Red Dust: A Novel - Softcover

Slovo, Gillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393323994 ISBN 13: 9780393323993

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003

Synopsis

"Perhaps the most important piece of fiction yet to emerge from the new South Africa."―San Francisco Chronicle

"Written with the pace of a thriller"―Times Literary Supplement. Red Dust is set in a rural South African town, where three people are about to meet their past. Sarah Barcant has left her law career in New York to assist an old friend as prosecutor on a Truth Commission hearing. Dirk Hendricks, a former police deputy, is being taken in handcuffs to the station where he once worked. There he will confront Alex Mpondo, the man he had tortured, who is now an MP.

About this title

About the Author:

Gillian Slovo, author of the novel Red Dust, now a feature film, and co-author of the play Guantánamo, as well as a memoir and nine other novels, lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly:

This remarkable exposition of a Truth Commission amnesty hearing in a backwater South African town underscores that "the full truth" is more complex than court transcript or verdict can ever reveal. South African police brutally tortured and murdered at will in their unfettered efforts to crush the "terrorist" acts of black rebels against apartheid. Now those rebels occupy the higher branches of government while the offending policemen are imprisoned. Sarah Barcant left the dusty, dead-end town of Smitsrivier 14 years ago to become a successful New York City prosecutor, but drops everything to heed the call of hometown mentor and antiapartheid activist Ben Hoffman. Ben represents brilliant legislator Alex Mpondo at the amnesty hearing of former Smitsrivier policeman Dirk Hendricks, who brutally tortured Alex and knows the truth about the murder of his friend Steve Sizela. Steve's body and killer were never found, and Steve's parents push Sarah to use Dirk's hearing to implicate Pieter Muller, another policeman, never charged, who now runs a security firm in Smitsrivier. Slovo (Catnap; Every Secret Thing), herself the daughter of antiapartheid activists, skillfully handles Sarah's quandary of returning to face her past and reexamine her life in the light of long-term exile. The reader can almost taste the dust and feel the heat of the stultifying locale; the scatter of words in Afrikaans enhances the absorbing, fast-paced narrative. Amnesty hearings are meant to bring closure to the violent period that ended apartheid by forgiving crimes by former officials, where possible. But this powerful novel full of legal and emotional twists and turns strips bare the torment forever ingrained in victim and jailer alike, a torment that runs through all segments of post-apartheid society.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0393323994
• ISBN 13: 9780393323993
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350