Emergency Continued

‘Twenty-five years on, Andrew Dreyer, the young student activist in
Richard Rive’s first novel Emergency, at the time of the Sharpeville
massacres, is now a settled, married teacher in Cape Town.
He fiercely resists getting caught up again in the student upheavals
of the 1985 State of Emergency. But his young son Brad and his
friends are activists, and it’s an inflammable mixture of generations.
In semi-autobiography – but, poignantly, giving himself the family
he never had – the author of ‘Buckingham Palace’, District Six places
himself as both a narrator and the central character.
Rive wrote this provocative novel in the white heat of his own
experiences – ‘I’m telling truth through fiction’ - and at the end of May
1989 he triumphantly surprised his publisher David Philip by presenting
him with a complete printout of the novel. He was in high spirits – this
was the week before the opening at the Baxter Theatre of the play of
‘Buckingham Palace’, District Six, in which Basil Appollis was to star. By that
opening night Richard Rive had been murdered ... and his computer,
stolen with Emergency Continued on it, was never recovered.’
Marie Philip

‘This is not an angry book… nor is it condemnatory. It is a very beautiful
journey into what makes people tick … and into what influence the
tiniest of our actions can have on our fellow man.’
Will Bernard, Talking of Books

‘One of the first South African writers to examine what it means to be
of mixed race in a rigid dualistic society.’
The New York Times Book Review

‘One of South Africa’s best-known and most versatile writers.’
The Independent

RICHARD RIVE was born in 1930 in Cape Town's District Six.
His distinction as a scholar took him to Columbia and Oxford
University, where he continued his participation in anti-apartheid
activities. Rive's first novel, Emergency, deals with his experiences
during the first State of Emergency, and was published abroad to
wide critical acclaim. Rive's writings include poems, short stories,
and the autobiographical novel Buckingham Palace, District Six,
about his boyhood in the slums.

A continuation of the late South African writer Rive's fictional account of the black struggle in South Africa begun with his first novel, Emergency (1970--not reviewed), a chronicle of the 1960's. With the same protagonist, Andrew Dreyer, the narrative has moved to 1985--a period not only of great political unrest but of increased tensions between the generations. Dreyer, a teacher and failed writer, has sought to isolate himself from his activist past and failed love affair with a white woman, Ruth, by living a conventional life. He has married, has two children, and is relatively prosperous but lonely and unhappy. And when black schoolchildren revolt against the system, and the violence spreads, schools close, children are arrested, and killed in protests, Dreyer--like many of the older generation--is uneasy with the young people's emphasis on conformity and confrontation. But when his activist son Bradley disappears, Dreyer becomes increasingly involved in events as he searches for his son and meets friends from the past. It is as much a search for his son as for his former self, and it is recorded here by Dreyer partly in letters to an old friend in Canada and partly in a ``novel that was about a writer writing a novel, that was incomplete, because it was waiting for the next section to happen...a blur between fact and fiction.'' Though the prose is at times pedestrian, Rive movingly describes the terrible toll apartheid has taken on individuals, families, and whole communities. A memorable portrait of a particular time, place, and condition. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.