So today I thought I’d upload a little work I’ve done. I finished today with my Creative writing seminars. This is a task I had to do for the class, it’s about two books of the same author. I enjoyed this task because this author is one of my favourite South-African authors. He’s an excellent writer.
André Philippus Brink was born on 29 May 1935. He is a South-African novelist. Brink played a big role during the apartheid years with his Anti-apartheid idealistic writing. He formed part of the “Die Sestigers” literary movement with writers such as Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach. These writers sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government, and also to bring into Afrikaans literature the influence of contemporary English and French trends. The apartheid government banned a lot of these writers’ books; Looking on Darkness was Brink’s first book to be banned in South-Africa.
“Die Sestigers” were very educated writers. Brink had travelled and studied in Europe. This is what inspired his 1963 novel, The Ambassador. The novel plays off in Paris, in the early sixties. The key protagonist, Ambassador Paul van Heerden, is the only South African to whose advice the French Foreign Office will listen; and yet, embroiled in an affair with the promiscuous, seductive Nicolette, his passion obscures even an event as significant as the Sharpeville massacre back in South-Africa. Unbeknown to him, Nicolette is also mistress to the Embassy's Third Secretary, Stephen Keyter. Almost inevitably, Van Heerden and Keyter are seduced by the potent sensuality of the city's night life - and into a fierce triangle of disinformation, deception and intrigue. By the time both men try to reconcile the conflict in their lives, events have spiralled far beyond their control; and falling foul of the system exacts from each a terrible price.
In Brink’s work during apartheid, the negative aspects of apartheid can be seen. The novels that play off during apartheid regularly have apartheid influences. After the change to democracy in South-Africa, Brink’s novels had to change too. In his newer novels Brink goes way back into history past apartheid and writes more about the early slave situation in newly found South-Africa. This can be seen in the 2005 novel Praying Mantis. The novel tells the life-story of Cupido. In his early years, growing up on a Dutch farm in the deep interior of the Southern African Cape, Cupido Cockroach became the greatest drunk, liar, fornicator and fighter of his region. Coming under the spell of a woman, the soap-boiler Anna, and the great Dr Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp of the London Missionary Society, later in the book Cupido is made the first Khoi or 'Hottentot' missionary ordained at the Cape of Good Hope. Received into the fold of the Church, Cupido passionately turns against all his early beliefs and is appointed as missionary in a remote and arid region in the North-western Cape. But this also marks the beginning of his decline, as the society abandons him to his fate. One by one, the members of his congregation disappear into the desert, so that in the end, abandoned even by his wife and children, he is left to preach to the stones and thorn trees and tortoises, returning to the dream-world of his people.
This novel opens a new world to Brink’s writing and also new topics to write about. Brink has recently released a new book, Philida a Slave Novel which is about the life of a slave woman.
These two novels (Praying Mantis and The Ambassador) of Brink are very different in the topics they cover; but the characteristics of his unique writing style are as clear as daylight. Brink uses a “three-way-point-of-view” telling method in his novels. It tells the story from the protagonist’s point of view, the antagonist’s point of view and then finally tells the story as it really is. This way of writing opens up the story and characters which gives the reader more knowledge of the novel. It also allows the reader to get to know the characters better, which can make the reader relate. The use of more than one point of view can also bring clarity to the reader on certain events and can prove to be less judgmental and biased.
Brink also writes his novels simultaneously in Afrikaans and English. He believes that writing in one language limits thoughts and creativity, thus writing his novels in two languages allows him to argue better and develop better stories. This is the reason why Brink caters for such a large English and Afrikaans audience. Afrikaans and English readers alike can relate and understand his novels.
Brink studied in Europe and therefore his vocabulary in foreign languages such as French, Dutch and German is rather good. He uses these foreign languages in his novels in extracts such as letters, signs or common phrases. In Praying Mantis Dutch is used for the letters which is written by Dr Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp and in The Ambassador French is used for songs or common phrases which Ambassador Paul van Heerden quotes regularly. The use of these foreign languages adds to the belief of the novels’ reality, to make the characters real and to make them fit in to their setting. Whether it’s Johannes van der Kemp who is Dutch or Paul van Heerden who is in Paris, it makes the characters and their surroundings authentic.
André Brink has contributed a lot to South-African literature. Starting with his Anti-apartheid writing in literature and surviving through the government bans. He wrote about sex, mild drugs and mixed race relationships as if it was nothing, which was a big deal in a conservative communities. With his type of writing which gives the reader insight to the character, it opened the minds of people and created ideas about apartheid, the controlling government and Africans. Brink also went against the government which was all about “Die Suiwering van Afrikaans” and he used French and English in his writing. Brink is and will always be a key figure in anti-apartheid ideas and South-African liberal and modern literature.
—. Die Ambassadeur. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2006.
