Set against the background of the South African drought and culminating in a torrent of rain, Rumours of Rain depicts a parched human landscape of stealthy, eruptive thirsts. André Brink has taken a large, ideologically-charged premise and proceeds to render it in intimate terms without—and this might well be unique among such efforts—sacrificing any of its hard-edged, "political" implications. Brink writes about slim, barricaded identities: whites against blacks, men against women, sons against fathers, and the way in which distorted private histories affect the public arena. His book is strong, even stony, as befits its perception of a land and a people who have been forced to a belated and violent reckoning with history….

Rumours of Rain is an ambitious resonant novel that depicts a volatile situation with remarkable control and lack of sentimentality. It has, understandably, been compared to Cry, the Beloved Country, although Brink...