Synopsis
Andre Brink has earned his place among the most important authors on the international literary scene. His profound moral vision and unique ability to bring to the surface the turbulent undercurrents of South African politics and society have been hailed by reviewers of his much acclaimed novels such as A Dry White Season and A Chain of Voices. "No one writes of Africa with more visual power than Andre Brink," wrote the Chicago Tribune in its review of his most recent work, An Act of Terror.
Now, in a provocative fable, Brink probes the fateful beginnings of his country's complex cultural situation, the arrival of the first Europeans, and the tormented love affair between a young African tribal leader and a white woman left behind by the sailors. This is a journey through landscapes that are rich in magic and allusion, and emotions that are powerful, primal, and eternal.
Brink's novella has its origins in an act of rescue: What, he wondered, lay behind the fragments of myth that had been handed down about the mountains of the cape? Adamastor, the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocks of the Peninsula, first appears in Western literature in the sixteenth century - much about the same time as the first known contact between the seagoing European explorers and the natives of southern Africa. How, Brink asks, would that meeting have looked from the landward side? What role would the visitors take in the mythology of an utterly different culture, with its own deities, its own accumulated story?
In a startlingly fresh yet familiar form, Brink takes us to the heart of the ambivalent relationships that define South Africa's modern history. Cape of Storms is a work of ribald charm, mesmerizing beauty, and resounding importance. Brink has unearthed from the sun-carved land itself the missing meaning of a myth that has waited four centuries to be invented.
Reviews
In this searing novella, acclaimed South African novelist Brink tells the tragic love story of a Khoikhoi chieftain leader (a nomadic people, the Khoikhoi were derogatorily called "Hottentots" by European colonists) and a white woman left behind by members of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's crew when they rounded Africa's southern tip in 1498. The romance between T'kama (Big Bird) and the castaway he names Khois (meaning "woman") forms the touching core of an often ribald tale, narrated by the chieftain in lilting prose. T'kama, who learns to mistrust the murderous European invaders, feels terrible pain when a fleet returns and drags off Khois, mother of their infant son--the possibility that she voluntarily abandoned them only compounds his grief. In an introduction, the author relates T'kama's story to that of Adamastor, a giant in Greek mythology who fights the armies of the sea and yearns for the nymph Thetis. Just as Zeus turned Adamastor into a rocky cape, Brink's parable suggests, so have white Europeans punished native Africans. Readers who were wary of tackling Brink's previous novel, An Act of Terror , because of its length, will find this short fable a stunning introduction to his work.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Following An Act of Terror ( LJ 12/91), a study of political agitation in his native South Africa, Brink moves back in time to the first European exploration of Africa. As the story begins, an innocent young tribal leader encounters a strange new creature in a pool. T'kama is immediately taken by the white woman he sees bathing, but she flees screaming to the beach, where Vasco da Gama's men rush to her aid. T'kama, wounded by gunfire, seizes the woman and escapes to the bush. A bloody confrontation develops, but the explorers are eventually forced to abandon the woman. Under her spell, T'kama leads his people on a dangerous inland journey, and they become divided over this strange white outsider. Still, T'kama's love is unrequited until he can make the supreme sacrifice. Presiding over this collision of cultures is the mysterious Adamaster. Interweaving magic and history, this wonderful tale is essential for all collections.
- Brack Stovall, Carrollton P.L., Tx.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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