Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Brink, André (Vol. 106) - Peter S. Prescott (review date 14 August 1994)

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Peter S. Prescott (review date 14 August 1994)

SOURCE: "The Cape of Not Much Hope," in New York Times Book Review, August 14, 1994, pp. 7-8.

[In the following review, Prescott examines On the Contrary in the context of a changing South Africa and commments on its picaresque qualities.]

A newly democratic South Africa confronts its novelists with the same problem that the end of the cold war posed for the writers of spy stories: Is there any life left in the old conflict that I've spent my career defining? For years André Brink, at great risk to himself, wrote realistic novels exposing the cruelty of apartheid. Now, with the urgency of racial conflict diminished, he responds with more fanciful novels that look to his country's past, even to its myths: How did this horror come about? Must interracial contact inevitably culminate in misunderstanding, violence and oppression? His answer appears to be yes—but with the proviso that as...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. C. J. Driver (review date 15 November 1974)
   2. Frank Pike (review date 17 September 1976)
   3. Jim Hoaglund (review date 5 November 1978)
   4. Mel Watkins (review date 23 March 1980)
   5. Richard Eder (Interview/Profile date 23 March 1980)
   6. Bernard J. Toerien (review date Spring 1983)
   7. Josef Skvorecky (review date 30 April 1984)
   8. John Sutherland (review date 18 May 1986)
   9. George Stade (review date 29 June 1986)
   10. Philip Horne (review date 4 August 1988)
   11. J.M. Coetzee (essay date Fall 1990)
   12. Randolph Vigne (review date January 1992)
   13. Paul Preuss (review date 15 March 1992)
   14. Lillian Hilja Andon-Milligan (essay date Fall 1992)
   15. Abdulrazak Gurnah (review date 26 February 1993)
   16. Mario Vargas Llosa (review date 25 July 1993)
   17. Clarence Major (review date 29 August 1993)
   18. Mark Wormald (review date 3 September 1993)
   19. Charles R. Larson (review date 5 September 1993)
   20. Peter S. Prescott (review date 14 August 1994)
   21. David Plott (review date 16 October 1994)
   22. Michael Kerrigan (review date 9 February 1996)
   23. Amanda Hopkinson (review date 23 February 1996)
   24. John F. Baker (essay date 25 November 1996)
   25. Theodore F. Sheckels Jr. (essay date 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright