FIRST SEMESTER

2000/2001

ARABIC BOOKS                                                      ENGLISH BOOKS

ENGLISH BOOKS

South African writer and Professor of English at the University of Cape Town, Andre Brink writes the seven highlighted books, listed below. The South African Representative Office in Ramallah presented several works by Andre Brink to Birzeit University on the occasion of the author's visit to Palestine on June 15, 2000. Brink, a white person of Dutch and Huguenot descent known as Afrikaner, has long been known as an opponent of his country's apartheid policy. His 1974 novel, Looking on Darkness, was written in the Dutch-based language and was banned by the South African government. Other works, A Dry White Season (1979), An Act of Terror (1991), and On the Contrary (1993), encountered similar controversy.

In an interview conducted in March 1997 by American journalist Nicholas A. Basbanes, Brink states, " during the apartheid years, it was immensely important for me to get across an image of what was happening in the country and to try and interpret it at a time when journalists simply were not allowed to do their job".

When the book written in Afrikaans, Looking on Darkness, was banned, Brink decided to write all his books in two languages, Afrikaans and English (without the use of a translator).

"It started as a strategy for survival," Brink declared. "Suddenly, I was a writer without a reader, a non-person. So to insure that what I wrote could be read, I started writing in English as well. If, because of censorship, I couldn't find the readers in my own country, then I had to make sure that my books would be published in English."

Ironically, Brink's works are more influential outside his native South Africa. Books once banned in his country have been translated into twenty-nine languages and have reached readers throughout the world.

On June 15 of this year Andre Brink spoke at Birzeit University. He spoke of the miracle that took "three hundred years of people's work. The miracle did not come from the sky but was due to many factors, mainly patience under terrible circumstances, … we learnt that violence alone can't do many things. Poetry and literature as a whole has an important function in building solidarity."

An act or terror PR9369.3.B7A65 2000


A massive apartheid thriller which starts with a failed assassination attempt on the South African president. The story tells the flight of the main character from the police, which lead him through all levels of South African society.

A chain of voices PR9369.3.B7C5 2000

This is a story about a slave uprising on a farm in 18th century South Africa. A group of slaves stand accused of the murder of their owner, a wealthy Afrikaner farmer.

Devil's valley: a novel PR9369.3.B7D48 1998

A forty-nine year old crime reporter tells this story. Due to an encounter with a boy from Devil's Valley, the main character visits the valley. In this tale the people who moved into the valley over 150 years ago have been able to preserve their isolation and way of life relatively undisturbed.

A dry white season PR9369.3.B7D7 1998

A white teacher starts to ask questions about the death of a friend at the hands of police. As he investigates further it unsettles his whole life and brings out a dark side of South African society he never knew was there.

The first life of Adamaster PR9369.3.B7F57 2000


This is more a myth than a novel. It tells about the time of the first contact between seagoing European explorers and the natives of southern Africa.

On the contrary PR9369.3.B7O5 1994


This is an account, in his own words, of a French immigrant to South Africa in the early 18th century as he sits in prison awaiting execution. Underneath, the novel is about today's South Africa and the dilemmas facing people challenging the status quo.