SOURCE: "A Novelist's Impassioned Indictment," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 85, March 23, 1980, pp. 15, 20, 21.

In the following review Watkins examines the fictional devices Brink uses in A Dry White Season to expose some of the realities of living under Apartheid, while considering the novel alongside some of Brink's previous work.

In his previous novel, Rumours of Rain, André Brink, an Afrikaaner and head of the department of literature at Rhodes University at Grahamstown, South Africa, gave his audience a chilling glimpse into the inner sanctum of the South African ruling class. Through his portrayal of Martin Mynhardt, a calculating and philandering Afrikaans Nationalist, he dramatized the firmly entrenched attitudes of superiority and self-righteousness that brace his country's political posture. That novel, like his earlier works, was a direct indictment of South Africa's racist regime. Mr. Brink's latest book, A Dry White Season, his most impressive novel thus far...