The reader senses that Du Toit cannot relate deeply to any black, and his emotional breakthrough comes with his love for a young, white, liberal journalist - something of a scandal in Afrikaner society. In fact, the personal relationships in the book are largely one-dimensional. But he is driven by a sense of justice - a common motive for many white South Africans' opposition apartheid - rather than by any deep human relationship. When a black cleaning man in Du Toit's school is killed in the hands of the security police, Du Toit is slowly sucked into opposition to the system. By its very plainness it could lead some believers in apartheid to ask questions.īrink's protagonists, Ben Du Toit, is a typical Afrikaner - a middle-aged, married schoolteacher and father of three who accepts the apartheid system, who has never entertained a black in his home, who has never set foot in a black city such as Soweto.

But before the banning, which was lifted recently, Brink managed privately to print 3,000 copies and to distribute them in the Afrikaner 'underground.'įew novels will speak to the Afrikaner - or to foreigners who want to understand the Afrikaner - as well as this one. 'A Dry White Season' was banned by the South African government, which fears Brink's type of 'subversion' even more than that of white novelists such as Nadine Gordimer. Andre Brink's latest novel about his own people, the ruling Afrikaners of South Africa, preaches opposition to apartheid in the unadorned fatalistic style that Afrikaners believe is frank and honest.

Andre brink a dry white season