Ties of Blood - Softcover

Slovo, Gillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380709023 ISBN 13: 9780380709021

Publisher: Avon Books, 1991

Synopsis

Riva Cyn flees the pogroms of Russia to make a new life for herself in Johannesburg, and becomes the first remarkable individual in four generations of strong-willed women, whose fates are entwined with that of the Bopape family

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

The struggle for freedom and equality in South Africa takes center stage in this hefty, sprawling novel of four generations of two South African matriarchies--the descendants, respectively, of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants and of a Xhosa chief. In her attempt to animate 20th-century history, however, mystery writer Slovo ( Morbid Symptoms ), daughter of exiled South African activists, has produced, at best, a sequence of tableaux: the miners' strike of the 1920s, the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s, the shanties of Soweto, penal farms, Pretoria prisons, political exile. These appalling contexts dwarf her undeveloped characters, depicted as "chains of women bound by ties of blood, of guilt, and of duty." As they age, the women of one generation are nearly always replaced in the limelight by daughters who embody the day's progressive politics. The political convictions of the protagonists, whose lack of dimension is exacerbated by wooden dialogue, seem merely pietistic. Failing to give life to her characters' conflicts, Slovo has failed to do justice to her subject. Literary Guild alternate; author tour .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380709023
• ISBN 13: 9780380709021
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 693