ignorance is bliss.

i've been wanting to blog about this book for weeks, but i thought i should finish it before advertising it. however, i can't wait that long. one, cause i'm reading a few other heavy books alongside this one, so reading is slow. and two, cause it's too good to refrain from promoting.

go and read this book.

i've not read so many books on south african history, and even less on history as a whole. it's never been my thing, really. actually, the history of my beloved rainbow nation of SA is what opened the tightly-shut door between me and any interest in reading nonfiction narratives about the past. i couldn't be bothered.
but this country has changed that. and this book is a reason why.

So deeply disturbed by the paradox that is South Africa, the author fled the country after a number of years as a police reporter during apartheid. Descendent of a notably racial Afrikaans lineage, Malan was a name all colors of South Africa associated with racist blood. Rian Malan, the author, battled this upbringing by immersing himself in black culture, drinking black alcohol in black shebeens in black townships with black men all around...and yet living in the deepest-seated fear that it took him years to pinpoint. He spend much of the book giving himself the title of "racist", and yet the stories he tells, story after story of documenting the atrocities of racist South Africa during the 1900's, portray a man compelled by a deeper force than fear or guilt or regret. He was motivated by an insatiable thirst for the truth. But what do you do when the reality is too much for you to bear? Most of us...we run.

What he uncovers will shock you, horrify you, and leave you wondering if a country can really ever climb out of such deeply-rooted ideologies.

Do yourself a favor and read the book.

"It might be hard for you to understand this, being an outsider, but South Africa holds the souls of its sons and daughters in an almost inescapable grasp. History cast all of us in a strand and gripping drama, but i had deserted the stage. I had no idea what my role was, and felt i would never be whole unless I found out. I would live and die in LA and be buried under a tombstone that read, "He Ran Away". People would ask, who was Malan? Ah, a South African. And what did he stand for? He never really knew.

It seemed to me, looking back, that my life had been somehow out of balance ever since my days as a police reporter. It was the most humble of newspaper job, but it took me to all those extraordinary places--to police stations where men screamed in the dead of night, to tea with cold-blooded colonels, into mortuaries to see eyeless black corpses, and down a street where a black man ran amok with an ax, crying "Africa! Africa!" I didn't learn about the paradox by living in South Africa's white suburbs. I learned about it on the police beat. The job put me in a position to ask the right questions, the questions that cut to the very darkest heart of the matter, but I'd been too cowardly to wait for answers. Instead, I ran away."

**keep your eyes open for further posts on this book. i've got a solid one brewing in my head about the contradictions.