Bloodsong And Other Stories

Violence comes in many forms, not all of them bloody. These extraordinarily moving stories from South Africa report not on the violence of the evening news but on the quiet anguish and brutality suffered by all the nation's inhabitants, both black and white. Ernst Havemann, long a South African citizen, knows his troubled country from the ground up its mines, its farms, its armed forces and police. He writes of the ordinary facts of apartheid the gestures, the irony-laden language, the humiliations that add up to everyday repression. He makes the voices of the Afrikaners and of black laborers specific, alive, real. These stories illuminate a society in the grip of seemingly hopeless crisis. At the same time, they introduce a writer whose first work, the product of a life's experience, radiates wisdom and maturity. The publication of Bloodsong is above all a literary event. Havemann writes with a spareness and depth of feeling that will remind readers of the early works of Hemingway. This book will take its place among the best literature that South Africa has produced. Jacket design by: Mon Mohan