Awards

• Winner of Book Data Southern African Booksellers' Choice Award 1999
• Winner of Book Data Southern African Booksellers' Choice Award 1999.

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9780099289791

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One of the best books of the year * The Economist * No one will tell us more about the struggle for the Afrikaner's soul; for this book, like the events it reports, is an act of redemption * Daily Telegraph * Krog's account of the hearings, which recorded 20,000 statements from victims and nearly 8,000 applications for amnesty, is vivid and impassioned * Mail on Sunday * Whatever it is that makes a major lasting work of non-fiction, it is here * Observer * Her accounts are so powerful, her resilience, humour and compassion so engaging...to have written this book is heroic * Sunday Times *

This searing examination is a compelling achievement that considers the nature of guilt, shame, and forgiveness in post-apartheid South Africa, yet also sometimes feels exactly like what it is - a series of clumsily stitched-together news reports. For more than two years, South African radio reporter and esteemed poet Krog covered the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's investigations into crimes committed on all sides in the name of apartheid. Headed by the Nobel Prize-winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission held out the promise of complete amnesty, but only in return for complete honesty about each and every offense. Hearings were held all around the country, with victims and their families able to confront their torturers. The testimony was painfully riveting, and Krog includes vast, uninterpolated swaths of accounts of bombings, beatings, rapes, and murder squads. She details expertly the effects of such terrible revelations on white South Africans, most of whom had never thought (or wanted to think) about the true cost of sustaining apartheid; what had once seemed to them like standard-issue authoritarianism eventually was viewed as unmitigated evil, reminiscent of nothing so much as Nazi Germany. Although the Truth Commission itself has been criticized for a relatively lenient treatment of the African National Congress, Krog is not blind to the anti-apartheid opposition's own multifarious brutalities. However, she is so focused on the particularities and intricacies of the South African experience that many general readers will find substantial chunks of this book somewhat inaccessible, despite a concluding glossary of South African terms and brief bios. Krog's poetic and reportorial gifts often serve her well - her lapidary profundity and keen-edged analysis are frequently superb. Still, she fails to craft them into a sustained or focused narrative. Like the truth itself, a messy, imposing sprawl. (Kirkus Reviews)

When the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 1995, its detractors thought that it was merely a convenient way to wash away the terrible, brutal history of apartheid. However, this powerful, disturbing and honest story of the Commission's work is an amazing testament to its purpose: the awful, personal stories of pain and guilt reveal a history which could never have come to light amid prosecutions and recriminations. Krog, an award-winning journalist and poet, gives us a passionate insight into the heart of South Africa. (Kirkus UK)

One of the best books of the year. <br>-- The Economist <br> This is a deeply moving account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission--South Africa's attempt to come to terms with her often horrendous past. Antjie Krog writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the clarity of a journalist. Country of My Skull is a must-read for all who are fascinated by this unique attempt to deal with a post-conflict context. It is a beautiful and powerful book. <br>-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu <br> Trying to understand the new South Africa without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be futile; trying to understand the commission without this book would be irresponsible. <br>-- Andre Brink, author of A Dry White Season <br>Antjie Krog has rendered the world a great service. This elegant manifesto for justice will haunt the soul long after the reading is done. <br>-- Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans <br> Here is the extraordinary reportage of one who, eyes staring into the filthiest places of atrocity, poet's searing tongue speaking of them, is not afraid to go too far. Antjie Krog breaks all the rules of dispassionate recounts, the restraints of 'decent' prose, because this is where the truth might be reached and reconciliation with it is posited like a bewildered angel thrust down into hell. <br>-- Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Author Information

Antjie Krog was born in 1952 in Kroonstad, a town in the Free State province of South Africa. She has published eight volumes of poetry, several of which have been translated into European languages and have won international prizes. Reporting as Antjie Samuel, the author and her SABC radio team received the Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for reporting on the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission. Krog also won the Foreign Correspondents' Award for outstanding journalism for her articles on the Truth Commission. She went on to become parliamentary editor for SABC radio in 1997 and has since been appointed as an Extraordinary Professor in the Arts Faculty at the University of the Western Cape. Antjie Krog is married and is the mother of four children.

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