DEVIL'S VALLEY

Literature & Fiction

André Brink

Contemporary

VINTAGE (RAND)

The First Life of Adamastor has it origins in an act of rescue: what, wondered Andr Brink, lay behind fragments of myth that have been handed down about the mountains of the Cape Adamastor, the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocks of the Peninsula, first appears in European literature in the sixteenth century - much about the time of the first known contact between seagoing European explorers and the natives of Southern Africa. How, Brink asks, would that meeting have looked from the landward side What role would the visitors take in the mythology of an utterly different culture, with its own deities, its own accumulated story Brink, in this extraordinary, moving and potentially explosive creation has unearthed from the sun-carved land itself the missing meanings of a myth that has waited five centuries to be invented.

First Life of Adamastor

Vintage

The Wall of the Plague

Rumours of Rain

Star

The year is 1749, when the Boers ruled South Africa. And so it has come to his Baas&’s final command to his Hottentot slave Adam, to flog his mother, because she refuses to prune the master&’s vineyard in order to attend her own beloved mother&’s funeral. And when he refuses to do so, and his Baas smashes his face with a piece of wood, Adam turns on him, and beats him almost to death. Then he flees to South Africa&’s veld. There he comes to the rescue of Elizabeth, a white woman, and the only person to survive her husband&’s expedition in the vast South African interior. Alone and terrified, she pleads with the runaway slave to bring her back to the Cape and her home. Adam agrees because he believes by rescuing Elizabeth, he will be awarded his own freedom. & &This, then is the stunning story of their trek together, how they find in each other their mutual need and humanity, and finally how their days together turn into an unforgettable, tender love story. &&Shortlisted for the 1976 Booker Prize&

Instant in the Wind

Literary

A compelling novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize/ Best Book from Africa award.As a small child in a wintry Bremen, Hanna dreams about the other side of silence, the place where the wind comes from and palm trees wave in the sun. Seeing her chance to escape from years of abuse in an orphanage and in service, Hanna joins one of the shiploads of young women transported in the early years of the twentieth century to the colony of German South-West Africa to assuage the needs of the male settlers. Following atrocious punishment for daring to resist the advances of an army officer, she arrives at a phantasmagoric refuge in the African desert -- “prison, nunnery, brothel, shithouse, Frauenstein.” When the drunken excesses of a visiting army detachment threaten her only companion, Hanna revolts.Mounting a ragtag army of females and natives, she sets out on an epic march through the desert to take on the might of the German Reich. This apocalyptic journey through the darker regions of the soul will also reveal to Hanna the hidden meanings of suffering, revenge, companionship, love and compassion.

Other Side of Silence, the (South Africa Only)

Secker Warburg

Estienne Barbier, born in the Loire Valley in 1699, lays claim to service in the armies of the kings of France and Prussia, but he is an inveterate liar, and the truth is less glorious: irate husbands have made the Lowlands too hot to hold him, and he has deserted his pregnant wife to stow away for the Cape of Good Hope. An expedition to the hinterland opens his eyes to the majesty of the African landscape and its wondrous animals and he is enchanted by the rumour of a fabled city of gold. But he also begins to see clearly the sordid dealing that underlies the self-righteous pomposity of the East India Company. It is a vision that makes him powerful enemies. Taking cover on a remote farm, and energetically consoling sundry widows, Barbier finds himself, to his own surprise, fomenting rebellion.

ON THE CONTRARY

Instant In the Wind

RANDOM HOUSE UK

A massive apartheid thriller centred on a plot to blow up none other than the State President outside the gates of Cape Town Castle. . . Brink at his robust and imaginative best' - Adam Low, Daily Telegraph.A profound novel set in South Africa that combines compelling action with an intellectual confrontation of the author's poitically volatile home country. A brave masterpiece from Booker Prize shortlisted, award-winning author Andr Brink.

Act of Terror

Minerva

This book "tells the story of actor Joseph Malan as he awaits execution for the murder of his white lover. Andre Brink panders to no one's political, ideological or religious beliefs in a controversial novel which has achieved international significance and abundant critical acclaim" 'Strikingly effective' The Times

LOOKING ON DARKNESS

Vintage, UK

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Books by André Brink