Customer Reviews

Granta 69: The Assassin (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing)

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As I read this issue travelling from LA to New York and back, I saw there was a secret thread that held most of the pieces in it together: Ghosts of one sort or another. Henk van Woerden's excellent "The Assassin" is about a man who had no sense of identity, and whose attempt to find one led to the assassination of South African premier Hendrik Verwoerd in September 1966. His Demetrios Tsafendas is a man without a country, without a religion, and without the human affiliations that seem to make life worth living.

Other pieces in this thread are Hanif Kureishi's arresting "Goodbye, Mother" about a son's inability to deal with his aging mother; Graham Swift's "Our Nicky's Heart," about a boy's death in a motorcycle accident and its strange aftermath; and especially Richard Williams's haunting "Gifted," about his search for jazz trumpeter Dupree Bolton, one of the best written pieces I have ever read on the subject of jazz. Also, I must add Kent Klich's sad "Born in Romania," about HIV-positive Romanian children whom he photographed, many of whom died before the article went to press.

I enjoyed Diana Athill's "Editing Vidia," a contribution in the emerging subgenre of why V.S. Naipaul is not likeable (adding to Paul Theroux's article last year in the NEW YORKER). The question I ask is, what does that have to do with Naipaul's work? Niceness is not a trait common to all great artists, so why belabor the point?

There are also short pieces by Paul Theroux and Keith Ridgway that struck me more as fillers for an otherwise excellent issue of this indispensable publication.

The Assassin is a facinating story. I never knew that the father of Apartheid was assassinated and that there was a single "father of Apartheid". The man wasn't even South African but Dutch! Then there is a story about the assassin, who I had never heard of either. A half-African, half-Greek man from Mozambique whose father attempted to raise him as his first born, Greek son, only to have the son racked by terrible mental illness. The son was not able to socialize with others and no country wanted to claim him. His family could not stand him. The irony and blind chance that led him to assassinate the Prime Minister is astounding. It came at a time when the laws were becoming stricter and more intolerant of the racial intermixing and the policies were in a direct conflict with our assassin, who was considered white in South Africa but was asking to become coloured. I was really absorbed in the story and hope to read more about it.
Other great stories and articles in this issue include a Hawaiian Hotel in which Paul Theroux learns observes some strange guests. An editor reveals what it is like to edit V.S. Napaul's books and the trouble with elderly mothers and addict jazz musicians. I enjoyed the whole issue.

This is an important book that anyone interested in South Africa must read. Goethe famously said that to really understand something, first you have to love it. I don't know if this is always true, but van Woerden's sympathetic reconstruction of Tsafendas' sad and, through one deed, monumental life is a compelling example of this methodology. Still, I have strong reservations about the rhetorical project of the book. Van Woerden rightly sets out to prove that Tsafendas was not merely insane, but that he was a kind of living reductio ad absurdum of apartheid racism. However, I think van Woerden pushes his point too hard when, especially toward the end, he suggests Tsafendas was a martyr / prophet / hero of the 'new South Africa.' This might have been true of David Pratt (another sad story), but there is little doubt in mind that Tsafendas was profoundly mentally ill. We should pity him. Making a hero out of him after the fact is troubling. Even at the time, one should remember, Mandela and the ANC condemned Tsafendas' act. I am inclined to defer to that opinion.