Rian Malan – författare

For Rian Malan, the blessing of living in South Africa is that every day presents him with material whose richness astounds those who live in saner places. Twenty years after the publication of his bestseller My Traitor's Heart, he is still strongly committed to the struggle against suffocating political rectitude. Malan eviscerates politicians, provokes rabid fury in Aids activists, pursues justice in the music industry, and exults in the company of an extraordinary cast of characters from truckers to tycoons.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHORIn '70s' South Africa, Rian Malan – descendant of the architects of apartheid, middle-class white boy, friend to blacks – went to work as a crime reporter for a local Johannesburg rag. There he encountered first-hand the horrors wrought by apartheid: the poverty, injustice and violence. After an eight-year exile, he returned to write this book. With gripping stories and in mesmerising prose, this is Malan’s attempt to understand his country, its racial hatred, and his own tortured conscience.

For Rian Malan, the blessing of living in South Africa is that every day presents him with material whose richness astounds those who live in saner places. Twenty years after the publication of his bestseller My Traitor's Heart, he is still strongly committed to the struggle against suffocating political rectitude. Malan eviscerates politicians, provokes rabid fury in Aids activists, pursues justice in the music industry, and exults in the company of an extraordinary cast of characters from truckers to tycoons.