SOURCE: "Mixing the Colours," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 3793, November 15, 1974, p. 1278

In the following review of Looking on Darkness Driver comments on the novel's social context and assesses its artistic merits.

Looking on Darkness is the English translation (by the author himself) of an Afrikaans novel, Kennis van die Aand, which was banned on publication in South Africa: "If this is art", said the clerical Vorster, brother of the Prime Minister, "then a brothel is a Sunday school". It is not difficult to understand why it was banned: it is explicit about sex; it is explicit about torture in South African gaols; it is explicit about racial hatred and persecution, and about the way South Africans actually live and talk and feel; and it largely concerns the (illegal) love affair between a Cape Coloured man and a (white) British girl. According to an Afrikaans saying, "a bird must...