Reinventing a Continent: Writing and Politics in South Africa 1982 - 1998

by André Brink

Ranging in tone from dispassionate historical overview to bare-knuckles polemic, these essays chronicle South Africa's willful transformation from repressive police state to emerging democracy.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

André Philippus Brink was a South African novelist. He wrote in Afrikaans and English and was until his retirement a Professor of English Literature at the University of Cape Town.

In the 1960s, he and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the Afrikaans literary movement known as Die Sestigers ("The Sixty-ers"). These writers sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government, and also to bring into Afrikaans literature the influence of contemporary English and French trends. His novel Kennis van die aand (1973) was the first Afrikaans book to be banned by the South African government.

Brink's early novels were often concerned with the apartheid policy. His final works engaged new issues raised by life in postapartheid South Africa.