THE LOVE SONG OF ANDRÉ P BRINK is the first biography of this major
South African novelist who, during his lifetime, was published in over
30 languages and ranked with the likes of Gabriel García Márquez, Peter
Carey and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Leon de Kock's eagerly awaited account of Brink's life is richly
informed by a previously unavailable literary treasure: the dissident
Afrikaner's hoard of journal-writing, a veritable chronicle that was 54
years in the making.
In this massive new biographical source - running to a million words -
Brink does not spare himself, or anyone else for that matter, as he
narrates the ups and downs of his five marriages and his compulsive
affairs with a great number of women. These are precisely the topics
that the rebel in both politics and sex skated over in his memoir, A
Fork in the Road.
De Kock's biographical study of the author who came close to winning the
Nobel Prize for Literature not only synthesises the journals but also
subjects them to searching critical analysis.
In addition, the biographer measures the journals against additional
sources, scholarly and otherwise, among them the testimonies of Brink's
friends, family, wives and lovers.
The Love Song of André P Brink subjects Brink's literary legacy to a
bracing academic reevaluation, making this major new biography a crucial
addition to scholarship on Brink.
