The Keep - Softcover

Becker, Jillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1733867708 ISBN 13: 9781733867702

Publisher: Gothenburg Books, 2019

Synopsis

The story is about the Leyton family, of Russian-Jewish descent, living in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 1930s. The father, Rayfel, is a lawyer who aspires to political power. He believes the racially divided country can be saved by liberal democracy. His wife, Freda, despises Johannesburg society and longs for romantic drama in her life. Their articulate, imaginative, even visionary daughter, Josephine, is precocious in her understanding of those who surround her at home and at school, and is troubled by the injustices some of them suffer. She has extraordinary empathy with her handsome, inarticulate brother, Simon. He is a force of nature, wild, at times to the point of savagery. The adults live as Europeans in an Africa that remains mysterious and alien, beautiful but dangerous to them. Its menace lurks even where they feel most safe in their suburban home. In the end, it defeats and destroys them all except Simon.

About this title

Review

'In her power to present a large panorama, and fill it with lively, telling detail, Jillian Becker is a writer born' - Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate

'I don't know which I admire most: Mrs Becker's gift for detailed characterization or her powerful sense of dramatic form. Like a great wave, the novel crashes to its conclusion.' - The Sunday Telegraph (London), 16 July 1967

'The horror in Becker's first novel is infinitely subtle and impressive.' - The Daily Telegraph (London), 17 August 1967

'Jillian Becker's first novel is quite different in character from anything that has so far appeared in the category of South African fiction in English. In terms of a vivid splendour of characterisation, of drama, humour, irony and tragedy, in terms of profundity and living relevance in philosophy, The Keep is a rewarding and important novel.' - English Studies in Africa (1968)

'Her extremely impressive first novel is a vivid evocation of what it meant to live in South Africa in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Keep finely bears out the truth of George Eliot's old axiom that there is no private life that has not been determined by a wider public life. But though the people are certainly products of their time and place and illuminate our understanding of both, their individuality is intense enough to convey a vision of life which is more than a question of a local habitation and a name. The violent disasters are enforced by prose that carries an unnerving authority. The tension between imaginative urgency and literary poise can only be the work of a striking talent.' - The Observer (London), 16 July, 1967

Edition details

• Publisher: Gothenburg Books
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1733867708
• ISBN 13: 9781733867702
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274