My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience : Book

Search ISBN:0802136842 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience Reference Book. Classifications : General Historical Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books General AAS Historical Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books Political Leaders & Notable People Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books General Biog . Click the following link to view the cover of My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience.

1) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. I have attempted to write a review of this book several times, but failed as I find myself gripped with the same conflicting emotions that Malan so succintly portrays in the book.

Having been born and brought up very close to the Msinga Valley (the subject of the closing chapter of My Traitor´s Heart) in the heart of Kwa Zulu Natal, many of the names and people are known to me. Some of those people are the heroes of the book, others are the villains. I mention this only in so much as I can verify sufficient of the authenticity of Malan´s very personal, cathartic journey.

Many others have written a synopsis of Malan´s book. If you want to know about the story line - there are many reviews to be read. However, for me the review is a personal experience. Malan´s catharsis is paralleled by my own! No other book I´ve read is as descriptive of the madness that is Africa. A madness that you both love and hate at the same time. A madness that drives you away and yet draws you in simultaneously. And finally a madness that drives you to the edge of reason, yet (as the story of Creina Alcock unfolds) drives you to the reason for being.

No matter where you start on the political spectrum (extreme left, extreme right or somewhere in the middle), you find yourself driven to the other end of the scale and back again, on a roller coaster of emotion. For Malan, his beginning point is ´extreme left´. His end point, is, I suspect, ´disillusioned´.

I recommend this book as an extremely well written, witty, sad, mad book. If you want to understand Africa (insofar as anyone can ´understand´ Africa), this is the book to read.

But reader beware - it is a deeply disturbing, very graphic read!

¤

2) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. How does one explain the intricacies of Apartheid-era South Africa, from the political turmoil to the constant tribal warring? Primitive thought? Anger spurred by poverty and hunger? Ancient beliefs conflicting with modernity? Racism? There is no one simple answer, and this book does an incredible job of elucidating this. It is harrowing, horrific, and incredibly sad, but it is all real and should be read by all. The story of an incredibly violent and hopeless place told through the eyes of Rian Malan, a descendant of one of the first founders of Apartheid thought, as he retells his life story and searches his soul for an answer, travelling from white affluence to the slums, from America to the soul-crushing gold mines, from the base of a dwindling black political movement to the outermost reaches of the arid rural kwaZulu, meeting whites consumed by intense racial hate and those who tried to love so hard that it destroyed their lives, and telling their life stories along with his, to create an incredibly rich and horrifying mosaic.¤

3) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. When I read this book ten plus years ago it blew me away, both as political and narrative non-fiction, and as excellent writing. Malan´s voice and humanity perfectly tell an important story. The second reading was as good, if not better.¤

4) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. White liberal draft-dodger hard at work. He´s a good writer and the book´s a painful look into the heart of a white liberal. My admiration goes rather to those who fought to defend their country.... but it´s an insight into the tortured soul of a typical liberal wooftah. Why people put themselves thru all this inner torment I have no idea - have a beer and get over it, bloke! If you´d just done your time in the armed forces like pretty much every other south african had to do instead of taking the chicken run, you wouldn;t be going thru all this turmoil.¤

5) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. Before a recent visit to S. Africa, this book was recommended as an introduction to the political climate in S. Africa, especially after Apartheid. This very personal account told by Rian Malan, whose ancestors were directly responsible for the formation of the Apartheid society, traces his teenage rebellion against Apartheid, his career as a liberal newspaper reporter and his ultimate rejection of the violence that the new government has spawned. Be prepared for graphic descriptions of violence committed by both whites and blacks.

A good introduction to the complicated history of S. Africa and leaves the reader with questions regarding the future of that sad country.¤

6) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press.

A classic of literary nonfiction, My Traitor´s Heart has been acclaimed as a masterpiece by readers around the world. Rian Malan is an Afrikaner, scion of a centuries-old clan and relative of the architect of apartheid, who fled South Africa after coming face-to-face with the atrocities and terrors of an undeclared civil war between the races. This book is the searing account of his return after eight years of uneasy exile. Armed with new insight and clarity, Malan explores apartheid´s legacy of hatred and suffering, bearing witness to the extensive physical and emotional damage it has caused to generations of South Africans on both sides of the color line. Plumbing the darkest recesses of the white and black South African psyches, Malan ultimately finds his way toward the light of redemption and healing. My Traitor´s Heart is an astonishing book -- beautiful, horrifying, profound, and impossible to put down.

7) Paperback Book My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Grove Press. Like many white South Africans of his generation, Rian Malan fled his country to dodge the draft. He felt incredibly guilty for this act, but would have felt equally guilty for not doing it: "I ran because I wouldn´t carry a gun for apartheid, and because I wouldn´t carry a gun against it." Malan, the product of a well-known Afrikaner family, returned to South Africa and produced My Traitor´s Heart, which explores the literal and figurative brutalities of apartheid. Death is a constant presence on these pages, and the narrative is driven by Malan´s criminal reportage. This acclaimed book intends to illuminate South Africa´s poisonous race relations under apartheid, and few books do it this well.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 5-Dec-2008, 08021368429780802136848, 120-640-420-970-461-AXB-N8B-8

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