Flame In The Snow The Love Letters Of Andr Brink Ingrid Jonker

In a telegram sent on 29 April 1963, Ingrid Jonker thanks André Brink for his letter and flowers. They had met a few days before. He was almost twenty- eight; she thirty. This was the beginning of a correspondence between two writers that lasted up until three months before Jonker drowned herself at Three Anchor Bay. Half a century later, their love letters are published here for the first time. In more than two hundred letters that have never been seen before, a gripping love affair unfolds.

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, both scholarly and otherwise, among them the testimony of Brink's friends, family, wives and lovers. The Love Song of André P Brink subjects Brink's literary legacy to a bracing scholarly re-evaluation, making this major new biography a crucial addition to scholarship on Brink.

Here, in these places ... There is no money. It is hard for you to understand, but there is not even a coin sometimes. There is only dust.' He paused and stared at me and his eyes were hard. 'It has become a very costly human urge,' he said, 'this thirst.' I looked away. 'There is opposition,' he said. 'Small bands of men and boys who attack the reservoirs. Many are killed. Others leave for the city. Like me. I left. I joined the army because they were asking for men. Then I became a company guard, to guard the water against my own people.' In a country long gripped and devastated by drought, water has become the priceless commodity over which a deadly war is being waged. In remote towns and villages, far from the safety of the city, the resistance does what it can to oppose the company whose guards ruthlessly secure and control the water supply, but each small victory merely seems like one more step towards eventual defeat. When an unexpected rain leads a group of water security guards to a town long since thought abandoned, they find an old woman, identified only as Mother, and four girls in a classroom. A journalist, two aid workers and a doctor arrive soon afterwards, and what they discover defies ordinary explanation. When strange, dislocated fragments of Mother's story appear in the media, a young writer is intrigued enough to set off on a journey to find her, a journey that will take her deep into the heart of a broken country in search of a truth that no one wants uncovered.

Geologically speaking, southern Africa is without equal, a treasure house of valuable minerals with a geological history dating back some 3 600 million years. In addition, the evolution of plants and animals, especially mammals and dinosaurs, is well preserved in the region, which also probably has the best record of the origin of modern man. This book provides a fascinating insight into that remarkable history: how southern Africa, and to some extent the world, came to be the way it is - how its mineral deposits formed, its life evolved and its landscape was shaped. Along the way readers will be enthralled by accounts of the Big Bang that marked the beginning of time and matter, by drifting and colliding continents, folding and fracturing of rocks, meteors colliding with the Earth, the time when the Earth froze over, volcanic eruptions and the start of life. Anyone interested in the landscape and ecosystems in which we live will be intrigued to discover how our natural landmarks were formed, from the deserts of Namibia to the mountains of the Western Cape or Mpumalanga. Why is South Africa so rich in minerals? How did glacial deposits come to be found in the Karoo? Why did dinosaurs become extinct? How did mammals develop from reptiles? How closely related are we to the apes? The answers to many such questions are found in this lavishly illustrated volume. The authors also suggest how we can learn from the past in order to anticipate the future - for instance, to be able to predict earthquakes, deal with volcanic eruptions and meet the challenges of global climate change.

When wildlife conservationist Richard Peirce learnt about the targeting of three private game reserves in the Western Cape in 2011 and the butchery of some of their rhinos, he embarked on a crusade to raise public awareness about the horrors of rhino poaching. This is the story of Higgins and Lady, two rhinos from the farm Fairy Glen that defied the odds by surviving a brutal attack. Peirce keeps the reader spellbound as he recounts the series of attacks and their aftermath in chilling detail: the unbearable savagery, suspect police work, shady characters, mysterious happenings and death threats. Reading like a crime thriller, this account of dogged survival, compassion and triumph – along with desperate strategising to outwit the poaching mafia – will have wide appeal. Colour images throughout, taken as the drama unfolded, bring the subject even more vividly to life.

In Fatal Females, investigative psychologist and former police profiler Micki Pistorius examines the minds and motives of women who kill. Throughout history the view seems to have prevailed that it is not in women's nature to commit violent crime, but Pistorius shows that this is not in fact the case. Women, givers of life, are indeed capable of ruthlessly taking life. She examines more than fifty documented cases of South African female killers, categorised according to the nature of the crime - for example, infanticide, spree killings, stalkers, poisoners - and she presents her new hypothesis to explain the psychology of that rare individual, the female serial killer.

The new edition of this highly succesful poetry anthology includes new poems, new notes and exercises, and has a freshly- designed, learning friendly format that makes it even more relevant and accessible to students in Southern Africa