To Every Birth Its Blood

The many people of Alexandra Township are the characters in this book in which readers can discover the links in a chain of extended families, friendships, street gangs and political groups.

These two richly concentrated novels from South African writers probe the soul of a troubled land through the eyes of very different but equally affecting characters. Brink creates a first-person narrator, a white male novelist struggling to construct a love story from his musings on the nature of fiction and the semiotics of passion. Current events intrude in the forms of a black friend under police scrutiny and the singular manuscript and diary produced by a young Afrikaaner woman who committed suicide by self-immolation following her activist lover's death in prison. Gradually, reality and interior monologue merge into a dominant image of fire that will and must burn. Serote's linked episodes take readers inside the township of Alexandra for a painful journey through the majority black experience in South Africa. The appealing prose style, mingling description and dialogue in rhythmic patterns that complement the many musical allusions, does not soften the story Serote has to tell of suffering generations joined together in "The Movement . . . the eyes which see how poverty is akin to a skeleton. So white. So dry." Both books are recommended for most fiction collections.
- Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.
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