Product Description

A compelling novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize/ Best Book from Africa award.

As a small child in a wintry Bremen, Hanna dreams about the other side of silence, the place where the wind comes from and palm trees wave in the sun. Seeing her chance to escape from years of abuse in an orphanage and in service, Hanna joins one of the shiploads of young women transported in the early years of the twentieth century to the colony of German South-West Africa to assuage the needs of the male settlers. Following atrocious punishment for daring to resist the advances of an army officer, she arrives at a phantasmagoric refuge in the African desert -- “prison, nunnery, brothel, shithouse, Frauenstein.” When the drunken excesses of a visiting army detachment threaten her only companion, Hanna revolts.

Mounting a ragtag army of females and natives, she sets out on an epic march through the desert to take on the might of the German Reich. This apocalyptic journey through the darker regions of the soul will also reveal to Hanna the hidden meanings of suffering, revenge, companionship, love and compassion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1458132 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-01
• Released on: 2003-12-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.81" h x .75" w x 5.12" l, .50 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed South African novelist Brink (The Rights of Desire; Devil's Valley; etc.) paints a harrowing picture of German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) in his latest novel, focusing on a German initiative to import hundreds of women to Africa for the colonists at the turn of the last century. Hanna X is an orphan who spends her early years in Germany trying to catch on as a domestic with a number of families, only to have the sexual advances of various libidinous husbands ruin her efforts to find a stable situation. Hanna thinks she has escaped the world of male domination when she receives permission to emigrate to South Africa, but her escape backfires. Raped and mutilated by brutal German officer Hauptmann Buhlke, she is taken to a horrific outpost known as the Frauenstein, where the abuse continues. The book's surreal, fragmentary first half, in which the events of Hanna's childhood are interspersed with the harrowing details of her arrival in Africa, is followed by a riveting second half, in which Hanna escapes the Frauenstein and tracks down Buhlke with the help of another abused woman, Katja, and a Herero tribesman, Kahapa, whom the two women rescue from a savage German farmer. The trio quickly become a small vigilante posse as they journey to Windhoek to find Buhlke, and their efforts to turn the tables on the Germans succeed when they murder a small troop of soldiers and then wipe out a larger group at a garrison. The relentless violence occasionally turns Hanna into a one-dimensional character, but the imagery from this haunting novel will stay with readers, as will the frightening allure of all-consuming hatred: "So beautiful. So singular. So utterly pure. So abundantly full of life."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Hanna X is a young German woman who, after years of abuse in a Bremen orphanage, escapes to her country's colonies in southwest Africa, only to be even more badly brutalized--mutilated, even--by the men she has volunteered to serve. Disfigured and mute, she is banished to Frauenstein, a desert asylum for broken, unwanted women. When Hanna saves frail young Katja from the violent advances of a drunken soldier by beating him to death, her silent rage comes alive and the tenor of Brink's story shifts from suffering to revenge. Forming a militia from the scarred victims of colonial oppression, natives and immigrant women alike, Hanna declares war on the Reich itself, organizing attacks on German desert outposts and ultimately coming face-to-scarred-face with the persistent shadows of her childhood--as well as the man responsible for her horrible disfigurement. This is familiar territory for Brink, a South African whose explorations of violence, memory, and apartheid have won him praise and media attention. His latest proves provocative by evoking these themes within the unconventional setting of German colonialism. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Brink is one of the crucial writers of our time… A truly horrifying tale, but compassionately and compellingly told.” -- Glasgow Herald

“An astonishing performance…his most profound and most beautiful novel.” -- Irish Times

“Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn: André Brink must be considered with that class of writer.” -- Guardian

“Harsh, visionary and unsettling.” -- Time Out