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The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist
A memoir of Breytenbach’s seven years in South Africa’s prisons - two of them in solitary confinement - this book captures the full horror of life in one of the worst penal systems in the world.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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491 people want to read
About the author
Breyten Breytenbach
131 books62 followersBreyten Breytenbach was a South African writer, poet, and painter. He became internationally well-known as a dissident poet and vocal critic of South Africa under apartheid, and as a political prisoner of the National Party-led South African Government. He is also known as a founding member of the Sestigers, a dissident literary movement, and was one of the most important living poets in Afrikaans literature.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 5, 2015
One of the most deep, impressive works of speculative (non)fiction coming out of the prison experience -- South Africa in this case. Breytenbach is a writer gifted with precise observation, explosive prose and deep emotional expanse. He is among my all time favorite writers, and a beautiful painter as well. If you like David Mitchell but want something more personal and at once more political, Breytenbach has the skillz. It's a wonder that he is relatively unknown still, but I would put him in Nobel Prize territory. Like Mitchell, his prose is poetic; both know how to switch from infinite magical realism to haiku at a moment's notice. True Confessions is an inspiring book, but also a daunting one, as we are choosing to look at things that are quite simply hard to look at -- that is, the fate of the political prisoner. While Kafka's characters' brushes with the Law are highly metaphorical and bureaucratic, here we have a narrator of his powers doing it for real, dealing directly with the isolation, the wavering of hope, the loss, the repetition of innumerable days. Of a nine year sentence, Breytenbach ended up spending 7 years incarcerated, just for fighting earlier in his life against Apartheid and making the mistake of visiting his homeland again after his exile years in Paris. Also, if you like this, I would also recommend the book Mouroir, which serves in a sense as a dreamtime companion to this book, delving deeper into the freedom of the imagination, which no one can take away.
August 7, 2024
“Nearly any part of the body of man or beast can be used for hiding and transporting illicit articles. A prisoner would wrap his small share of smuggled dagga in silver foil, tie a string to it and swallow it with one end of the string around a tooth. People would tape hacksaw blades to their bodies. I myself was caught once with a book stuffed down the front of my pants and I passed many a tense moment at some gate with a newspaper cutting in a shoe or inside my underpants, or even a complete (stolen) newspaper underneath the jacket down the back and into the belt. I once saw a young Black convict being caught after having smeared peanut butter all over the parts of his body which were covered by his clothes (Blacks aren't entitled to eat peanut butter, but have to carry the big drum of peanut butter from the lorry in the yard into the stores.
Can you imagine how strong the temptation must be?).”
“Any man after five years of prison is no longer a man.”
“I felt quite passive. I can understand how the mouse is paralyzed although still alive whilst being eaten by the snake - celebrating with open eyes its own death.”
“They have learned to fabricate and manipulate information. They have learned the value of spying and collecting information on everybody, their puppet masters included. After all, in the State of Abject Fear and Taboos we are all guilty - we are just, sometimes, clever or lucky enough not to be caught.”
It must be a miserable existence: men’s stunted psyches needing the satisfaction of destroying an opponent, and at the same time being lucid enough to perhaps perceive the extent of moral decrepitude and corruption - an animal on the toilet - such an attitude implies.
Can you imagine how strong the temptation must be?).”
“Any man after five years of prison is no longer a man.”
“I felt quite passive. I can understand how the mouse is paralyzed although still alive whilst being eaten by the snake - celebrating with open eyes its own death.”
“They have learned to fabricate and manipulate information. They have learned the value of spying and collecting information on everybody, their puppet masters included. After all, in the State of Abject Fear and Taboos we are all guilty - we are just, sometimes, clever or lucky enough not to be caught.”
It must be a miserable existence: men’s stunted psyches needing the satisfaction of destroying an opponent, and at the same time being lucid enough to perhaps perceive the extent of moral decrepitude and corruption - an animal on the toilet - such an attitude implies.
December 5, 2022
Un mélange étonnant d'espionnage, de poésie, de philosophie exotique au sens général. Un livre qui donne du courage.
May 10, 2022
This is both an expose and very much not an expose of apartheid. While I struggled with this book over the last two months I was very much committed to finishing it before traveling to S. Africa. Because Breytenbach is a poet, his writing style is loosely cohesive. There are some significant sections that are purely streams of consciousness. That said, he was in fact a political prisoner for 7+ years, and he beautifully renders his life during that time.
July 6, 2012
For insight into the fascist mind and the prisons it creates, Breytenbach is one of the best writers ever. And one reads not a note of self-pity. Perhaps his genius for observation and poetics kept him sane.
October 16, 2007
I read the McGraw-Hill 1986 edition and was completely mesmerized by his fortitude, insight and talent.
December 26, 2010
Amazing, genre-bending reflection on the apartheid system, its paranoia, and its methods of crushing dissent. Breytenbach is an amazing writer, and thus, makes the book a fast, engaging read.
January 29, 2019
Excellent book. Prison memoirs are not my usual thing, but this one has unique appeal as the account of a white poet-revolutionary's 8-year stint in a South African prison during the flower of apartheid. A poison flower, exposed at the roots where criminals flourish. I shouldn't mislead by suggesting that this is an overt indictment of the segregationist tyranny of apartheid. It isn't, yet in every word there is protest, intelligence and beauty, all utilized to maintain a caged man's humanity.
I chose two passages that illustrate what for me is the most basic horrors of prison life: the social aspect and being cut off from your loved ones, two unbearable torments that I'm certain would have me foaming and stupid before the sun went down. The first is about the gangs that run the prison from within:
The kring (the circle), the governing council, will decide upon a death. Once its decision has been carried out, parts of the body of the victim may be eaten ritualistically. (Pause here and consider how structuralized alienation has brought about a society of cannibals. These men eat human flesh as rats will devour each other -for similar reasons- and not because it has ever been 'traditional' anywhere. Don't try to shrug it off by saying 'they' are not like 'us'. Don't go and look for so-called Cultural so-called Differences... When you decide to release these confessions, Mr Investigator, you will have smoothly combed prison spokesmen denying en bloc the veracity of what I'm telling you. They will be sitting in smart offices, far away from the stinking death lying in the cells, and their civilized mouths will produce bureaucratic appeals to your 'understanding' -how frail is human nature!- by admitting to exceptions which have all been investigated, with the guilty ones punished. Will you be taken in? I'm telling you that what I'm describing is typical of that mirror which the South African penal universe holds up to the Apartheid society -and that it is inevitable.
The second passage, lighter than the first, conveys the struggle of an artist dealing with artless overseers censoring letters he writes to his wife:
Smoel left for the Island. Saayman took his place, a huge pig of a man, subservient to his superiors, bullying-violently, at times-the prisoners, but above all lazy and incompetent. He was also just a liar. His conception of censorship was to 'lose' the incoming letters, or to hold back mine and then to have me rewrite them to his specifications. I wrote to Yolande once lyrically praising the talents of some chocolatiers-Bernachon in Lyons, Corne de la Toison d'Or in Belgium, etc (it was getting on for Christmas, my mind was sweet with absences) and when she wrote back asking how I knew about these things I answered admitting that I'd always been an initiate of the Secret Order of Chocolate Lovers but that I could never tell her as it was supposed to be a secret. So Saayman launched an inquiry; he wanted to know exactly what 'politics' was hidden in these codes....
I chose two passages that illustrate what for me is the most basic horrors of prison life: the social aspect and being cut off from your loved ones, two unbearable torments that I'm certain would have me foaming and stupid before the sun went down. The first is about the gangs that run the prison from within:
The kring (the circle), the governing council, will decide upon a death. Once its decision has been carried out, parts of the body of the victim may be eaten ritualistically. (Pause here and consider how structuralized alienation has brought about a society of cannibals. These men eat human flesh as rats will devour each other -for similar reasons- and not because it has ever been 'traditional' anywhere. Don't try to shrug it off by saying 'they' are not like 'us'. Don't go and look for so-called Cultural so-called Differences... When you decide to release these confessions, Mr Investigator, you will have smoothly combed prison spokesmen denying en bloc the veracity of what I'm telling you. They will be sitting in smart offices, far away from the stinking death lying in the cells, and their civilized mouths will produce bureaucratic appeals to your 'understanding' -how frail is human nature!- by admitting to exceptions which have all been investigated, with the guilty ones punished. Will you be taken in? I'm telling you that what I'm describing is typical of that mirror which the South African penal universe holds up to the Apartheid society -and that it is inevitable.
The second passage, lighter than the first, conveys the struggle of an artist dealing with artless overseers censoring letters he writes to his wife:
Smoel left for the Island. Saayman took his place, a huge pig of a man, subservient to his superiors, bullying-violently, at times-the prisoners, but above all lazy and incompetent. He was also just a liar. His conception of censorship was to 'lose' the incoming letters, or to hold back mine and then to have me rewrite them to his specifications. I wrote to Yolande once lyrically praising the talents of some chocolatiers-Bernachon in Lyons, Corne de la Toison d'Or in Belgium, etc (it was getting on for Christmas, my mind was sweet with absences) and when she wrote back asking how I knew about these things I answered admitting that I'd always been an initiate of the Secret Order of Chocolate Lovers but that I could never tell her as it was supposed to be a secret. So Saayman launched an inquiry; he wanted to know exactly what 'politics' was hidden in these codes....
August 16, 2023
What a read, what an experience!
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist reads as the author meant it to; a purging of his memories and his time spent as a political prisoner in a South African prison. Much of writing is visceral, and in many places I found carried an undertone of almost Murakami-esque style of madness. In many of the 'Inserts' between chapters, the writing dissolves into poetry, weaving surreal elements and wisps of desperate dreams with the violent realism so abundant throughout the entirety of Breytenbach's story.
While some words and phrases in my edition (1st South African edition) have been censored out, there remains a brutal sense of honesty present. The way the author describes the rituals and behaviours that become intrinsic to life in prison is very illuminating - even humanizing, in a way. It is no secret that prisons and those inside them are often disgracefully forgotten by the larger part of society - out of sight, out of mind, as it were - and furthermore, the treatment of those inside goes unquestioned, or simply narrowed down to the idea that all inmates deserve all horrors they are dealt. This book really uncovers the reality of life behind bars, and humanizes those of which are so easily dehumanized by the outside world.
One example of this in particular that stood out to me was when Breytenbach wrote that he wasn't afraid to go back to prison, but one of the reasons he didn't want to return was that it would mean starting over in the prison hierarchy. He gave away his tobacco and other items valuable because of their being banned behind bars. Going back to prison would mean starting over with nothing. It really opens your eyes to not only the influence an environment can have on an individual, but also that the importance of so many of our belongings and beliefs are circumstantial. In prison, a scrap of paper was often worth more to a poet in prison than gold, and a glimpse of the moon more precious than a pearl. It seems such a simple gesture, but such a human one, and a further example of why the treatment of prisoners should improve on a global scale. I understand that this book was written and published several decades ago now, but the point still stands, and there remains no shortage of examples of people who are not treated as such behind bars.
I recommend this book to anyone looking for an autobiography where the prose reads as easily as fiction, and, in many places, as poetry. Also, I think that fellow Haruki Murakami fans may also enjoy reading this as Breytenbach is the closet style of writing that also carries a sense of very Murakami-esque realism-surrealism.
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist reads as the author meant it to; a purging of his memories and his time spent as a political prisoner in a South African prison. Much of writing is visceral, and in many places I found carried an undertone of almost Murakami-esque style of madness. In many of the 'Inserts' between chapters, the writing dissolves into poetry, weaving surreal elements and wisps of desperate dreams with the violent realism so abundant throughout the entirety of Breytenbach's story.
While some words and phrases in my edition (1st South African edition) have been censored out, there remains a brutal sense of honesty present. The way the author describes the rituals and behaviours that become intrinsic to life in prison is very illuminating - even humanizing, in a way. It is no secret that prisons and those inside them are often disgracefully forgotten by the larger part of society - out of sight, out of mind, as it were - and furthermore, the treatment of those inside goes unquestioned, or simply narrowed down to the idea that all inmates deserve all horrors they are dealt. This book really uncovers the reality of life behind bars, and humanizes those of which are so easily dehumanized by the outside world.
One example of this in particular that stood out to me was when Breytenbach wrote that he wasn't afraid to go back to prison, but one of the reasons he didn't want to return was that it would mean starting over in the prison hierarchy. He gave away his tobacco and other items valuable because of their being banned behind bars. Going back to prison would mean starting over with nothing. It really opens your eyes to not only the influence an environment can have on an individual, but also that the importance of so many of our belongings and beliefs are circumstantial. In prison, a scrap of paper was often worth more to a poet in prison than gold, and a glimpse of the moon more precious than a pearl. It seems such a simple gesture, but such a human one, and a further example of why the treatment of prisoners should improve on a global scale. I understand that this book was written and published several decades ago now, but the point still stands, and there remains no shortage of examples of people who are not treated as such behind bars.
I recommend this book to anyone looking for an autobiography where the prose reads as easily as fiction, and, in many places, as poetry. Also, I think that fellow Haruki Murakami fans may also enjoy reading this as Breytenbach is the closet style of writing that also carries a sense of very Murakami-esque realism-surrealism.
July 21, 2021
Grazie olimpiadi di Goodreads Italia che mi avete spronato a togliermi uno dei miei più vecchi to-read. Stava a fare la polvere dal 2010, capiamoci.
Questo dimostra che non si dovrebbero mai fare acquisti sul sentimento delle presentazioni al Salone del Libro... Ma vabbeh, non sono pentita, anzi.
Il memoir di Breyten Breytenbach sui suoi sette anni di carcere per terrorismo in Sudafrica, reo di aver tentato di creare un'organizzazione politica per i diritti di tutti (bianchi, neri, donne) e un paese più umano, è sorprendentemente poetico. Durissimo, per carità, ma ugualmente affascinante.
Il suo racconto sulle sue condizioni (due anni di isolamento, con tentato processo bis allo scadere dei due anni con nuove accuse fuffa per prolungarglielo) e la "stranezza" di un bianco in carcere in Sudafrica, considerando la bieca generalizzazione "neri = buoni ; bianchi = cattivi" che purtroppo siamo abituati a leggere, è molto interessante da leggere.
Questo dimostra che non si dovrebbero mai fare acquisti sul sentimento delle presentazioni al Salone del Libro... Ma vabbeh, non sono pentita, anzi.
Il memoir di Breyten Breytenbach sui suoi sette anni di carcere per terrorismo in Sudafrica, reo di aver tentato di creare un'organizzazione politica per i diritti di tutti (bianchi, neri, donne) e un paese più umano, è sorprendentemente poetico. Durissimo, per carità, ma ugualmente affascinante.
Il suo racconto sulle sue condizioni (due anni di isolamento, con tentato processo bis allo scadere dei due anni con nuove accuse fuffa per prolungarglielo) e la "stranezza" di un bianco in carcere in Sudafrica, considerando la bieca generalizzazione "neri = buoni ; bianchi = cattivi" che purtroppo siamo abituati a leggere, è molto interessante da leggere.
October 12, 2022
If at times this book is elliptical and self-consciously philosophical – the author is a poet after all – it remains a devastating portrait of one of the most evil regimes of all time – that of white supremacist South Africa - as well as a blow by blow account of what it means to be an activist and political prisoner. It is therefore essential reading. Let us not forget that Margaret Thatcher and her cronies pandered wholly – indeed, apologised for and encouraged the perpetuation of Afrikaner racism throughout the 1980s. No excuses.
August 22, 2017
Mi ha scosso ed emozionato, oltre a commuovermi.
Nel consigliare o meno la lettura, mi vien d'aiuto la postfazione di Maria Teresa Carbone che ho trovato azzeccata e con cui mi sono identificato appieno, cui riporto un passaggio:
«...Rinchiuso per sette anni, dal 1975 al 1982, nelle prigioni sudafricane per la sua militanza contro l'apartheid e liberato solo in seguito a una campagna cui presto parte intellettuali di tutti i paesi, Breytenbach proietta nel suo testo - al tempo stesso testimonianza, atto d'accusa, libro di poesia - il tragico microcosmo carcerario contro il profilo chiuso del Sudafrica, il "mondo a parte" nel quale nessuno (non i neri ma neanche i bianchi al potere, prigionieri di un meccanismo perverso da loro stessi congegnato) è davvero libero. Ma descrivendo la sua condizione di detenuto in mezzo ad altri detenuti e ricorrendo all'unico strumento, la parola, che gli è dato usare - uno strumento dotato, Breytenbach lo sa bene, di immensi poteri e di seduzioni infinite - lo scrittore va ben oltre il resoconto delle vessazioni subite e dà vita a un universo di dolore e di solitudine e di prepotenza (e perfino, a volte, di gioie inattese), nel quale chiunque si può rispecchiare...»
Nel consigliare o meno la lettura, mi vien d'aiuto la postfazione di Maria Teresa Carbone che ho trovato azzeccata e con cui mi sono identificato appieno, cui riporto un passaggio:
«...Rinchiuso per sette anni, dal 1975 al 1982, nelle prigioni sudafricane per la sua militanza contro l'apartheid e liberato solo in seguito a una campagna cui presto parte intellettuali di tutti i paesi, Breytenbach proietta nel suo testo - al tempo stesso testimonianza, atto d'accusa, libro di poesia - il tragico microcosmo carcerario contro il profilo chiuso del Sudafrica, il "mondo a parte" nel quale nessuno (non i neri ma neanche i bianchi al potere, prigionieri di un meccanismo perverso da loro stessi congegnato) è davvero libero. Ma descrivendo la sua condizione di detenuto in mezzo ad altri detenuti e ricorrendo all'unico strumento, la parola, che gli è dato usare - uno strumento dotato, Breytenbach lo sa bene, di immensi poteri e di seduzioni infinite - lo scrittore va ben oltre il resoconto delle vessazioni subite e dà vita a un universo di dolore e di solitudine e di prepotenza (e perfino, a volte, di gioie inattese), nel quale chiunque si può rispecchiare...»
May 3, 2007
funny, I don't like his poetry - maybe it translates badly - but this is a nice prison memoir, as prison memoirs go. the way he writes about his wife is beautiful. (cf. especially the moment where he fights with his letter-censors about the proper translation into afrikaans of the french word for 'cunt.' love it!)
July 6, 2013
Like the Rosetta stone, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, is the key to understanding the infamous writer's prison poetry. The book itself has a fascinating history and records the poet's deepest thoughts and emotions as he "expels the darkness" of the violent and traumatic events during his time as an enemy of the state.
December 16, 2019
Breytenbach’s chronicle of his experiences in the South African penal system at the height of apartheid has been a revelation in its depiction of a shocking absurdist moment in the history of humanity. His approach and style are wholly original, personal, yet resonant and ominous in regards to what they reveal about human nature.
December 28, 2013
The *only* nice South African ever, if spitting image are to be believed, & they're usually right to be honest.
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July 28, 2017Good read. Seems a little vain, but I think it's an honest, if "literature-fied" account. Education on the prison systems role in SA struggle history.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews