Chain of Voices [Kindle Edition]

Andre Brink (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

On a farm near the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century, a slave rebellion kills three and leaves eleven others condemned to death. The rebellion’s leader, Galant, was raised alongside the boys who would become his masters. His first victim, Nicholas van der Merwe, might have been his brother.

As the many layers of Andre Brink’s novel unfold, it becomes clear that the violent uprising is as much a culmination of family tensions as it is an outcry against the oppression of slavery.

Spanning three generations and narrated in the voices of both the living and the dead, A Chain of Voices is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!; it is a beautiful and haunting illustration of racism’s plague on South Africa.

From the Back Cover

Cruelty and passion are evoked in this luminous story of a slave rebellion set in a remote part of South Africa in 1825. At its heart is the confrontation between two men: one white, the other black; one master, the other a slave; two brothers joined as friends and torn asunder as adults in their tragic struggle for freedom. Based on the actual slave revolt and published simultaneously in Afrikaans and English, A Chain of Voices spans three generations of the living and the dead.

“The story…will inevitably evoke comparisons with William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, a work to which it is substantially superior in insight and artistry.”
-Julian Moynahan, New York Times Book Review

“A Chain of Voices is the truest and most provocative study of existential rebellion since the publication in 1951 of Camus’s seminal work, The Rebel. Like Camus, Brink reminds us that no matter the human condition, there remains within an indomitable spark bursting to be free, a spirit which may in the end be able to abide physical slavery but never mental imprisonment.”
-News and Observer–Raleigh

“Brink is a good storyteller, adept at the selection and building of detail and the pacing of a momentum which sweeps the reader to its climax.”
-Sunday Tribune

“A Chain of Voices is a broadside of a book…It has much to say about the universality of oppression and the equally ubiquitous striving for freedom.”
-Worldview

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 696 KB
• Publisher: Cumberland House (January 10, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001POX6YW
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,118 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The twisted dynamics of slavery, April 30, 2000

By 

Carlos R. Lugo-Ortiz - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Chain of Voices (Paperback)

Andre Brink is one of the leading lights of white South African literature, a writer with a strong commitment towards social justice in a country whose black majority until recently could not have a say in its daily life. His celebrated 'A dry white season' stands as a monument of indictment of the 'apartheid' regime by exploring its consequences in the social dynamics and psychology of a white South African schoolteacher who takes upon himself to find out the whereabouts of his gardener's son and, then, the gardener himself. Anybody interested in 'apartheid' South Africa and in Brink's ouvre of moral commitment should read that novel; it would definitely be an excellent introduction to both.

With 'A chain of voices', Brink explores the dynamics of another oppresive regime: slavery. It is evident, however, that what Brink does in this novel is to go back to the institution of slavery to explore 'apartheid' in a similar way to 'A dry white season'. And what he finds, again, is ugly. At many levels, Brink tells us that any oppresive regime corrupts all human relationships, and that it can even transform--in a Frankenstein-like fashion--victims into victimizers. Not only is white pitted against black, but also wife against husband, father against children, brother against brother, and friend against friend. Brink brilliantly accomplishes this feat by giving voice to those that are senselessly involved in the oppresive dynamics of slavery, in a true 'chain of voices'.

The novel is set in the early 1800s in the Western Cape, in the beautiful area around Tulbagh and Worcester. From the very beginning, we know that three white men (two masters and one schoolteacher) have been killed by a group of slaves in a small-scale rebellion. What the novel does so well is to go back through the forces that led to that ending. In the process, one finds that the oppressor oftentimes is not aware of his oppression, that he is not enterely evil in the naive way that he is almost always portrayed, and that, incredible as it might seem, there is human side to him. On the other hand, one also finds that those that are oppressed are forced to commit acts of cruelty, even against those they supposedly love, in an effort to assert some power. In the end, however, everybody, but particularly the male characters, is a victim and a victimizer.

Even though I enjoyed the novel, with its deep psychological analysis of the characters involved, I found that the language seems too modern and sometimes too sophisticated for the 1800s setting. Also, there is some repetitiveness, particularly in the sexual domination of women. Despite this, I thoroughly recommend this novel to anyone interested in Brink's novels and the psychological consequences of oppressive regimes.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Chain of Voices - Andre Brink, January 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Chain of Voices (Paperback)

I read this novel in the eighties, when the power of the white minority regime in South Africa was still at its height. From the perspective of a liberal outsider there seemed to be nothing that could be said in favour of these people - they were stuck somewhere in the Dark Ages where the rest of the world could not reach them. A Chain of Voices put a somewhat more complex slant on the whole issue, but because Brink is a liberal as well as an Afrikaaner, refused to give an inch where apartheid was concerned. He doesn't stereotype people as villains or victims, but nor does he make excuses for them. He examines the evil of the system from the comparative safety of the distant past - the novel is set sometime in the nineteenth century and is based on a slave rebellion in which a slave owner had been murdered. Each chapter is taken from the perspective of a different character, slaves and masters, and Brink never fails to draw the sympathy of the reader to whichever character is being explored at any one time. Reading this book taught me that no matter how brutalised someone is, no matter how unpleasant they seem, they still have the capacity for finer feelings. They can still fall in love, they never lose the capacity to be hurt by those closest to them. You may find that this leaves you with even fewer excuses for their behaviour than ever, but what it certainly does is to bring their experience closer to our own. Modern-day evils such as racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry are no longer out there being practiced by people who are not like us. They are much closer to home and we share a responsibility for them and for eradicating them. The strong moral ethos of the book aside, it is also a gripping read - all 500+ pages of it, there is much lush description of the South African landscape and there is a beautiful many-layered love story that doesn't have a cliche in it. It made me cry. Enjoy!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars overlooked masterpiece, December 23, 2003

By 

Gaunilon - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Chain of Voices (Paperback)

Andre Brink is well known in South Africa and less so in the US. He writes in English, and that is a serious understatement. He deals with that country's central problem, apartheid and its aftermath, which is a subject that most American's recognize as part of our on heritage as well though not so gravely. The role of women also holds his attention as well. But this is a literary work, not ideological, and it has tremendous merits. Its structure and plot are refreshingly counterintuitive but not hard to grasp or distracting. Its language is rich but not self-conscious, calling to mind recent works such as Cold Mountain or maybe Faulkner at times. But the work offers an exotic and important opportunity for readers outside South Africa.