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Red Dust (Hardcover)

by Gillian Slovo (Author) "SARAH GLANCED DOWN, watching as her black suede ankle boots clipped up the subway stairs ..." (more)
4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Virago Press Ltd (19 Oct 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1860498248
  • ISBN-13: 978-1860498244
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 461,354 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #9 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Slovo, Gillian

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk 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

Product Description
Set in South Africa, this is a political thriller about a cold and ambitious South African who returns to her country to help convict a murderous member of the old South Africa. She finds herself caught up in a storm of emotions and politics through which she fights to discover the truth.

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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Good insight into the Truth and Reconciliation Council, 27 Feb 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Red Dust: TV Tie-in (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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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Post Apartheid South Africa, 1 Mar 2005
By Philippe Horak (Zug, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
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 The New South Africa struggling to emerge., 28 Oct 2008
By soffitta1 (Harwich, Essex) - See all my reviews
Sarah receives a phonecall in New York from her mentor Ben, a call that will bring her back the dorpie in South Africa that she left. The Truth Commission has arrived in town and the school Headmaster would like to use it to find out what happened to his son, to finally have a body to bury.
The New South Africa still trying to come to terms with its past, the victims and the perpetrators are caught up by a connection that none can break. This is a good book to try and understand what is happening even now in RSA, noone was unaffected by the past.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Truth? Reconciliation?
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up in post-apartheid South Africa, enabled people who had been imprisoned for the crimes they had committed in apartheid... Read more
Published on 28 Feb 2006 by Ralph Blumenau

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth? Reconciliation?
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up in post-apartheid South Africa, enabled people who had been imprisoned for the crimes they had committed in apartheid... Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2006 by Ralph Blumenau

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