A Dry White Season

André Philippus Brink

Penguin, 1984 - Fiction - 316 pages

As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, Andre Brink's classic novel, "A Dry White Season," is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality. Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

Contents

• I: 7
• II: 35
• III: 77

About the author

André Brink was born on May 29, 1935 in Vrede, South Africa. He studied English and Afrikaans at the University in Potchefstroom and comparative literature in Paris. He was a South African writer and educator. He became a part of a group of writers known as Die Sestigers upon returning to South Africa in the 1960s. The group aimed to broaden Afrikaner fiction by writing about sexual and moral matters and the failings of the traditional political system. His books included Rumors of Rain, Looking on Darkness, A Dry White Season, and States of Emergency. Some of his books were banned in South Africa. He became a professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at Rhodes University and professor of English at the University of Cape Town. He has received the 1980 Martin Luther King Prize, the 1980 French Prix Medicis Etranger, and the 1982 Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice and nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature on several occasions. He died on February 6, 2015 at the age of 79.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Dry White Season; A Penguin Book: Fiction; Penguin books
• Author: André Philippus Brink
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 1984
• ISBN: 0140068902, 9780140068900
• Length: 316 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary; Literary Criticism / General