SOURCE: "Love Finds a Way," in New York Times Book Review, July 25, 1993, pp. 1, 23, 24.

In the following review of Cape of Storms: The First Life of Adamastor, celebrated novelist Mario Vargas Llosa praises Brink's novel for its imagination and humor. Vargas Llosa interprets the allegorical features of the book in which he reads that "rapprochement between human beings of differing skins, languages and customs is impossible, for even with the best will on both sides it will inevitably be frustrated by cultural conditioning."

"There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved with a story." That is what a witch doctor of the Xhosa tribe tells the tormented narrator of Cape of Storms, a giant of the Khoikhoi people named T'kama, whose inordinately large penis, along with several other areas of incompatibility, prevents him from having a normal relationship with his European wife. In this case, the...