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

Intro; Praise for Rian Malan's my Traitor's Heart; Half Title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Book I; Book II; Book III;My Traitor's Heart is an astonishing work of reportage, at once beautiful, horrifying, and profound-a book unlike any other about South Africa. Rian Malan is an Afrikaner, scion of a centuries-old clan deeply involved in the creation of apartheid. As a young crime reporter, Malan covered the atrocities of an undeclared race war and ultimately fled the country, unhinged by what he had seen. Eight years later, he returns to confront his own demons, and those that are tearing his country apart. Written in the final years of apartheid's bloody collapse, My Traitor's Heart still resonates, offering a chilling-but ultimately redemptive-vision of the darkest recesses of the black and white South African psyches. An essay collection that offers “a fascinating glimpse of post-apartheid South Africa” from the bestselling author of My Traitor’s Heart ( The Sunday Times ). The Lion Sleeps Tonight is Rian Malan’s remarkable chronicle of South Africa’s halting steps and missteps, taken as blacks and whites try to build a new country. In the title story, Malan investigates the provenance of the world-famous song, recorded by Pete Seeger and REM among many others, which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda. He follows the trial of Winnie Mandela; he writes about the last Afrikaner, an old Boer woman who settled on the slopes of Mount Meru; he plunges into President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s; and finally he tells the story of the Alcock brothers (sons of Neil and Creina whose heartbreaking story was told in My Traitor’s Heart ), two white South Africans raised among the Zulu and fluent in their language and customs. The twenty-one essays collected here, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa; “a grimly realistic picture of a nation clinging desperately to hope” ( The Guardian ). Malan, former South African crime reporter, searches for the truth behind apartheid, and finds it not in the way blacks and whites live, but in the way they die at one another's hands