Dry White Season
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Product Description
Product Description
Ben du Toit is an ordinary, decent, harmless man, unremarkable in every way - until his sense of justice is outraged by the death of a man he has known. His friend died at the hands of the police. In the beginning it appears a straightforward matter, an unfortunate error that can be explained and put right. But as Ben investigates further he finds that his curiosity becomes labelled rebellion - and for a rebel there is no way back.
About the Author
André Brink was born in South Africa in 1935. He is the author of the eleven novels in English, including A Dry White Season, A Chain of Voices, An Act of Terror, The First Life of Adamstor and On the Contrary. He has three times won South Africa's most important literary prize, the CAN Award, and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His novels have been translated into twenty-nine languages. In 1980 he received the Martin Luther King Prize, and in France the Prix Médicis Étranger. In 1982 he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and in 1987 was named Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. André Brink is Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. He has three sons and a daughter.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A harrowing novel,
By
This review is from: Dry White Season (Paperback)
Ben Du Toit teaches history and geography in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is the period of the height of the youth riots in the township of Soweto. At Ben's school, Gordon Ngubene, a native, is a cleaner and he occasionally does little chores for Ben. When Ben sees that Jonathan, Gordon's son, is showing signs of intelligence and diligence, he decides to partly finance his education. One day however, Jonathan takes part in a demonstration which ends up in a violent riot and is arrested by the police. A few weeks later, after a harrowing quest through countless offices, Ben and Gordon are informed that Jonathan died "of natural causes" while in detention.Due to the mystery surrounding his son's death, Gordon gives up his job in order to devote himself entirely to the enquiries which have become an obsession with him. Both the Special Branch and the Security Police are annoyed about Gordon's insistence and soon enough Gordon is arrested. After numerous attempts to try to trace Gordon and speak to him, Ben and Gordon's wife Emily are told by the spokesman of the Security Police that Gordon apparently committed suicide by hanging himself with strips torn from his blanket. But Ben Du Toit senses that the official explanations for both Jonathan's and Gordon's deaths are just a pretext for poorly disguised murders and so he decides to take matters in his own hands and starts investigating. Mr Brink's novel is a harrowing account of a solitary man's fight against all the atrocities of the Apartheid. During this dark period in the history of South Africa, a white man had to be a real hero to fight for the right of the Afrikaners. The author beautifully captures the fact that Ben has to fight not only the resentment of the people of the other race, but also that of the people belonging to his own race - his family for a start. The descriptions of the townships of Johannesburg, particularly that of Soweto, are breathtaking in their accuracy and poignancy.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, buy this book!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dry White Season (Paperback)
Every so often you discover a writer who is so good you feel you have to read all his work. Brink is such a writer. His ability to disseminate the inherent prejudices and corruptions of South African politics is wondrous. I cannot rate this novel highly enough
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ben du Toit stood up and lost everything except his conscience,
By
This review is from: Dry White Season (Paperback)
Set in South Africa in the late 1970s, I wasn't really sure what to make of this book at first. I didn't find it easy to get into and it felt dated - so much has changed since then. Also, as the theme is most definitely political, I wasn't quite sure if the book itself was going to be more of a political statement than an exploration of emotions and feelings in an unfamiliar situation. Thankfully, it is more of the latter than the former.The overt theme is the injustice of apartheid in South Africa and the impunity with which the the ruling whites could kill members of the black population. When it touches his life, Ben du Toit will not turn a blind eye. In doing so, he doesn't just anger the Security Police, he also exposes the weaknesses and prejudices of his friends, family and work colleagues and it is this less obvious theme that became the most compelling for me. If, in standing up for a moral issue that you cannot ignore, you also threaten the perceived security of those around you, it won't be long before they turn against you. That's how difficult it is to stand up and be counted. Ben du Toit, stood up and lost everything except his conscience. Having finished this book last night I can now say that I'm very glad that I did read it. It's a book that explores the bigger themes that face us as human beings and I'm left with a feeling of having been taught something by someone whose work I would have liked to have been introduced to as a teenager. Better late than never.
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