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This is André Brink's story of a life lived in tumultuous times. He describes with searing honesty his conflicting experiences of growing up in a world where innocence was always surrounded by violence and storytelling was a means of reconciling the stark contrasts of his world. His time spent in Paris in the 1960s confirmed in him the desire to become a writer but his opposition to the apartheid establishment resulted in years of harassment by the South African secret police; it also led to extraordinary friendships with leaders of the ANC in exile. A Fork in the Road is André Brink's love song to the country where he was born and where, despite recent tragedies, he still lives today.
This is what it is to be a slave: that everything is decided for you from out there. You just got to listen and do as they tell you. You don’t say no. You don’t ask questions. You just do what they tell you. But far at the back of your head you think: Soon there must come a day when I can say for myself: This and that I shall do, this and that I shall not. In Philida, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, André Brink—“one of South Africa's greatest novelists” (The Telegraph)—gives us his most powerful novel yet; the truly unforgettable story of a female slave, and her fierce determination to survive and to be free. It is 1832 in South Africa, the year before slavery is abolished ...
As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, André 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—until 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—a 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.
It is 1825 and high in the mountains of South Africa a group of slavesstand accused of the murder of their owner, Nicolass van der Merwe, a wealthy Afrikaner farmer. Galant, the van der Merwe family's chief hand, is held leader of the murderous band. Raised with the two sonsof the house, it was not until adulthood and rivalry over Hester, orphaned daughter of a tenant farmer, that he realised their differentroles, their unequal futures and opposed stations in life. A CHAIN OFVOICES stands as a prophetic lesson - when hopes of freedom from slavery are dashed, and when promises of equal treatment are broken, an escalating spiral of bitterness, resentment, and finally, explosiveviolence is inevitable.
Ruben Oliver's life is coming adrift from its moorings. He has been obliged to take early retirement from his job as a librarian due to 'rationalisation' and the new political realities of South Africa. His wife has died. One of his sons has settled in Australia, the other is about to emigrate to Canada while trying to persuade Ruben that it is too dangerous to remain. The only constants are his old family home, haunted by the ghost of a young slave woman; and his housekeeper, Magrieta, with whom he has a shared history that goes back more than half his life. When Tessa Butler comes out of the rain one night in response to an advertisement for a lodger, Ruben is captivated by her. She restores passion to his life, but brings with her a turbulent past.
Flip Lochner is a weary and disillusioned newspaper crime reporter. Curious to find out more about the origins of a casual acquaintance, he descends into Devil's Valley where, like Dante's Virgil, he encounters a bewildering array of mysterious characters and events that lead him to reevaluate the world in which he lives and which he thought he knew. Fusing invention and reality, magic realism and earthy humour, Lochner's adventures in the valley centre around the journey he undertakes to discover the truth about the elusive and erotic figure of Emma, one of Brink's most remarkable creations.
The Blue Door is built around one of the oldest questions in storytelling: What if ...? What if I return home one day to find, behind a familiar door, an unfamiliar world? What if the people closest to me turn out to be strangers? What if strangers start claiming a place in my life I cannot imagine? What if the memories of the most important moments in my life can no longer be trusted? What if I am not who I think I am? David le Roux, a teacher recently turned fulltime artist, returns to his studio one afternoon to find his whole familiar world turned upside down. The woman who opens the door and welcomes him as her husband is a complete stranger to him: beautiful and loving, but not the wif...
`A massive apartheid thriller centred on a plot to blow up none other than the State President outside the gates of Cape Town Castle. . . Brink at his robust and imaginative best' - Adam Low, Daily Telegraph. A profound novel set in South Africa that combines compelling action with an intellectual confrontation of the author's poitically volatile home country. A brave masterpiece from Booker Prize shortlisted, award-winning author André Brink.
A magical novel from a world class writer about a remarkable historical figure. In his early years, growing up on a Dutch farm in the deep interior of the southern African Cape, Cupido Cockroach became the greatest drinker, liar, fornicator and fighter of his region. Coming under the spell of the soap-boiler Anna, and under the influence of the great Dr Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp of the London Missionary Society, Cupido is made the first Khoi or 'Hottentot' missionary ordained at the Cape of Good Hope. Received into the fold of the Church, Cupido passionately turns against all his early beliefs. After being drawn into the fierce struggle between the missionaries and the Dutch colonists,...