SOURCE: "André Brink and the Censor," in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 21, No. 2, Fall 1990, pp. 59-74.

In the following essay, South African novelist Coetzee examines the role of the writer in a totalitarian state and the relationship between the state and the censored writer as expressed in Brink's essays. Coetzee points to Brink's view that "a state whose nature is repressive depends for its existence on something to repress."

The 1960s and 1970s saw the mounting and deployment of a comprehensive censorship apparatus in South Africa. In the forefront of opposition to this apparatus was the novelist André P. Brink. While he cannot be said to have stood alone, his position was in two senses exemplary: he exemplified the dissident Afrikaans intellectual, writing in a language spoken in only one country and therefore particularly vulnerable; and he took a stand that was consistent, principled and uncompromising in an...