinguished South African writer who has lost his gift for the word. That is, until, he meets Rachel, a woman destined to become the great love of his life, a love greater for being unfulfilled. Before I Forget is the final act of Chris’s creative life; it is the coming together of all the chaotic pieces of his existence. It is much more than the story of how he met Rachel; it is the story of his life and his lifetime of loves. There are brief affairs, extended affairs, even a marriage and in all of them we find Chris retelling his joys and pains in such a way that they move us to tears and beyond. Erotic, searingly honest, and a profoundly moving novel, this is the history of a life set against the history of a nation and, more than anything, a tribute to lost lovers and our very ability to love at all.

Other Lives

In just one morning, he forgot who he was…
Three provocative and interconnected stories from one of the world’s greatest living writers: A white painter in Africa comes to his studio in the afternoon. On his doorstep, he sees a woman with curly hair and a dark complexion. He has never seen her before, but she embraces him. As he steps past her, two strange children rush to his feet yelling ‘Daddy!’ This family welcomes him home, but he knows none of them. On the other side of Cape Town, a white man pulls himself out of bed and toward his mirror, where he is confronted by his suddenly black face. A concert pianist falls passionately in love with the celebrated singer he works beside, but cannot bring himself to touch her, until one night they sit down to eat dinner, and look up to see themselves surrounded by armed men. In this new novel, Andre Brink is at his best, exploring the fractured yet globalized world where we find ourselves and our lives transformed. PRAISE FOR ANDRE BRINK ‘South African novelist Brink is a master stylist.’ Publishers Weekly ‘Brink describes calamities and absurdities of the apartheid system with a cold lucidity that in no way interferes with high emotion and daring flights of the imagination.’ Mario Vargas Llosa, New York Times Book Review ‘One of the most important and prolific voices from South Africa.’ Library Journal ‘If you want to get the feeling of South Africa, as strongly as Camus gives you the feeling of Algiers, you will turn to Andr Brink.’ Tribune ‘Brink writes feelingly of South Africa the land, the black, the white, the terrible beauty and tragedy that lies therein.’ Publishers Weekly ‘Brink is a hard eyed storyteller.’ Philadelphia Inquirer 20080801

The Novel

‘The Novel, Brink argues, is not about representation but the self conscious play of language. From its inception, he suggests, the genre has been about the act of writing and self reflection. This thesis is not new but is part of the currency of postmodern literary theory. Brink, himself a noted South African novelist, the author of some 12 books, including A Dry White Season 1984, and a university professor, brings the insight of an insider. He surveys 15 celebrated novels, historically arranged from Don Quixote and La Princesse de Cleves to A.S. Byatt’s Possession and Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveller examining each in terms of its play with writing and language. His discussions are marked by clarity, insight, and comprehension. A valuable book.’
Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal

‘What a treat to explore The Novel as a genre through the lucid eyes of Andr Brink, himself one of the world’s foremost novelists! I particularly enjoyed the way in which the most traditional novels were revealed as contemporary and entirely relevant.’
Ariel Dorfman

The postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and wide ranging new study, Andr Brink argues that this self consciousness has been a defining characteristic of The Novel since its inception. Taking as his starting point ‘the propensity for story’ embedded in all language, he demonstrates that the old familiar novels may be the more startlingly modern, while postmodernist texts remain more firmly rooted in convention.

From the beginnings of the genre with Don Quixote, through ‘classic’ novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and modern and postmodern texts of the twentieth, Brink performs a sweeping analysis of 500 years of The Novel, including Moll Flanders, Emma, Madame Bovary, The Trial, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Possession. As an internationally recognized novelist, he brings a unique critical eye and enthusiasm to his exploration of the genre, offering the reader a refreshing and rewarding introduction to The Novel and narrative theory.

/Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content The South African writer Andr Brink is no stranger to novels, having written several himself. In The Novel, however, he turns his attention to analyzing fiction, not creating it. Brink’s own work might best be described as literary realism; in A Dry White Season, he chronicled the horror of apartheid and its dreadful effect on both whites and blacks. In Imaginings of Sand, he explored South Africa’s slow transition to democracy. Yet The Novel is a celebration of postmodernism, in which language becomes both the subject and the medium for literature. Though postmodernist literary theory is relatively young, Brink argues that its practice goes back to the very roots of The Novel, starting with 16th century Miguel De Cervantes’s Don Quixote and continuing on up through 20th century author Italo Calvino. He applies his theories to the classic novels of Flaubert, Austen, and Defoe, among others, then moves to modern writers such as Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garc a M rquez, and A.S. Byatt. Though Brink’s analysis of these newer novelists is both acute and interesting, it is the unique reading he brings to the classics of previous centuries that makes The Novel novel.

A Fork in the Road

One of South Africa’s best loved novelists writes with searing honesty about growing up in a world where innocence was always surrounded by violence. Illuminating his memoir is his life long love affair with music, art, the theatre and literature and his relationships with remarkable women.