Imaginings of Sand
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | André Brink |
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| Subtitle | A Novel |
| Publisher | Harcourt |
| Honors | |
| When expatriate Afrikaner Kristien Müller hears of her grandmother’s impending death, she ends her self-imposed exile in London and returns to the South Africa she thought she’d escaped. But irrevocable change is sweeping the land, and reality itself seems to be in flux as the country stages its first democratic elections. Kristien’s Ouma Kristina herself is dying because of the upheavals: a terrorist attack on her isolated mansion has terminally injured her. As Kristien keeps vigil by her grandmother’s sickbed, Ouma tells Kristien stories of nine generations of… | |
When expatriate Afrikaner Kristien Müller hears of her grandmother’s impending death, she ends her self-imposed exile in London and returns to the South Africa she thought she’d escaped. But irrevocable change is sweeping the land, and reality itself seems to be in flux as the country stages its first democratic elections. Kristien’s Ouma Kristina herself is dying because of the upheavals: a terrorist attack on her isolated mansion has terminally injured her. As Kristien keeps vigil by her grandmother’s sickbed, Ouma tells Kristien stories of nine generations of women in the family, stories in which myth and reality blur, in which legend and brute fact are confused, in which magic, treachery, farce, and heroism are the stuff of the day-to-day.
Imaginings of Sand is the passionate tale of a nation discovering itself and of the women who pioneered that discovery.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Andre Brink has had a long career as a South African novelist, one that has provided him a forum for voicing his opposition to apartheid. Imaginings of Sand depicts the country as it makes the transition to democracy at the same time as Kristien Muller returns from self-imposed exile to the bedside of her dying grandmother, Ouma Kristina. At age 103, matriarchal Ouma is a fountain of family history and white South-African legend; to her granddaughter she passes on tales—magically unreal at times—that link the oppression suffered by women and blacks. While immersed in these fables of memory and emotion, Kristien must also deal with the current reality: a hostile family and authorities discomfited by the impending transition of power. —Alex Freeman
