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Red Dust: TV Tie-in [Paperback]

Gillian Slovo
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Book Description

3 Jan 2002

There was probably only one person who could make Sarah Barcant, successful prosecutor, leave New York and return home to Smitsrivier, the small town in South Africa she left years before. Ben. Her lawyer mentor and inspiration; the man who encouraged her to get out and know the world now needs her back, to help him with one last case, part of the Truth Commission.

In the back of a van, handcuffed, Dirk Hendrickes is being driven to the police station where once he was proud to call himself deputy. Later, down the same hot,dry road, will come Alex Mpondo, alternating between cursing Dirk and feeling sick at the idea of facing him, his torturer. And in Smitsrivier: James Sizela, who has passed years waiting for the moment when the man he is certain killed his son, will be forced to tell where the body lies. The people who are about to meet their pasts will not experience the real truth-telling in the court room, at the public show. The real truth will be felt offstage...


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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Virago; New Ed edition (3 Jan 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1860499155
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860499159
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 78,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Amazon Review

Red Dust follows Gillian Slovo's remarkable memoir Every Secret Thing. The novel tells the story of what happens to Smitsrivier, a small town in the Karroo when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission comes to visit. Sarah Barcant, a successful prosecutor now living in New York is summoned back to help her former mentor discover what happened to a young black activist, Steve Sizela. Steve's comrade, Alex Mpondo, will give testimony against a crony of the policeman suspected in the matter of Steve's disappearance and it is hoped that this will provide an opportunity to break the case. Slovo tracks the changes in South African political power dynamics adroitly. Here is an encounter between the former torturer now in the dock and his victim:
Not just any man, Alex Mpondo. Alex who was smart in a black suit and a flash yellow shirt that looked like it might have been sewn from silk ... The changes covered every aspect of the man. He seemed taller, more confident, more at ease and even slightly fatter ... Dirk shook himself. Prison must be making him stupid. What else had he expected? Mpondo was no longer a prisoner. He was an MP. No wonder he looked different.
While the moral universe of the novel is a complex one--the double-crossings and uncertainties allow Red Dust to read like a thriller, and no-one gets off lightly--the characters themselves feel somewhat schematic. We have also met them all before in more compelling guises. James Sizela, the missing Steve's father is something straight out of Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. Pieter Muller, the murderous policeman, is a loving husband and an upright family man. While Red Dust is a rollicking good read, perhaps it moves a little too fast, risking becoming Truth and Reconciliation lite in the process. --Neville Hoad --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A rich, ambitious and powerful novel. (THE TIMES )

This is a beautifully written novel, with the pace and twists of a thriller and the atmosphere, scents and space of Africa. (GUARDIAN )

Covers the territory of Bernard Schlink's post-Holocaust novel The Reader as well as J.M. Coetzee's Booker-winning Disgrace. (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

Red Dust follows Gillian Slovo's remarkable memoir Every Secret Thing. The novel tells the story of what happens to Smitsrivier, a small town in the Karroo when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission comes to visit. Sarah Barcant, a successful prosecuto (Not just any man, Alex Mpondo. Alex who was smart in a black suit and a flash yellow shirt that looked like it might have been sewn from silk ... The changes covered every aspect of the man. He seemed taller, more confident, more at ease and even slightly )

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
As someone who spent sometime in South Africa in the last few years, I was interested to read some fiction about the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. This was a good start. The author describes the hearing from several points of view which gives an insight into the different expectations people have.

The descriptions of an African town were superb and it brought me back immediately to similar places that I visited.

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Post Apartheid South Africa 28 Feb 2005
By HORAK
Format:Hardcover
Sarah Barcant is a successful young lawyer in New York who grew up in Smitrivier, South Africa. One day she gets a call from Ben Hoffman, a retired lawyer who used to be Sarah's professional mentor, asking her to come back to Smitrivier to take up a case. And so after fourteen years, Sarah returns to the town where she grew up to do Ben a favour because she thinks she owes him so much. A policeman, Pieter Muller, is suspected of having killed James Sizela's son Steve during the Apartheid. Muller's culpability has been a belief in Smitrivier for thirteen years, ever since Steve was arrested on Pieter Muller's orders and then disappeared. So now the Truth Commission is James's last chance to find his son's body and have him properly buried. The timing appears to be perfect since the Truth Commission is about to deal with the jailed policeman Dirk Hendricks who applied for amnesty for the torture of Alex Mpondo, now an MP in the South African government. The plan is to use Alex Mpondo's presence at the hearing to threaten Hendricks that unless he reveals Pieter Muller's complicity in the murder of Steve Sizela, he may not get his amnesty. But the search for the truth is going to be far more arduous than Sarah imagined - perhaps even an impossible task.
Mrs Slovo casts a merciless look at contemporary South Africa where heroism and perfidy are no longer distinct, where new truths are as painful as old lies, where torturers, once heroes, are now victims. An excellent novel which shows the absurd relationship between aggressors and victims and the power between the torturers and the tortured.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Cinematic Vigour 3 Nov 2011
Format:Perfect Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I enjoyed this very much. I have not read many novels about modern South Africa, but I have read Coetzee's 'Disgrace', and this inhabits the same territory, the moral ambiguity between races, the eating of humble pie by whites and the reaching out for what constitutes justice or acceptable compromises in the new world.

This is not as subtle as Coetzee's book, but has more directness. The courtroom scenes have cinematic quality, for example Alex Mbondo in court, thinking about the smell of his torturer's aftershave, 'crushed pine mixed with lard which soured on his slippery skin when he began to sweat'. The physicality of the white farmers, and the careful delineation of their code, and the agonizing restraint of the black families seeking what will have to pass for justice comes through with brutal candour.
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