SOURCE: "André Brink: In Tune with His Times," in Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 243, No. 48, November 25, 1996, pp. 50-51.

In the following interview/profile, Baker and Brink discuss the progress in Brink's work alongside developments in South African politics and society.

André Brink finds himself in an almost unbelievable position for a writer: one where he can see a profound kinship between his own work and the aspirations of his country—a newly minted South Africa free of the intolerable burden of apartheid under which it had labored for most of the author's life.

"There's just such an overwhelming amount of material to be used that sometimes you want, as an author, simply to take a breather from it," says Brink, whose latest novel, Imaginings of Sand, begins, very notably, to make use of such new material. It has just been published here by Harcourt after winning stellar reviews in its...