Dog Heart A Memoir

Breyten Breytenbach is a leading Afrikaner poet who was arrested and tortured for his political activities during apartheid. Here he returns to South Africa from Parisian exile, and finds himself excavating the history of his family while contemplating the cultural identity of a nation. Breyten Breytenbach's meditations are informed by a profound intelligence and wit and an overriding sense of the past. He is captivated by memories of the land that is no more, of the child he must have been. Breytenbach begins Dog Heart with his own beginning in Bonnievale, South Africa, and looks at his homeland through the prism of memory to uncover a new landscape. We read of the ouvolk, the moon and stars and trees and shrubs and rocks that are really petrified shamans, subterranean travelers, death dancers who change themselves into rocks to become invisible to those who invade the land. Then over time they forget to change back. Through searching honesty and dreamlike lyricism, Breytenbach raises the memoir to a new level.