Althouth Brink has been touted in America as "the obvious inheritor of Alan Paton's mantle," Paton speaks to the heart, evoking sorrow while Brink shouts to the conscience, invoking anger. And compared with Paton's or Gordimer's polished and graceful prose, Brink's writing seems crude indeed. André Brink is simply not a "great" writer; but he's an urgent, political one and an Afrikaner other Afrikaners can't ignore. (p. 5)

A Dry White Season, Brink's fourth novel, boldly attacks the security police and examines the tendency of political prisoners to commit suicide—or to die of "natural causes"—prior to trial. The terrorism statutes and unlimited pretrial detention have resulted in many such deaths, Steve Biko's in 1977 being the most notorious….

A Dry White Season has an avowedly political purpose: to jolt Afrikaners into recognition, to deny them the "Nuremburg" defense, "so that it will not be possible for any man...