Freedom Rising: Life Under Apartheid Through the Eyes of an American on a Four-Year Clandestine Journey Through Southern Africa

New York. 1985. Macmillan. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0025899406. 336 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Neil Stuart. keywords: History South Africa. DESCRIPTION - This is an excellent book. It gives an inside picture by an outsider of the day-to-day struggle against apartheid and of the principal actors. When the final eruption takes place in South Africa, James North's book will be invaluable for understanding how it came about. I am especially impressed by his ability to reach the people involved in the resistance to apartheid and to communicate their ideas honestly and without distortion - this is rarely seen in books written about South Africa by outsiders.' - Dennis Brutus, the exiled South African poet, author of Stubborn Hope and A Simple Lust. Thanks to his act of courage and his unconquerable need to discover the truth for himself, James North has written an extraordinary book. By traversing southern Africa alone, for four and a half years over 25,000 miles, nearly all by land, often by hitchhiking, he has witnessed the unfolding drama of southern Africa caught up in its slide into rebellion and war. The result is Freedom Rising, a personal, living history of apartheid and of Rhodesia's becoming Zimbabwe. North was on a dangerous adventure. He talked with hundreds of people of all colors and backgrounds. His experiences and theirs combine to make this an indispensable book on the present realities of southern Africa. Because North ventured into forbidden territories and met leaders of the underground, he writes pseudonymously to protect others. An eyewitness to apartheid, North brings to bear unique gifts not only of perception and analysis, but of empathy with people - so he elicits the truth. Freedom Rising is one of the few - if not the only - general interest books on southern Africa to appear in three decades. It provides an insider's report as well as a deeply personal account - including James North's friendships with guerrilla forces. The consequence is a stunning work on the world's most controversial societies. It reveals a world that inspires fascination and horror but also hope, and one whose fate is inextricably involved with the future of the A recent magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and former president of The Harvard Crimson, James North has spent six years reporting from the Third World in such publications as The New Republic and The Nation. inventory #5973.…