Comments on: Novel explores passing in South Africa

By: jlnli

jlnli — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:19:36 +0000

Re this: many Afrikaners are mixed race. Even Verwoerd [the founder of apartheid] had a wife who looked African.”

I don’t know how true it is (although the book seemed massively well-researched), but in Hermann Giliomee’s “The Afrikaners: Biography of a People” he says that essentially *all* of the major Afrikaner families are from a mixed background from the early colonial days.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:49:26 +0000

Bringing racial passing closer to home is novel ‘That Caucafrican Distraction’
A humorous narrative about an opportunistic goldigger, he’s struggling to cover
his tracks; keep the lid on!

By: mtevc

mtevc — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 13:58:53 +0000

disgrace is one of my favorite books ever…on many levels…it is so well written…the way he talks about race and never mentions color (of course, you need to know the backdrop and situation in modern day S.A.)…but more importantly, the way he is able to get us inside the head of the lead character…the narrator is so pitiful and so unrepentant at the beginning…and then…

By: Charlette

Charlette — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:39:52 +0000

thanks for the news.

By: gatamala

gatamala — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:47:59 +0000

mtevc
Coetzee is on my list, but I’ll bump him up. Thanks for the recommendation.

By: mtevc

mtevc — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:30:38 +0000

have to pick this up…if anyone is interested in more S.A. fiction, check out J.M. Coetzee’s book Disgrace…as this is one of the best written books ever, and if you are familiar with South Africa, he does such a wonderful job of describing things and the problems and the interactions that occur (because of the race issue and the race of the characters) but I don’t think he ever mentions this one is black and this one is white…he makes it clear by the status…wonderful book…