Book Review—Philida by André Brink

A leading voice in South African literature and a strong critic of the Apartheid era (he was the first Afrikaans novelists to have a work banned), André Brink passed away in February this year, and Philida was his last published novel before passing.

Philida is a slave who takes advantage of new laws that, amoung other things, allow slaves to file complaints against their masters in 19th century South Africa. Her complaint involves Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink, her master’s son, to whom she bore four children, and who promised her freedom and shoes—the sign that distinguishes slaves and animals from people. But in a land where tradition weaves ownership and cruelty, new laws are simply flies buzzing around an open wound.
The various tellers of the tale include Philida, Francios, his father Cornelius, and Petronella, a freed slave still living on the Brink farm. Biblical parables, family lineage, and folklore are knitted, stretched, and crumpled together in this tale where the fabric of South Africa's future without slavery is interrogated, with the results as brutal as the traditions.
Andreas

Book Review - J.M. Coetzee: A life in writing by J.C. Kannemeyer

There are two narratives the late J.C. Kannemeyer follows in this extensive literary biography: that of Coetzee’s life and the life of his works. Neither is likely to enthral everyone. Coetzee’s life, although marked by intense moral and intellectual focus, is far from bohemian, and his works, characterised by meta-fictional explorations and narrative ambiguities, are difficult to penetrate.

Chronologically structured, the focus is on Coetzee’s novels, with personal circumstances and his academic work informing his literary output. The volume is hefty, but at times a little redundant. But it does what every literary biography should: it leaves you with a reading list. You finish excited to read every one of Coetzee’s novels, from the elusive Dusklands, to the devastating Life and times of Michael K, the troubling Disgrace, and the more personable Boyhood, Youth and Summertime. You may even wish to tackle his essays collected in Inner Workings. The reading list, however, is not limited to Coetzee’s output. Kannemeyer’s strength is relevance, linking writers as diverse as Gordimer, Breytenbach, Beckett, and Defoe with Coetzee’s imagination, creating a desire to hear the chimes and discords between his and their work.

J.M. Coetzee: A life in writing may not be for everyone, but is worth an exploration for those interested in the author himself or the workings of a literary life. 
Andreas

Book Review – Life and times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

If I were to cut, he thought, holding his wrists out, looking at his wrists, the blood would no longer gush from me but seep, and after a little while of seeping dry and heal. I am becoming smaller and harder and drier every day.

Michael K, a municipal gardener born with a hare lip and slow of mind, lives in a future South Africa in the atrophy of civil war. His mother, Anna K, is in failing health and longs to see the farm of her childhood again. K decides to cross the hundreds of kilometres to get her there. Facing bureaucratic procedure after bureaucratic indifference, they travel by wheelbarrow-cum-rickshaw. Anna K dies early into the journey, leaving K with an uncertain future, searching for solitude and a garden.

The language is restrained, precisely clear, but by no means plain. Coetzee conjures unsettling images that culminate in rich metaphors through this reserved prose. His ability to combine these striking climaxes while retaining unadorned, nuanced language (as in the passage above) is reason enough to read the book.  But the unambitious K provides an even greater one. He is not the daft, unimaginative dullard the world believes him to be, with the solace of his silence leaving his mad world (and us) devastated and baffled in his wake.
Andreas.