Narrative
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist
Breyten Breytenbach · 1984
Synopsis
An Afrikaner poet who has secretly returned to his country on a false passport is arrested, tried and imprisoned. The narrative goes back over his years of detention, their physical and moral privations, and mixes in a reflection on the country's future. It takes the form of a confession addressed to a shifting figure, called in turn Mister Interrogator, Mister Confessor or Mister Eye, who is at once the one who questions and the reader, so that the relationship between the interrogated man and his jailer is replayed in the writing itself.
Context
The book came out of a need to speak and to tell that its afterword describes, after the author's release. It appeared in 1984 in London from Faber and Faber, and the same year from Stock in the French translation by Jean Guiloineau. The most direct condemnations of the violence of apartheid are not in the body of the text but in an appendix. A review in the Times Higher Education reproached it for romanticising the complicity with the interrogator, in light of the accounts of Black detainees for whom cooperating amounted to betrayal.
Who it is for
A narrative in English of nearly four hundred pages, between testimony, address to the reader and political reflection; translated into French.
Prizes and reception
His best-known book; hailed as the first prison testimony written by an Afrikaner and an important contribution to the country's prison literature.
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