The Other Side of Silence - Hardcover

Brink, Andre Philippus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151007705 ISBN 13: 9780151007707

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003

Synopsis

After years of abuse, with only a bleak future ahead of her, a young German woman joins other women being transported to German's colony in South-West Africa to attend the needs of male settlers, but when she is confronted by the harsh reality and brutality of life in Africa, she revolts, joining a ragtag army of women and native victims to take on the German Reich. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Authors

André Brink is one of the world's most prominent novelists. He has won South Africa's important literary prize, the CNA, three times, and has twice been short-listed for the Booker Prize. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

André Brink is one of the world's most prominent novelists. He has won South Africa's important literary prize, the CNA, three times, and has twice been short-listed for the Booker Prize. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Reviews

Acclaimed South African novelist Brink (The Rights of Desire; Devil's Valley; etc.) paints a harrowing picture of German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) in his latest novel, focusing on a German initiative to import hundreds of women to Africa for the colonists at the turn of the last century. Hanna X is an orphan who spends her early years in Germany trying to catch on as a domestic with a number of families, only to have the sexual advances of various libidinous husbands ruin her efforts to find a stable situation. Hanna thinks she has escaped the world of male domination when she receives permission to emigrate to South Africa, but her escape backfires. Raped and mutilated by brutal German officer Hauptmann Buhlke, she is taken to a horrific outpost known as the Frauenstein, where the abuse continues. The book's surreal, fragmentary first half, in which the events of Hanna's childhood are interspersed with the harrowing details of her arrival in Africa, is followed by a riveting second half, in which Hanna escapes the Frauenstein and tracks down Buhlke with the help of another abused woman, Katja, and a Herero tribesman, Kahapa, whom the two women rescue from a savage German farmer. The trio quickly become a small vigilante posse as they journey to Windhoek to find Buhlke, and their efforts to turn the tables on the Germans succeed when they murder a small troop of soldiers and then wipe out a larger group at a garrison. The relentless violence occasionally turns Hanna into a one-dimensional character, but the imagery from this haunting novel will stay with readers, as will the frightening allure of all-consuming hatred: "So beautiful. So singular. So utterly pure. So abundantly full of life."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hanna X is a young German woman who, after years of abuse in a Bremen orphanage, escapes to her country's colonies in southwest Africa, only to be even more badly brutalized--mutilated, even--by the men she has volunteered to serve. Disfigured and mute, she is banished to Frauenstein, a desert asylum for broken, unwanted women. When Hanna saves frail young Katja from the violent advances of a drunken soldier by beating him to death, her silent rage comes alive and the tenor of Brink's story shifts from suffering to revenge. Forming a militia from the scarred victims of colonial oppression, natives and immigrant women alike, Hanna declares war on the Reich itself, organizing attacks on German desert outposts and ultimately coming face-to-scarred-face with the persistent shadows of her childhood--as well as the man responsible for her horrible disfigurement. This is familiar territory for Brink, a South African whose explorations of violence, memory, and apartheid have won him praise and media attention. His latest proves provocative by evoking these themes within the unconventional setting of German colonialism. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151007705
• ISBN 13: 9780151007707
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320