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Title: My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Rian Malan ISBN: 0-8021-3684-2 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The heart of darkness isn't necessarily dark
Comment: In college in the late 80's/early 90's, the South African malaise of social injustice intrigued me, drew me in to study it and explore potential outcomes. It's surprising that no one pointed me in the direction of this book to learn more about the exact personal toll of the apartheid policy. Granted Malan tells his side and experiences as a liberal Afrikaner that becomes an expatriate South Afrikaner and eventually comes back to try to come to terms with his country's separatist racial policy. There are other sides to this story that should be explored if one wants to get a complete look at what European colonialism and apartheid did to South Africa. But as part of the story, Rian Malan tells it passionately and you will remember the book long after you've put it down.
It is naive to think that since the ugly face of apartheid has been pulled away, Nelson Mandela has been freed, that these problems in South Africa changed overnight. One can say it was a peaceful revolution (as stated in Susan Dunn's book Sister Revolutions), but there was so much blood leading up to the point where the Afrikaners handed over the reigns of government. Malan vividly accounts some of these personal tales of blood and what is to be made of them. The future of his country looks bleak amid these tales of hate and cultural differences, but there is a thread of hope...that maybe they can live together in a strange land.
Malan starts off the book, "I'm burned out and starving to death, so I'm just going to lay this all upon you and trust that you're a visionary reader, because the grand design, such as it is, is going to be hard for you to see." You may not come to see the grand design but you will be engaged trying as you experience this book. The grand design in anything is rarely revealed, as the endgame for South Africa has yet to be reached today...but Malan tells it like it is without a grand design, but an ugly design he has witnessed nonetheless.
Rating: 5
Summary: If there is a book to understand South Africa, this is it
Comment: "My traitor's heart" is a deeply and uncommonly sincere book by a white South African who tries to explain and understand the Kafkian and tragic dynamics generated by the apartheid regime. Malan painfully goes over the South African experience through his family's history (he is related to D. F. Malan, one the architects of apartheid) and his own experiences and investigations, and what emerges is a picture full of blood, confusion, and tears. The major question one asks at the end of the book is if there is any hope of coming to terms with the past and move on. There are, despite the efforts by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, too many animosities not only between blacks and whites, but within blacks and whites themselves, and Malan's book might turn out to be sadly prophetic as to how we treat each other in this country. Perhaps "My traitor's heart" is too pessimistic, but I usually find that pessimistic books are the most realistic, and for that reason I highly recommend reading Malan's book.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is not a book about South Africa
Comment: The previous review to the contrary, this book will always be relevant as long as human beings judge other humans based on race. I just finished reading it and, as an American living in the Middle East, I faced innumerable home truths about myself and my own racist biases during the two days I was glued to it.
It is a painful read, in terms of the atrocities it depicts and the questions it asks. However, it is an essential read, though I wonder if anyone who has not lived long-term outside their own culture can truly appreciate it. It's easy to be a white liberal at home, wrapped in one's own smug assurance and safe within the majority. (And I'm speaking of myself here). Surrounded by 20 million Arabs, Malan's own journeys into Soweto strike far too close to one's heart.
On only the most superficial level is this a book about South African Apartheid. It is also about Israelis and Palestinians, Hindus and Muslims, Northern Irish and the English, the US and its every victim.
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Title: Country of My Skull : Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog ISBN: 0812931297 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela ISBN: 0316548189 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: A History of South Africa, Third Edition by Leonard Monteath Thompson, Leonard L. Thompson ISBN: 0300087764 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change by Allister Sparks ISBN: 0226768554 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Life along the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield ISBN: 0520232143 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 06 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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