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A review by daytonm
My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience by Rian Malan
4.0
A powerful and difficult book, written shortly before the end of apartheid by a white South African who left the country for the US and then went back.
A mix of in-depth reporting and memoir, Malan's book shows a man who from a young age opposed his country's government and his fellow Boer's racism, but was also in many ways naive (his candid analysis of his younger self struck close to home). Later, as he reports on a range of political and apolitical (but always horrifically brutal) murders, people of all colors killing each other, Malan begins to doubt coexistence is possible. He believes the anti-apartheid cause is just but is anxious whether it can end in any way but slaughter, whether a white person can ever be home in Africa or whether it will always be us vs. them.
There is much I learned in this book (for example, I had not been familiar with the disturbing history of violence between rival anti-apartheid groups), and the book raises hugely important questions for white leftists/anti-racists. It doesn't answer many of these questions, and those answers he gives are not all correct or complete, but Malan writes movingly and in good faith, well worth grappling with.
A mix of in-depth reporting and memoir, Malan's book shows a man who from a young age opposed his country's government and his fellow Boer's racism, but was also in many ways naive (his candid analysis of his younger self struck close to home). Later, as he reports on a range of political and apolitical (but always horrifically brutal) murders, people of all colors killing each other, Malan begins to doubt coexistence is possible. He believes the anti-apartheid cause is just but is anxious whether it can end in any way but slaughter, whether a white person can ever be home in Africa or whether it will always be us vs. them.
There is much I learned in this book (for example, I had not been familiar with the disturbing history of violence between rival anti-apartheid groups), and the book raises hugely important questions for white leftists/anti-racists. It doesn't answer many of these questions, and those answers he gives are not all correct or complete, but Malan writes movingly and in good faith, well worth grappling with.