Reinventing a Continent: Writing and Politics in South Africa 1982-1998 Hardcover - 1998

From the publisher

The first U.S. publication of a major new work of nonfiction by acclaimed South African writer Andre Brink, author of Imaginings of Sand and A Dry White Season. With a preface by President Nelson Mandela, and a new introduction and epilogue written expressly for the American edition, Reinventing a Continent collects Brink's writings on politics, culture and literature from 1982 to 1996, a period of unprecedented social change. Ranging in tone from dispassionate historical overview to bare-knuckles polemic, these essays chronicle a nation's willful transformation from repressive police state to emerging democracy.

"The South African struggle for liberation and democracy was always and everywhere -- in exile, in prison, in the internal mass movements and the underground -- informed and inspired by the rich body of thought and creative work produced by our writers. Their work continued to demonstrate, even in the darkest years, that the South African voices of justice and reason would not be silenced. These essays ... open a vista on the challenges and the rich possibilities ahead. The quality of our freedom in the future will depend on the creative and critical input of our writers and intellectuals, just as much as the attainment of the present conditions for that freedom was brought about by their contributions". -- from the preface by President Nelson Mandela