My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience [Paperback]

Rian Malan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2000

A classic of literary nonfiction, My Traitor's Heart has been acclaimed as a masterpiece by readers around the world. Rian Malan is an Afrikaner, scion of a centuries-old clan and relative of the architect of apartheid, who fled South Africa after coming face-to-face with the atrocities and terrors of an undeclared civil war between the races. This book is the searing account of his return after eight years of uneasy exile. Armed with new insight and clarity, Malan explores apartheid's legacy of hatred and suffering, bearing witness to the extensive physical and emotional damage it has caused to generations of South Africans on both sides of the color line. Plumbing the darkest recesses of the white and black South African psyches, Malan ultimately finds his way toward the light of redemption and healing. My Traitor's Heart is an astonishing book -- beautiful, horrifying, profound, and impossible to put down.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like many white South Africans of his generation, Rian Malan fled his country to dodge the draft. He felt incredibly guilty for this act, but would have felt equally guilty for not doing it: "I ran because I wouldn't carry a gun for apartheid, and because I wouldn't carry a gun against it." Malan, the product of a well-known Afrikaner family, returned to South Africa and produced My Traitor's Heart, which explores the literal and figurative brutalities of apartheid. Death is a constant presence on these pages, and the narrative is driven by Malan's criminal reportage. This acclaimed book intends to illuminate South Africa's poisonous race relations under apartheid, and few books do it this well. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This soul-searching account of an Afrikaner's life in apartheid South Africa joins a growing body of publications by South Africans of every ethnic group. Malan, the grand nephew of a major definer of the doctrine of apartheid, Daniel Malan, left South Africa in 1977, in part to avoid military service, and returned eight years later. This book reports his observations of violent death in the land. He details instances of whites killing blacks, blacks killing blacks, blacks killing whites, politically motivated murder, and economically motivated murder. Well written, gripping, and disturbing, the descriptions leave one with a sense of despair which makes Malan's final note of hope all the more remarkable. Recommended for adult general readers as well as those with a special interest in South Africa.
- Maidel Cason, Univ. of Delaware Lib., Newark
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (March 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802136842
• ISBN-13: 978-0802136848
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #211,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > History > Africa > South Africa

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, February 28, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience (Hardcover)

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?

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent, brooding work, December 23, 2004

By 

SkatertnyP (Poland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience (Paperback)

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.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding!, February 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: My Traitor's Heart (Paperback)

I am an avid reader,having read several books about South Africa. Being an African American I was very curious as to what this author had to say, and figured that I would end up being totally turned off, thus having wasted my time and money ordering it. Was I wrong! My Traitor' Heart was well worth the money and definitely the time. This book casts a broad beacon of light on the very dark history of South African's Apartheid and the evils it wrought on both blacks and the whites who were sympathetic to the struggle. "My Traitor's Heart" was the most heart rending book, but because it gives the reader such fantastic factual information, you can't put it down. I certainly hope Mr. Malan is not through sharing his insights, knowledge and experiences in his native country. I hope his next book comes out soon. Rian Malan I respect and admire you. Excellent!