A Veil of Footsteps by Breyten Breytenbach (Used)

This should be kept in mind as / write Breyten Wordfool's black book of impressions. One must not let go of the memories; maggots and grubs are always needed to transform that which has been lived.
Breyten Wordfool takes the reader on a journey, on many journeys, through his own history and the places where he lives and works and regularly visits: Paris, Spain, Gorée (Senegal), Cape Town, New York, Vietnam. Memories and impressions of real events - being arrested in 1975 at Johannesburg airport for alleged terrorist activities, witnessing the attack in 200l on the World Trade Centre in New York - are woven in the same cloth as surrealistic fantasies, dreamlike sequences, philosophical thoughts, fictions.
The nomad reports angrily, lyrically, humorously, daringly on our troubled times. He illuminates life in all its horror and beauty in a book in which the borders between fact and fiction are often blurred
"As a writer, Breytenbach has the gift of being able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life." - J.M. Coetzee, New York Review of Books
"[Breytenbach] write[s] with a wild heart and an unrelenting eye, and is fueled by the sort of rage that produces great literature." - The Washington Post Book World
Breyten Breytenbach left South Africa in 1960, and settled in Paris. After his marriage to a Vietnamese woman, he was prevented from returning to his country. He became one of the best-known campaigners against the apartheid government in the struggle years. In 1975 he was arrested in Johannesburg, charged with terrorist activities, and sentenced to nine years imprisonment. He was released in 1983. Since then he has received wide recognition as a leading poet of his generation, both locally and internationally. In 1999 he was awarded the Hertzog Prize for poetry for Papierblom and his books have been translated into many languages. He has also achieved renown as an artist.

Condition: Good