Novel
Emergency
Richard Rive · 1964
Synopsis
Three days, from 28 to 30 March 1960, in Cape Town, between the Sharpeville shooting and the proclamation of the state of emergency. Andrew Dreyer, a young Coloured schoolteacher, darker-skinned than his family, grew up in the poverty of District Six, where his brothers and sisters took other paths, some by passing as white. The narrative moves back and forth between his childhood, his studies and the resistance campaigns, up to the marches at Langa. He loves a white woman, Ruth, debates with his friend Abe the means of resistance, and must choose between exile and the struggle at home.
Context
Written in 1961 and 1962 by a witness of the march led from Langa towards central Cape Town by Philip Kgosana, the book appeared in London from Faber and Faber in 1964. It was its author's first work banned in the country, and most South African readers only discovered it when it was reissued by David Philip in 1988. Lewis Nkosi judged it commonplace; Es'kia Mphahlele praised its tension and economy of language. A sequel, Emergency Continued, appeared in 1990.
Who it is for
A novel in English that is easy to read, whose long political passages in the adult part slow the action; not translated into French.
Prizes and reception
The first novel set in the Sharpeville crisis, according to the biographer Shaun Viljoen; reissued in 1988 after years of banning.
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