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4.09 AVERAGE
4.09 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Brilliantly written, devastating, and incredibly insightful.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This is THE book to read on the TRC. Profoundly moving.
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Searing. Part memoir, part reportage from South Africa's Truth & Reconciliation Commission hearings
This is a quite skillful book. It combines personal narrative, poetry, political theory, and a retelling of the truth commission. Despite how long it took me to finish this book, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It ended up dragging because of my lack of background knowledge on apartheid. There was a lot mentioned that I really didn't grasp because I don't know the atrocities or context.
An emotionally challenging but essential read about the TRC. It delves deep into the complexity of South Africa's past, the hopes for the future, reflexions of guilt, and the complex problem of trying to bring a country on the road to forgiveness. There were times where I could not read more than 5-10 pages a day because of the graphic and emotional content. But it is well worth the effort.
It's interesting to read a book about the end of apartheid that isn't about Nelson Mandela -- he doesn't even really show up in this book. And the Truth and Reconciliation Committee is a great subject because it's messy and complicated and emotional; it gets beyond the inspirational story. The book is kind of uneven though. The author doesn't bother to stop and explain things, so there are parts where I couldn't tell what was going on, and she dwells a little too much on the travails of the journalists who had to cover the story. But worth a read if you want to get a sense of the difficulty of getting over apartheid.
A difficult read, in more ways than one. Harrowing and emotional with brutal descriptions of atrocities. Also clearly written assuming one has a decent level in South Africa/apartheid-era history, which I do not have. But it was a good challenge and encouraged me to do some research.
An amazing combination of reportage and personal reflection on the meaning of truth, the role of storytelling, and the challenges that come with one's own personal history within the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's work in post-Apartheid South Africa.