Giving Voice: Narrating silence, history and memory in André Brink’s The Other Side of Silence and Before I Forget
This essay examines André P. Brink's two most recent novels, The Other Side of Silence (2002) and Before I Forget (2004), in terms of their voicing of silence and the rewriting of history and memory. Each has a theme familiar to Brink's readers - an historical story of colonial violence an...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Afrikaans |
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Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Association
2018-07-01
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| Series: | Tydskrif vir Letterkunde |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.assaf.org.za/index.php/tvl/article/view/5361 |
| Summary: | This essay examines André P. Brink's two most recent novels, The Other Side of Silence (2002) and Before I Forget (2004), in terms of their voicing of silence and the rewriting of history and memory. Each has a theme familiar to Brink's readers - an historical story of colonial violence and violation avenged; and the recounting by an older writer of his "last love", respectively - and each is mediated by a male narrator. Both narrators, though, draw attention to the problems associated with this reconstructive and potentially appropriative storytelling. These texts thereby enact, in a more complex way than many of Brink's previous novels, the intersections of narrative, history and memory. |
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| ISSN: | 0041-476X 2309-9070 |