A few weeks ago Nigel Beale interviewed André in our home in Cape Town.
I met Andre Brink recently at his home in Cape Town. (His lovely young wife Karina greeted me at the door and led me into his book-lined study. Before entering the house however, I encountered this in the garden:) [photo left]. Once seated we talked mostly about his life, about his father, about love and duty, justice, Apartheid, inter-racial sex, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer; his love affair with poet Ingrid Jonker, her suicide, her poem ‘Plant me a Tree,’ English as his second language, Picasso, recommended wines and staying in South Africa, despite his nephew having been shot dead by intruders last year at his home just north of Johannesburg.
To listen to the audio interview click here.
South Africa’s Brave New World by RW Johnson and A Legacy of Liberation by Mark Gevisser: a review
André Brink compares two writers’ accounts of Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous presidency
Among the numerous books published in recent years on the developing political situation in post-apartheid South Africa, two new titles present a special focus on Thabo Mbeki. Mark Gevisser’s A Legacy of Liberation, originally published in South Africa in 2007 under the title The Dream Deferred, is a towering biography of the recently “recalled” president. It has now been abridged but simultaneously expanded with a substantial epilogue that broadens into an illuminating assessment of the current situation. In its original form it was, with good reason, widely acclaimed and distinguished with several prizes, notably the Alan Paton Award; in its new format it is a brilliant analysis of past equivocations and present blundering, opening into a view of future challenges.
RW Johnson’s South Africa’s Brave New World is a massive volume which in its attempt not to leave any political stone unturned confronts the reader with an avalanche of information. Unlike Gevisser, Johnson is more concerned with data than interpretation. Consequently, in spite of its great length, it is rather a survey of the already-known, gleaned mainly from newspapers, than a treasury of new insights and diagnoses.
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Binnewerkinge van SA sensuurmasjien bekyk
deur André P Brink
Tydens al die jare waarin ons in Suid-Afrika gestriem is deur sensuur, is daar voortdurend oor dié kulturele plaag geskryf – meestal in artikels en briewe in die pers, soms ook gebundel, soos in JM Coetzee se Giving Offense. Maar so ’n uitvoerige ontleding soos Peter M. McDonald se The Literature Police het tot dusver ontbreek. In sy indringende ondersoek van sowel die geskiedenis van sensuur in die praktyk as die filosofiese en ideologiese grondslae daarvan, vul McDonald op briljante en dikwels verbluffende wyse daardie ontstellende leemte onder die opgaaf Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences.
Verbluffend, omdat ons gereeld, danksy volgehoue protes en analise deur swart én wit, Afrikaans- én Engelssprekende skrywers, ingelig is oor die verrottende en vernietigende uitwerking van sensuur op ons kultuurlewe. Maar die binnewerkinge van die sensuurmasjinerie is nog altyd vir ons geheim gehou. Danksy McDonald se openbaring van die versweë argiewe van dié masjinerie is dit nou uiteindelik blootgelê – en dit laat die lesende publiek met ’n gevoel wat aan Luke Watson nie onbekend sal wees nie.
Continue reading: Binnewerkinge van SA sensuurmasjien bekyk
(Published in Die Burger, 23 February 2009)
See also: Michael Titlestad’s review of the same book.
Last Monday, 19 November, André gave a short guest lecture at the University of Salzburg, Austria:
“Writers in Context during Apartheid: Nadine Gordimer and André Brink”
The lecture was followed by André’s introduction to the film A Dry White Season (1989) based on his novel by the same title (1979).
The following excerpt is André’s contribution to an article by Martiens van Bart, published last Saturday (7 July 2007) in Die Burger and the Volksblad: “Woeste stryd om Naln”. Van Bart asked prominent Afrikaans writers and academics to respond to the Free State government’s intended budget cuts to the Nationale Afrikaanse Letterkundige en Navorsingsentrum (NALN) in Bloemfontein.
NALN is the equivalent of the National English Literary Museum (NELM) in Grahamstown.
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