Contrary: Critical Responses to the Novels of Andre Brink

This compilation brings together twenty essays (ten in English and ten in Afrikaans) on the work of one of South Africa’s most distinguished, prolific and internationally best recognised writers. The essays look at Brink’s approach to the genre and its narrative techniques. In his writing, Andre Brink interrogates power, violence, and inequality by probing silences: those of the past and those which threaten the new, democratic dispensation in South Africa. At the heart of his oeuvre lies the human condition as he turns to love, myth and history for inspiration. Published since the late 1980s, the criticism collected in this volume strives to be representative of the kind of research undertaken on Brink’s work and give insight into a variety of its aspects, focusing primarily on its most significant part, the novels and their reception. The essays look at Brink’s approach to the genre and its narrative techniques. They also contextualise Brink’s writing in relation to existentialism, (post)colonialism, myth-making, magic realism, representations of gender and sexuality, the dialectic of history and fiction, the picaresque tradition, and the tensions between memory, narration and identity. The collection includes one of the best profiles on the life and work of Andre Brink, written by Nicholas Wroe of the Guardian, as well as an overview essay by Godfrey Meintjes which was originally published as three separate pieces. The combined text of the latter, like no other, introduces all of the important phases and influences of Brink’s prose writing.