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Summary: To appreciate the roots of racism, read this book.
Review: MY TRAITOR'S HEART jeopardizes numerous comfortable prejudices surrounding not only South Africa's specific and now defunct form of institutionalized racism, apartheid, but also the nature and history of racist thinking itself. It is hard to imagine a more trustworthy writer than Malan, a brutally honest witness, a blunt and necessary critic, an author whose story grips the reader more surely than any pulp fiction offering, but who manages--against considerable odds--never to exploit his topic for cheap readability. Malan spends most of the book confronting us with images of brutality that manifest the worst elements of human nature, challenging us to look in a mirror that returns an unflattering, even loathsome, portrait; but then, in the final section, he offers us Creina Alcock, a woman who refuses--despite horrific provocation--to give in to the hatred and violence that consumes her country, and who thereby exemplifies what is best in the human character. This book will change your life
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Summary: An ache.
Review: Oh, I'm not going to get intellectual about this book, for me it's impact has always been wrenching and emotional. And it's been deeply personal, with resonances. Rian grew up blocks away from me, I was a crime reporter in Johannesburg (although some years after Malan), a fire-brand leftist in my day. So this feels like my story, and I'm sure many white men of my generation feel the same. To this day this is the first book I give to friends or lovers, in the hope they'll understand something unexplainable about me and my twisted history. And they always do. Along with Coetzee's 'Disgrace', this book has been a constant companion, keeping me close to a certain truth. There are few better books about the bitter complexities of the land we all love with desperation and heartbreak. A book that changes you. And the greatest compliment - the book I wished I'd written. Kudos, kudos, kudos. Read it.
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Summary: Changed my life... and I'm not kidding
Review: One of the best personal accounts of the South African experience I've ever read. A must read and re-read for those who want a deeper knowledge and understanding of life in South Afica
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Summary: A Great Philosophy of Life
Review: Rian Malan has created a masterpiece - it cannot be stated otherwise. This book captures one's heart from the very beginning and it continues to do so throughout the book. Rian Malan's illustration of the horrible acts during Apartheid must strike even the toughest soul, and the reader is left with a feeling of: 'how could this happen. How could the international community merely stand still and watch?' The feeling, the atmosphere - the entire appeal to every kind of dignity in the human capacity is sought throughout My Traitors Heart. If one wants to acquire knowledge of South Africa during the Apartheid regime, or merely read a masterpiece that will capture your emotions: read Rian Malan's 'My Traitors Heart'.
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Summary: Finally, an Honest Writer!
Review: Rian Malan is one of the few writers that can create a truly round perspective of a character and culture. "My Traitor's Heart" spares no ethnic group nor no individual in South Africa (even himself) an honest look in the mirror. Any person trying to understand South Africa or the state of race relations in any country must read this book! Though the book educates you, it is written in a casual style that makes for an easy read. Get an honest perspective of South Africa - READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Finally, an Honest Writer!
Review: Rian Malan is one of the few writers that can create a truly round perspective of a character and culture. "My Traitor's Heart" spares no ethnic group nor no individual in South Africa (even himself) an honest look in the mirror. Any person trying to understand South Africa or the state of race relations in any country must read this book! Though the book educates you, it is written in a casual style that makes for an easy read. Get an honest perspective of South Africa - READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: An agonizing but truthful look at racism and its consequence
Review: Rian Malan's book drives to the point the horrific but truthful events which shape the beautiful country called South Africa. I have been very interested of this place because I grow up in an era where people shunned talking and explaining to me why such atrocities happened . The book clears out the cobwebs which had dimmed my mind regarding the issues between black and white. Thank you Rian for having the courage to define the grey aspect of this thing called racism. People who have read this book will never in the dark again about the beautiful country called Afrique du Sud... I expect more books 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: a stunning piece of literature
Review: The previous 17 reviewers have given this book 5 stars, and I really have nothing more to add that hasn't been said already, but please permit me this personal indulgence. I am a (white) American with a longstanding interest in Africa. I had always meant to read this book. I even knew of Malan's record reviewing under the name Nelson Mandela. While vacationing in Southern Africa a few years ago with my (black) African wife, I ran out of reading material so I picked up "My Traitor's Heart" while browsing in a bookstore in Cape Town. A couple days later after a day of sightseeing, we returned to our hotel room and I lay down on the bed and began reading the book. It was an eery feeling to realize that, unknowingly, earlier that day we had visited the very farm where the transgressive act had taken place that sets the whole Malan family saga into motion. The book became a kind of companion for the rest of our stay in South Africa. Much of the literature produced during the apartheid period now seems dated. This book does not. People will still be reading it years from now.
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