This is a well written mystery that unfolds page by page. It is enticing reading. I found it best to arrange my observations numerically.1) It is possible to live in an oppressive society and not come to terms with it. This is willful to differing degrees, depending on the information to which people were exposed. The whites living in apartheid, who benefited from the system, didn't want to acknowledge the horrors of the oppression upon which their position in society was built. Most simply didn't concern themselves with the affairs of the black population. And when exposed to injustice, they chose to look the other way. In this way, the system became self-reinforcing. If something went well for a black person or community, whites took credit that the government was providing them with benefits. If something went wrong for a black person or community, whites took it as justification for the apartheid system (they need it, deserve it, must have done something wrong, etc.).I think the same may be true in oppressive regimes that promote the illusion of openness. China is a good example. As long as you don't take any interest in religion, you might not know you do not have religious freedom. And, if you follow the normal course of life and join the party (maybe it's "not a big deal" to you) you are further insulated from the oppression of people who chose to oppose the system. 2) But, Brink has not give us a sterilized world. The same concept is at work on the black side of the fence. I appreciated the tension Du Toit experiences from BOTH sides, white who oppose his questioning of the 'system' and feel threatened by blacks, but also blacks who see all whites as enemies and cannot accept him. I have copied a quote about this identification tension into my quotes, as being white myself it is challenging to understand the hostility from the other side when you know you are also against the same injustice and for the same ideals. This quote really made me think about the cultural ramifications of relationships between the oppressed and the oppressors - even when individuals of the oppressing class are trying to intervene to make a change. When I get a chance to type it out, I will add this passage to my quotes.3) Our decisions shape our life, one step at a time. The author does a masterful job of showing how Ben du Toit's life slowly shifts center from his family to his advocacy and investigation on behalf of the black community. The preliminary passages also show how his life/ relationships were vulnerable to this exploitation long before the crises came along. While the author makes Du Toit's actions understandable to us, I certainly don't agree with all his choices. Nonetheless, i liked the way the reader experiences the tightening of the net by the government around Du Toit, and how options/ relationships/ privacy etc. are eliminated. I also appreciated the sense of disconnect, the wondering, is this really the truth? They are all after him? or has he been so traumatized by the government's censure of him that he is seeing monsters in his closet?3) The author successfully draws the reader into the fundamental choice: If you saw injustice would you stand up, even if it might cost you. And if you are willing to stand up and pay the price, is there a limit to your commitment? I can imagine the power of this novel would be utterly convicting to someone involved with apartheid, and a fearful thing for the government that censored the book. I also found myself uncomfortable with the question of how far would I be willing to go to stand up for the oppressed. Given, du Toit's relationships seem to lack the depth of my family connections, but one cannot merely excuse the question with a "my situation is different" evasion. 4) I had to return to this review a couple weeks after I first wrote it to add this point. I continue to ponder the idea that we are essentially alone in our journey through life. Brink develops this idea throughout the novel by showing how individual characters only reveal portions of their life and experience to each other. When individuals are together, their experience is shared and intertwined, yet each interprets this interaction through their own lens. When characters are apart they are cut off from a true shared experience. Brink also develops how life experience prior to meeting a character impacts their perceptions and actions. This is a powerful concept that I find myself returning to often. I also want to type in a quote from the book about this topic.In the end, while i enjoyed this read, was glad I read it, and recognize it will stick with me a long time, I could only give it four stars. The adultery itself wasn't the problem for me, it is accurate that these things happen. However, some of the passages are very sensual, very graphic. And some of the language unacceptable (...taking the Lord's name in vain, and swearing, specifically the F-bomb). These passages are sprinkled throughout and not overwhelming. I understand the writer's intention to maintain the novel's gritty feel via this language, but it detracted from the overall experience and would inhibit me when considering either recommending or re-reading it. This is a mature reading experience and I would not recommend this book for young people. Nonetheless, it is a valuable read and I would recommend it to adults, particularly those interested in the mystery genre, as well as the topics of ethics, fighting injustice, government or South Africa.
I was introduced to the dream and nightmare that was South Africa around the same time A Dry White Season was published: 1979. I was ten, a 5th grader in an isolated, rural western Washington town. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence, for A Dry White Season was a bestseller upon publication in the United States, but I recall our class watching a cartoon film of black African children, each drawn with tight black curls and toasted almond skin, holding hands and singing as they paraded through streets made of simple gray lines. The words they sang never left me: "We are marching to Pretoria. We are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria. We are marching to Pretoria Pretoria, Hooorah!" Of course, it would be years, decades, before the irony of those lyrics hit me. What that film was, why it was shown in our classroom, why we learned the lyrics to British military marching song (or a Boer independence marching song, or an American Civil War marching song-for all are claimed as the song's origins) are mysteries never to be solved. I can only assume my teacher hopped on the same bus as The Weavers, who sang the song for years without bothering to learn what it was about, and once they did, turned it into a protest song. But of course, it's easy to protest another country's political tyranny with folk songs from thousands of miles distant, when it isn't your life on the edge, when you don't risk family, job, property or your life to stand up and do the right thing. For Ben Du Toit, a white schoolteacher in Johannesburg, doing the right thing never occurred to him, until suddenly it became the reason for his existence. As this story unfolds in the late 1970s, apartheid is the accepted way of life. Blacks are segregated in township ghettos, a condition Afrikaners and other white South Africans treat with reactions ranging from mild concern to dogmatic approval. But nearly all are oblivious to the effect racial segregation, injustice and abuse has on the human beings who clean their homes, tend their gardens, and who are disappeared by the authorities for crimes real and, mostly, imagined. It isn't until Gordon, a janitor at Ben's school, pleads for his help in locating Gordon's missing son that Ben wakes up to the reality around him. Ben follows protocol, solicits an attorney, and restricts himself to the usual channels of inquiry. At least in the beginning. When Gordon is detained by the police, Ben is drawn into a much darker drama, beyond the borders of his reasonable, tidy life. This is a political story. Ben remains something of a cipher- a mild-mannered, oddly passive husband, father, teacher, who is motivated not so much by affection or concern for Gordon and his family, but by a blossoming sense of social justice. In that, this is not so much the story of a man, but of a nation of men. It is no surprise that A Dry White Season was banned in South Africa soon after its publication there, for it is a strident call to action by a white man to his fellow white citizens. It is an appeal to resist, defy, expose, even when fighting back seems futile agains the might of a wealthy, armed regime. It is the shedding of ignorance, innocence, passivity. It is a story of betrayals and loss, of courage. There are some awkward stylistic choices-insertions of Ben's diary that seem to want to lend more humanity and color to an otherwise monochromatic personality-but the prose is refined and confident and careful. I squirmed a few times at the drifting of Ben's narrative toward the White Savior, but I wonder how much of that is my own baggage and an armchair reflection of this history, nearly forty years later. I am so glad to have read this book, a classic indictment of apartheid that has not lost its power or relevance in a time when race dominates our national conversation and international imperatives.
Do You like book A Dry White Season (2006)?
Dit is een boek dat naar het eind toe steeds beter wordt, in het begin erg voorspelbaar en soms zelfs een beetje kinderlijk uitleggerig, maar daarna steeds spannender. De stijl is heel variërend met zelfs prachtige lyrische passages, naast de thriller-achtige beschrijvingen van het eigenlijke verhaal. Indrukwekkend zijn de beschrijving van het lijkhuis met de gedode zwarte demonstranten en de armoedigheid van Soweto. Er is een aantal memorabele personages, behalve de hoofdpersoon Ben, de journaliste Melanie en haar vader, de windenlatende filosoof, die heel rake dingen zegt tussen de scheten door. De grote zwarte taxichauffeur Stanley is jammer genoeg te karikaturaal om echt geloofwaardig te zijn. Het grote thema van het boek betreft de vraag wat je als eenling kan of moet doen wanneer je getuige bent van door de overheid begaan onrecht, in dit geval meervoudige marteling en moord.
—Stef Smulders
‘There are only two types of madness we should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.’A Dry White Season is a sad, depressing look at racial prejudices in apartheid South Africa through the story of a white man trying to bring justice to the memory of a black man. Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher whose life changes when he becomes involved with the family of the school caretaker Gordon Ngubene. Set around the Soweto Riots the book deals with the futile endeavours of an individual to overcome injustice by the state. This book was banned in South Africa. It was made into a film in 1989.The story itself is incredibly gripping. I read it in only a few sittings, but had to stop reading it on the train, instead waiting until I was home, because I was scared of my own emotional reaction.
—Catherine Oughtibridge
It is ironic that while reading this account of defying prejudice, I found myself prejudging the entire book based on the rather irrelevant and minor frame story at the beginning, and worked myself up into such a fit of disdain that I very nearly abandoned this brave and important work by André Brink.Brink risked his own reputation and safety to speak out about prejudice and injustice in South Africa in the late 1970s. A Dry White Season, once the frame story is dispensed with, tells of the battle waged by a singular man who goes against his own community, the teachings of his church, and even his country’s justice system in order to follow a path dictated by his own conscience. André Brink died recently, and is said to have been disillusioned by post-apartheid South Africa. There are two kinds of madness one should guard against. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.
—Fionnuala
