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Summary: A journalistic examination of mans ties with aparthied
Review: I found My Traitor's Heart beautifully written. His strong sense of structure of his 3 books within a single book, explaining his and his families life with apartheid. Malan's journalistic skills are evident in his narrative through his detailed examination of events, especially in Book Two when many murders take place. Although Malan's intent on writing this novel may or may not be justified as some view him as a complete "liar", My Traitor's Heart still captivates the struggles between white and blacks during and after apartheid with precision.
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Summary: Dare I say it? A masterpiece...
Review: It seems that everyone has an opinion about Africa and all those opinions exist somewhere on a single sliding scale. At one end is the idea that all of that continent's problems are the result of some kind of post-colonial hangover and that if it hadn't been for the Europeans, Africa would be a wealthy, progressive Utopia. On the other extreme, is the opinion that the African culture has evolved in such a way as to virtually preclude `successful' statehood. Critics of this book tend to dislike it based on their position on that scale relative to the author's (somewhere in the middle, by the way.) Also, they sometimes use dubious facts and theories to back up their positions (e.g. Malan does indeed discuss the Afrikaner disinformation campaign designed to turn tribes/political movements against each other, and trying to determine what ethnic groups have `first settler' rights to a given piece of dirt is virtually impossible.)But all this is completely irrelevant. As is clearly stated in the extended title, this is the story of one man's journey though his own past and conscience. On this level, it is a triumph. It is the only book I have ever read that doesn't seem to include a single divisive word. Whether you agree with Malan's observations or not, I think it is clear that he agonized over and believed deeply in every one. Additionally, the book is beautifully written on almost every level: smooth, engaging prose, balanced structure, and unfailing pace. It is almost impossible for the reader not be affected in one way or another. It has been asked whether this book is still relevant in light of the fall of Apartheid and the progression of S.A. in the years since its publication. Certainly, as a wonderfully crafted look into one individual's soul and his struggle to find his place in the world, it is. But has it become outdated politically, as has been suggested? I wonder. At the writing of this review, Zimbabwe is trying hard to destroy itself in a misguided effort to deal with its colonial past. Unfortunately, My Traitor's Heart may have some life in it yet...
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Summary: A terrible, necessary gift to the world
Review: My book club chose this title for our most recent discussion....All caucasian women, middle-class or thereabouts, Canadian by birth. All quite whacked into silence and deep reflection by this book. Rian Malan has bared his own heart, his own mind, his own racist ancestry and his horrific awakenings to the demonic power of apartheid. He spares us nothing in the stories he shares and I wonder how he could keep himself sane and loving as he uncovered, witnessed and experienced an evil that is almost beyond description. He asks at the book's opening, "How do I live in this strange land?" -- He doesn't have an answer to the basic question of why we humans act with such hatred to one another, but his monumental courage in laying bare the poisons of racial cruelty is a horrible and necessary medicine for all of us. This book has jarred me permanently; I am grateful for its power. I hope that Rian writes again -- this first book was originally published in 1990; I would love to read his impressions of the last decade as South Africans struggle to release themselves from the noose of apartheid. Thank you, Rian.
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Summary: A review of My Traitors Heart
Review: The Exposé of Guilt and Remorse
By: Bill Ross A work of art has been presented through narrative prose; a book of tragedy experienced, intense in emotional anguish and descriptive illustration. Rian Malan shares his personal turmoil of living in South Africa before, during, and post Apartheid regime. In his book, My Traitors Heart, personal experiences are combined with invaluable witnessing reportage of an often misunderstood cultural realm. He is an expositional writer who braves to defy his publisher’s commission to write about a South Africa as it would typically be told and ventures into uncharted territory by narrating events through a graphical, personally emotional platform. Malan narrates personal and practical reportage of events that unfold throughout three books within one. He combines a multitude of memoirs and documented sources so descriptive that they enjoin the reader to vicariously experience the atrocities of Apartheid through articulately expressed prose. The paramount title of his book acts as a narrative to illustrate his remorse for betraying his family and his country and its artistic narrative shape is sculpted from personal need to confess the guilt and shame of his entrapment between two distinctly divided societies, and his cowardly denial of participating in destroying the foundation of Apartheid. The substance of Malan’s narratives in his book is supported by three meaningful subtitles and carefully selected epigraphs that add shape to the artistic content of its graphic illustrations. As an example, the title in Book Two: “Tales of Ordinary Murder” describes the normalization and acceptance that murder in South Africa is of the daily norm and not an extraordinary event; while an epigraph that describes “soil soaked in blood”(107) metaphorically illustrates the atmosphere of racial tension within South Africa.
Malan’s abandonment of his country and people compels him to feel remorse and desire to fix the wrongs of Apartheid but he does not grace the cause with any measurable effort. His only contribution to the “native solution” is to provide the reader with considerations of his experiences through his narratives, enlightening those that are ignorant to his cause. Malan wants to be part of the solution to bring peace to his homeland but can only seek remedy through the challenge of captivating the hearts and forgiveness of his audience through his narrative proposal. He exemplifies the difficulty of living in such an oppressive atmosphere by stating: “It might be hard for you to understand this, being an outsider, but South Africa holds the souls of its sons and daughters in an almost inescapable grasp”(102).
Malan furthers his ambition to disassemble the paradox of his South African life by returning to South Africa to report the atrocities that he and other sons and daughters of South Africa were witness to. Malan concludes Book I by quantifying his risk and courageous effort returning to South Africa by utilizing Hemingway’s quote: “To live in Africa, you must know what it is to die in Africa”(103). This narrative example clearly defines that living in South Africa literally means to die within its grasp either emotionally or by physical sacrifice. Malan’s purpose for returning to his homeland to report his experiences is clearly an attempt to find his loss of self, seek clarity of his ambiguous position, and challenge his oppressive fear of black people in South Africa. Readers are able to clearly visualize the people, environment, and continued conflict of the people of South Africa through Malan’s artistic shaping of the “news” and readers are presented with a non fictional narration that would be difficult to duplicate. His stories are plausible and too articulate in narrative to have been made from fictional substance. Overall, Malan shares a new perspective of narrative unmatched, and his book is an intense portrait of a very important historical period of his family’s ancestry and the heritage of a black South Africa.
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Summary: finding a new understanding
Review: The lengthy story into Rian Malans exile and his return gives the reader a clear sense into what type of person Rian Malan really is. Seen as a draft dodger by many, and as a person so disgusted by the practice of apartheid in South Africa, he simply decides to leave. However, during his "adventure" into the best of the worst parts of South Africa. Malan makes his stance very clear within the first part of the book; apartheid is the worst possible thing to happen in that could have ever happened in South Africa. Malan takes the stand against white South Africa throughout the entirety of the book. White man caused the Black suffering and through the examples Malan gives, the reader has no problem understanding his argument.
My Traitor's Heart is divided into three "books" which are vital to the understanding of Malan's experience. The second book, which is most easily understood with the simple epigraph at the beginning of the chapter "I kept thinking the land smell was queer. It was the smell of blood, as though the soil was soaked with blood" this setting the stage for one of the most explicit depictions of violence I’ve ever read. These occurrences are truly "tales of ordinary murder" as Rian Malan compels the reader to believe. My Traitor’s Heart is definitely not for the faint of heart, however, is an extremely heart moving story into the atrocities in South Africa prior to the abolishment of apartheid in 1994.
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Summary: This is not a book about South Africa
Review: The previous review to the contrary, this book will always be relevant as long as human beings judge other humans based on race. I just finished reading it and, as an American living in the Middle East, I faced innumerable home truths about myself and my own racist biases during the two days I was glued to it. It is a painful read, in terms of the atrocities it depicts and the questions it asks. However, it is an essential read, though I wonder if anyone who has not lived long-term outside their own culture can truly appreciate it. It's easy to be a white liberal at home, wrapped in one's own smug assurance and safe within the majority. (And I'm speaking of myself here). Surrounded by 20 million Arabs, Malan's own journeys into Soweto strike far too close to one's heart. On only the most superficial level is this a book about South African Apartheid. It is also about Israelis and Palestinians, Hindus and Muslims, Northern Irish and the English, the US and its every victim.
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Summary: enlightening rambling
Review: The purpose of this book was very educational and interesting but the structure was confusing which resulted in my loss of attention. The brevity of the individual narratives gives no closure. I was left hanging with the middle facts without a beginning or ending to complete each narrative, then thrust into the next narrative without time to digest the previous one.
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Summary: A Disappointing Read
Review: There are many debates as to the process of somehow defining what makes 'good' literature. One argument suggests that good literature can be recognised in terms of whether it remains worthwhile reading a hundred years after it was first written. Admittedly by my own personal reckoning, Rian Malan's A Traitor's Heart has failed this test a mere thirteen years down the line. I will grant that in 1990 it would probably have made interesting and challenging reading for some people. However, the value that Malan's investigation into apartheid atrocities held a decade ago has waned in a South Africa that has been deluged with thousands of such images via the mechanisms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Furthermore, Malan's Afrikaner angst is no longer fashionable or useful and such self-indulgent reflections as his own contribute little towards an imagining of 'the new South Africa'. Just because a book does not tie in to the government's project of nation building is no reason to dismiss it. One thing which the book did achieve was to remind me of the way in which the ANC government has sold out on its socialist beliefs since its ascension to power. However, overall Malan's book is not well-constructed enough to deserve the attention of readers for much longer.
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Summary: Magnificent, brooding work
Review: This book came out when I was working in South Africa. It explores in an uncompromising way two rival phenomena: the hopes of 'white liberalism' and some harsh realities of South Africa's 'African-ness' which many urban liberals at that point seemed to pretend either were not there or were somehow only a function of apartheid.
The passages on Creina Alcock, a 'white' South African who stepped far away from her background to live as a Zulu are are especially poignant, even stunning. I visited Creina in her remote hut on the strength of this book and was astonished by her courage and wisdom. Rian captures this extraordinary story in a moving if (for the average reader?) pessimistic way
This book has universalist insights for anyone interested in whether Civilisations really do Clash. Rian Malan was on to something very profound in this book. It is vivid and appalling in places, and not always easy reading. So what? These issues are as difficult as anything we face. Read it, lots of times.
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Summary: Disturbing
Review: This book is an investigation into the attitudes of a liberal who was raised in South Africa. In the book, Malan tells us that his original charge was to write the history of his racist ancestors, who were among the first Boer settlers in the region. But when Malan began his project, he found he needed to first explore and develop his own perspective on race in South Africa before he could begin. And once he began doing this, he never really got around to the history project. The book is divided into 3 sections. In the first, Malan describes his own childhood and adolescence, leading up to his forced flight from South Africa, with a major focus on his youthful love for Blacks (especially in the abstract). The second part of the book details a number of violent murders that Malan investigated upon his return to South Africa in 1986 to write this book. In this section, Malan describes the intense violence that was occurring in South Africa at the time, and how all Whites, even doctors providing humanitarian services in the townships, became targets for Black rage. He also explores violence between rival Black political groups. In the closing section, Malan visits a White woman named Creina Alcock, who lived on the border of Msanga, a tribal homeland, where she and her husband had struggled to build a sustainable rural development project with the local Blacks. The woman was widowed after her husband was killed while trying to negotiate peace talks during a tribal disturbance in Msanga. The book doesn't have a strong narrative thread- -instead it seems that Malan was trying to communicate some of his own confusion and ambivalence about racial questions by presenting so many stories and sides of the picture, and flipping rapidly from one to the next. The loose organization is effective to some degree; the reader slowly comes to understand the enormity and complexity of South Africa's problems. Yes, many Whites provoked anger from Blacks by their abominable behavior and laws. Blacks in turn responded with violence that was so overwhelming that even those Whites who tried as hard as they could to do the right thing were in mortal danger. And the worst and most senseless violence seemed to occur in Black communities that had no White involvement at all. The entire society was so focused on violence that as one White living on a farm in a rural area told Malan "The guy with the bigger stick wins." In closing with Creina Alcock's story, Malan tries to leave us with a little hope. He argues that Alcock's and her late husband's love for their community has made a marginal difference in the social structure, despite the ongoing attacks on them and thefts of their property by children they had adopted and raised as their own, and even the murder of Alcock's husband. With the infinitesimally small improvements that the Alcocks managed to make in their community by giving their entire lives over to the project, how many millions more Alcocks would it take to turn such a country around, and where might they come from?
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