The wall of the plague - André Brink (First edition)

Andrea, a coloured expatriate from the Cape, is on a reconnaissance trip to the hot hills of Provence for a film about the great Plague which swept Europe in the fourteenth century. She is doing research for her lover, Paul, but she is also going on a nostalgic trip into her own past (she has been here before, with someone else). She is staying with her fellow South African, a black writer named Mandla, a man whose very existence threatens not only her convictions but the entire life-style she has made her own.

So begins a contemporary story whose many-layered unfolding has all the subtlety and power André Brink's readers have come to associate with his work. Andrea's drive through the South of France is a truly memorable evocation of a landscape. At a deeper level, her search for the evidence of a long-forgotten catastrophe becomes a quest for self-understanding.

And there is Mandla, whose companionship slowly leads Andrea into a new realization of herself, and whose presence on the journey brings it finally to its menacing and unexpected conclusion.

The Wall of the Plague treks into the country of the past, finding there the lies and crimes of history; it is also a powerful exploration, through the image of the plague, of a society whose well-being is poisoned by the divisions of apartheid. Once again, André Brink has transformed a deeply felt political statement into a compelling and moving artistic achievement.