SOURCE: "The Cape of Not Much Hope," in New York Times Book Review, August 14, 1994, pp. 7-8.

In the following review, Prescott examines On the Contrary in the context of a changing South Africa and commments on its picaresque qualities.

A newly democratic South Africa confronts its novelists with the same problem that the end of the cold war posed for the writers of spy stories: Is there any life left in the old conflict that I've spent my career defining? For years André Brink, at great risk to himself, wrote realistic novels exposing the cruelty of apartheid. Now, with the urgency of racial conflict diminished, he responds with more fanciful novels that look to his country's past, even to its myths: How did this horror come about? Must interracial contact inevitably culminate in misunderstanding, violence and oppression? His answer appears to be yes—but with the proviso that...