Other Lives [Hardcover]

Andre Brink (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2008

In just one morning, he forgot who he was...

Three provocative and interconnected stories from one of the world's greatest living writers:

A white painter in Africa comes to his studio in the afternoon. On his doorstep, he sees a woman with curly hair and a dark complexion. He has never seen her before, but she embraces him. As he steps past her, two strange children rush to his feet yelling "Daddy!" This family welcomes him home, but he knows none of them.

On the other side of Cape Town, a white man pulls himself out of bed and toward his mirror, where he is confronted by his suddenly black face.

A concert pianist falls passionately in love with the celebrated singer he works beside, but cannot bring himself to touch her, until one night they sit down to eat dinner, and look up to see themselves surrounded by armed men.

In this new novel, Andre Brink is at his best, exploring the fractured yet globalized world where we find ourselves and our lives transformed.

PRAISE FOR ANDRE BRINK

"South African novelist Brink is a master stylist."
Publishers Weekly

"Brink describes calamities and absurdities of the apartheid system with a cold lucidity that in no way interferes with high emotion and daring flights of the imagination."
Mario Vargas Llosa, New York Times Book Review

"One of the most important and prolific voices from South Africa."
Library Journal

"If you want to get the feeling of South Africa, as strongly as Camus gives you the feeling of Algiers, you will turn to André Brink."
Tribune

"Brink writes feelingly of South Africa—the land, the black, the white, the terrible beauty and tragedy that lies therein."
Publishers Weekly

"Brink is a hard-eyed storyteller."
Philadelphia Inquirer

(20080801)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brink's latest novel—essentially a collection of three novellas—is a vividly imagined if claustrophobic chronicle of the lives of three subtly connected men living in contemporary South Africa. The first story is the dreamlike tale of a white painter named David le Roux who one day returns to his studio and finds a black woman named Sarah and her two children waiting for him. He quickly surmises that the woman believes he is her husband and the father of the children, but he has never seen any of them before. The second story revolves around a white architect (and acquaintance of David) named Steve, who looks into the mirror one day and discovers he is black. The third story is that of Derek Hugo, a celebrated pianist infatuated with singer Nina Rousseau. Despite years of womanizing (including an affair with Steve's wife), Derek cannot bring himself to touch Nina, and the night he finally makes his move, their date is violently interrupted. An enervating awkwardness suffuses the pieces, though the conceit is a little too thin to carry a whole book. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

White architect David looks in the bathroom mirror one morning in Cape Town and discovers he is black. Unsettling as this revelation is, David, always the opportunist, sees that his new skin color could be an advantage in the new South Africa. Afrikaner artist Steve cannot get home to his sweet wife, but he finds he has a beautiful Xhosa wife and two lovely kids. Is this a guilty throwback to a mixed-race woman he once deserted? Then there’s frustrated white musician Derek, forced to work as an accompanist and teacher, who has sex with a gorgeous pianist and, nearly, with David’s wife. The three stories come together in a violent restaurant holdup, as eminent South African writer Brink fuses the racist past with contemporary upheaval, evoking Magritte-type scenarios of dreams, wishes, and unrealizable desires. Rooted in the post-apartheid reality, the haunting connections raise elemental issues, disquieting and passionate. Do we always want to get home? --Hazel Rochman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (September 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402213913
• ISBN-13: 978-1402213915
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,055,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In a word, unsatisfactory, August 12, 2009

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Other Lives (Hardcover)

A year or so ago I learned for the first time about the South African novelist Andre Brink, who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and is most noted for writing about race and race relations. I then bought his most recent work of fiction, OTHER LIVES. Brink bills it as "a novel in three parts." It might also be described as three novellas that are interrelated by overlapping characters and events. I read the book a week ago at the beginning of a summer vacation trip and have been reflecting on it since. It certainly is arresting and it may even prove to be memorable in a perverse way, but, having now reflected on it for a week, I conclude it also is unsatisfactory.

All three novellas are set in contemporary Cape Town, and all three are narrated in the first person by relatively successful, artistic, middle-aged men. In the first, David, who is white and has been happily married for nine years to a white woman, suddenly discovers that he has entered an alternative universe in which he is married to a dark woman and has two dark children. In the second, Steve looks in the mirror one morning and sees that his skin color, formerly white, is now black, and he spends the rest of the day wondering whether and how that will affect his interactions with business associates and his (white) au pair, children, and wife. In the third, Derek, a concert pianist and Lothario, pursues Nina, a soprano and femme fatale (in both senses).

As can be gleaned from the above summary, OTHER LIVES is predicated on several radical breaks with reality, and with realism. Thus, the three novellas are also three fables. While the conceits permit Brink to raise and explore intriguing issues of race and personal identity, so far as I can tell (even after a week's consideration), he does not suggest any answers, leaving me feeling dissatisfied and manipulated. Moreover, none of the characters is particularly likeable. The three male narrators, as well as their various women, all are too hip, too materialistic, too smug, and too career-oriented. For those who care, there is plenty of sex, much of which is animalistic, at times savage, in nature. Finally, the writing is not distinguished. Strange to say about a book from a 70+-year-old Nobel Prize contender, OTHER LIVES strikes me as somewhat sophomoric, debased, and shallow.