SOURCE: "Beloved Bloody Country," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XXIII, No. 48, November 28, 1993, p. 4.

In the following review, Freed praises Breytenbach's ability in Return to Paradise to be both evocative and satiric of South Africa and its people.

This wonderful book [Return to Paradise], the third in Breyten Breytenbach's trilogy of exile, incarceration and return, centers around a three-month visit he made to South Africa in 1991. The book is written with a wild heart and an unrelenting eye, and is fueled by the sort of rage that produces great literature.

After more than half a lifetime spent in exile—with the exception of a few visits home, and seven years in a South African prison for "terrorism"—Breytenbach opens Return to Paradise with the statement of statements for South African exiles and expatriates: "There is such a thing as an incurable nostalgia." And yet, so saying, he goes...