A chain of voices - André Brink (First edition)

SOUTH AFRICA. 1825.

A group of black slaves is charged with the murder of their master, the late Nicolaas van der Merwe.

High up in the mountains of the Cape, on a remote Afrikaner farmstead, seven days by wagon from Cape Town an act of rebellion has taken place that will stand forever as the challenge of a subject people to the supremacy of white power.

THIS IS THE STORY, inspired by real events, of two boys, one white, one black, whose lives are linked by the rules and obligations of Afrikaner society.

As they grow up, however, one the master, the other the slave, their relationship gradually turns sour. Nicolaas is too weak to fulfill the role of boss.

Galant is too strong-willed and certain to be content with the pain and deprivation of being nothing more than the white man’s chattel.

AS THE VOICES of the novel begin to speak – Nicolaas, his brother Barend, his father, Galant, Hester, Rose the old black nurse, together with all the other inhabitants of Houd-den-Bek – André Brink unfolds a drama of cruelty and exploitation with the relentless tempo of a master storyteller.

THE THEMES OF SLAVERY and rebellion find more and more fateful expression in the lives of Nicolaas and Galant.

Ironically, the more they clash, the more they find themselves bound together by circumstances and by their own conflicting desires.

The novel moves to its horrifying climax with the inexorable power of Greek tragedy.