André Brink

The following article was published originally in Afrikaans and German.

Yesterday, it appeared in The Sunday Independent’s DISPATCHES with this magnificent illustration by one of South Africa’s most remarkable illustrators, François Smit.

He is awakened by his wife just before three in the morning. There’s somebody in the house, she tells him.

Nonsense, he replies, befuddled with sleep. I’m sure it’s only a mouse.

That isn’t a mouse, she insists. It’s much bigger.

Then it’s a rat, he mumbles.

And then the rat shoots him in the face. He dies in the presence of his wife and small daughter, and they are forced at gunpoint to accompany the intruders as they ransack the house, leaving the dead body on the floor.

(more…)

Last Sunday, The Sunday Independent, published André’s review of Flute, the book accompanying William Kentridge’s magical – in every sense of the word – production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Edited by Browyn Law-Viljoen and published by David Krut, Flute is a treasure trove for all lovers of Kentridge’s work and Mozart’s opera.

From p. 16 of The Sunday Independent (28 October 2007):

The performances of William Kentridge’s production of Mozart’s Magic Flute have been a triumph in a number of cities in the world, and South Africa has been no exception.

(more…)

In his book on Africa, Bartholomäus Grill wrote that sometimes literature can provide a small gap through which we can glimpse the invisible world of the continent (Ach, Afrika: Berichte aus dem Inneren des Kontinents, 2003).

This year, André’s British publisher Harvill Secker published Karen Connelly’s debut novel The Lizard Cage which opens a gap through which we can glimpse life in Burma between 1988 and 1995, the time between the anti-government riots in which hundreds of Burmese people lost their lives and the occasion when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from prison (even if only for a short period of time).

(more…)

The Blue Door was originally published in a not-for-sale edition by Umuzi on the occasion of its official launch in March 2006. Now, Harvill Secker has officially released the for-sale edition of this fascinating book which forms the first part of an upcoming novel in three parts, soon to be published by Human & Rousseau in Afrikaans.

Nadine Gordimer mentioned The Blue Door last year in The Sunday Independent as one of her choices for ‘great festive reading’ (24 December 2006, p. 16):

“…another example of Brink’s use of the writer’s imperative: to find the right ‘voice’ – mode – for a particular theme. This novel is a delicately beautiful exploration of the confusion in human relations: what lies, unrealised, behind the door of an individual’s conception of self.”

(more…)

Today’s edition of The Sunday Independent includes André’s review of Odyssey to Freedom, George Bizos’s memoir.

(Available online only for subscribers.)

For information on the memoir and a slide show of some of the photographs included in the book click here.

The following review of Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans (Fig Tree, imprint of Penguin), originally ran in the 8 July 2007 edition of The Sunday Independent, on page 18.

Lewycka earns her place among innovative writers
by André Brink

This is the story, inspired by Tolstoy, the naïve young Ukrainian Girl, Irina Blazkho, plans to write after her stint as a strawberry picker in England:

It would be a love story, a great romance, not something stupid and frivolous. It would be set against the tumultuous background of the Orange Revolution. The heroine would be a plucky freedom activist and the hero would be from the other side, the Soviet East. But through his love for the beautiful heroine, his eyes would be opened, and he would be very passionate and handsome, with bronzed muscular arms…

(more…)