Reinventing a continent : writing and politics in South Africa

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Title:

Author:

Brink, André P. (André Philippus), 1935-2015.

ISBN:

9780944072899

Personal Author:

Brink, André P. (André Philippus), 1935-2015.

Publication Information:

Cambridge, Mass. : Zoland Books, 1998.

Physical Description:

xiv, 274 p. ; 22 cm.

General Note:

Originally published: London : Secker & Warburg, 1996.

Contents:

Preface / Nelson Mandela -- Speaking in Voices -- A State of Emergency -- The Hour of the Idiots -- The Arts in Society -- Visions of the Future -- Afrikaners -- Mandela Free -- Reflections on Literature and History -- Reimagining the Real -- The Dove in the Grave -- Literature and Control -- Literature as Cultural Opposition -- A Farm in Africa -- Towards a Syncretic Future -- Foul Play -- Reinventing a Continent -- Sentimental Journey -- Epilogue: Revisiting Dakar.

Abstract:

An international bestselling author of eleven novels, Andre Brink here chronicles an extraordinary period of social change in South Africa, in his first new work of nonfiction in fifteen years. From the darkest and most oppressive years of apartheid, through the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the negotiations of a peaceful settlement, to the first years of a fledgling democracy with all its euphoria and misgivings, Reinventing A Continent charts the cultural, individual and literary meanings of freedom and repression.

Geographic Term:

South Africa -- Civilization -- 20th century.

South Africa -- Race relations.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015677228	968 B858R 1998	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The first U.S. publication of a major new work of nonfiction by acclaimed South African writer Andre Brink, author of Imaginings of Sand and A Dry White Season. With a preface by President Nelson Mandela, and a new introduction and epilogue written expressly for the American edition, Reinventing a Continent collects Brink's writings on politics, culture and literature from 1982 to 1996, a period of unprecedented social change. Ranging in tone from dispassionate historical overview to bare-knuckles polemic, these essays chronicle a nation's willful transformation from repressive police state to emerging democracy.

"The South African struggle for liberation and democracy was always and everywhere -- in exile, in prison, in the internal mass movements and the underground -- informed and inspired by the rich body of thought and creative work produced by our writers. Their work continued to demonstrate, even in the darkest years, that the South African voices of justice and reason would not be silenced. These essays ... open a vista on the challenges and the rich possibilities ahead. The quality of our freedom in the future will depend on the creative and critical input of our writers and intellectuals, just as much as the attainment of the present conditions for that freedom was brought about by their contributions". -- from the preface by President Nelson Mandela