Country of My Skull – 9781770220744

Description

‘This is Antjie Samuel reporting from Ladybrand …’ For more than two years, Antjie Krog worked in acute engagement with the many voices that arose in and around South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. From the legislative genesis of the Commission, through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, the revelations from apartheid’s operatives, the appearance of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and former president PW Botha’s courthouse press conference, to the Commission’s meeting with the media on Robben Island early in 1998 – this award-winning poet leads us on an extraordinary odyssey. Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission’s work in a uniquely personal narrative which is harrowing, illuminating and provocative. Krog’s powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions and secret themes, taking us beneath the big movements of the Truth Commission – and beyond …into the very heart of what it means to be a South African today.