The memoir of the author's seven-year imprisonment in South Africa moves from descriptions of prison routine and sardonic portraits of jailers, to interior monologues, and poetic digressions

The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist

BREYTENBACH, Breyten

Biographies & Memoirs

McGraw-Hill Book Co.

A collection of Breyten Breytenbach's political essays, letters, and notes from both in and out of prison.

End papers: Essays, letters, articles of faith, workbook notes

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

McGraw=Hill

The Memory of Birds in Time Revolutions is a collection of searching new essays by the acclaimed author of Returen to Paradise and True Confessions of an Albion Terrorist. Essaying his homeland, Africa, at the end of the twentieth century, Breyten Breytenbach offers penetrating insights on a variety of topics: the release of Nelson Mandela from prison ("Nelson Mandela is Free"); the early days of Mandela's presidency, and its failures (the controversial "Open Letter to Nelson Mandela"); the geography of the writer's imagination ("Tortoise Steps"); death as the mother of beauty ("Cadavre Exquis"); the true meaning of reconciliation and reform after apartheid ("Fragments from a Growing Awareness of Unfinished Truths"); and much more.

The Memory of Birds in Time of Revolution

Essays & Correspondence

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Breyten Breytenbach's meditations are informed by a profound intelligence and wit and an overriding sense of the past. He is captivated by memories of the land that is no more, of the child he must have been. Breytenbach begins Dog Heart with his own beginning in Bonnievale, South Africa, and looks at his homeland through the prism of memory to uncover a new landscape. We read of the ouvolk, the moon and stars and trees and shrubs and rocks that are really petrified shamans, subterranean travelers, death dancers who change themselves into rocks to become invisible to those who invade the land. Then over time they forget to change back. Through searching honesty and dreamlike lyricism, Breytenbach raises the memoir to a new level.

Dog Heart: A Memoir

Arts & Literature

Please deliver me, Lady, of prattle and cant As I bury one hundred years of war and want Evoking an extraordinary range of settings and images--from "Africa where blood blackens / and tiny desert creatures have to lick / the dew from their flanks to survive" to the havens of exile, and the "snow once again over Paris / this morning sheeting light / under grey blankets"--this searching verse explores love and loss, light and darkness, war and want, and wounds that do not heal. The texture of nostalgic, sometimes bitter memories of childhood in Breytenbach's African homeland is as palpable here as the vigorous exultation of love found amid the ruins of an earlier life. And pervading all the experience rendered is a sense of wonder and awe that "the light lies silvery smooth / in the furrows dug by the farmer / to lead astray the drought / and bring succour to the runner beans, / the maize, tomatoes, melons, peppers, / onions, garlic, potatoes / and love."

Lady One: Of Love and Other Poems

Poetry

J. M. Coetzee has described Breyten Breytenbach as "able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life." Windcatcher is a collection of Breytenbach's best work in poetry from 1964 to 2006, and includes many poems never before published. There are poems here from Paris in the sixties; poems written in prison, when Breytenbach was jailed in South Africa for seven years for his activities against the apartheid regime; poems of exile from New York in the nineties; poems from Vancouver, from Amsterdam, from Dar es-Salaam. Windcatcher is a remarkable record of a remarkable life and imagination. it is when night is at its deepestjust before morning that the muezzin calls the faithfulfor they are still asleepand his sad cry drifts over index fingers of minaretsrooftops and lovers and flowers and dockshis sad cry dawns over city --from "Dar es-Salaam: Harbor of Peace"

Windcatcher: New & Selected Poems 1964-2006

The painter, writer, and political activist returns to his native South Africa, where he was once imprisoned for working for the African National Congress, and reflects on the decline of apartheid and his own attachment to the Boer state

Return to Paradise

Harcourt

South Africa heads toward majority rule, yet Breytenbach is far from optimistic about its future. He sees a civil war raging and the land awash in blood. "[This] book...is fueled by the sort of rage that produces great literature" (Washington Post). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Awarded the Alan Paton Prize.

Return To Paradise (Harvest Book)

Community & Culture

Mariner Books

Breytenbach's first visit to South Africa, after thirteen years in exile, is more than just a dazzling travelogue. He is searching for a "paradise" that coincides with the geography, mysticism, and mythologies of Africa, but in reality his homeland is an often hellish region of racial discrimination and bigotry. Introduction by André Brink. Translated by Rike Vaughan.

Season In Paradise (A Harvest Book)

Historical

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.

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Books by BREYTENBACH, Breyten

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BREYTENBACH, Breyten. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist

End papers: Essays, letters, articles of faith, workbook notes

The Memory of Birds in Time of Revolution

Dog Heart: A Memoir

Lady One: Of Love and Other Poems

Windcatcher: New & Selected Poems 1964-2006

Return to Paradise

Return To Paradise (Harvest Book)

Season In Paradise (A Harvest Book)

The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist