Philida

Zusatztext 45751267 Informationen zum Autor André Brink is the author of numerous novels, including A Dry White Season, Imaginings of Sand, The Rights of Desire and The Other Side of Silence . He has won South Africa's most important literary prize, the CNA Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Klappentext This is what it is to be a slave: that everything is decided for you from out there. You just got to listen and do as they tell you. You don't say no. You don't ask questions. You just do what they tell you. But far at the back of your head you think: Soon there must come a day when I can say for myself: This and that I shall do! this and that I shall not.In Philida! longlisted for the Man Booker Prize! André Brink-"one of South Africa's greatest novelists" (The Telegraph)-gives us his most powerful novel yet; the truly unforgettable story of a female slave! and her fierce determination to survive and to be free. It is 1832 in South Africa! the year before slavery is abolished and the slaves are emancipated. Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink! the son of her master. When Francois's father orders him to marry a woman from a prominent Cape Town family! Francois reneges on his promise to give Philida her freedom! threatening instead to sell her to new owners in the harsh country up north. Here is the remarkable story-based on individuals connected to the author's family-of a fiercely independent woman who will settle for nothing and for no one. Unwilling to accept the future that lies ahead of her! Philida continues to test the limits and lodges a complaint against the Brink family. Then she sets off on a journey-from the southernmost reaches of the Cape! across a great wilderness! to the far north of the country-in order to reclaim her soul. Excerpted from Chapter One On Saturday 17 November 1832, after following the Elephant Trail that runs between the Village of Franschhoek, past the Farm Zandvliet to the small Town of Stellenbosch near Cape Town, the young Slave Woman Philida arrives at the Drostdy with its tall white Pillars, where she is directed to the Office of the Slave Protector, Mijnheer Lindenberg, to lodge a Complaint against her Owner Cornelis Brink and his Son Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink     Here come shit. Just one look, and I can see it coming. Here I walk all this way and God know that is bad enough, what with the child in the abbadoek on my back, and now there’s no turning back, it’s just straight on to hell and gone. This is the man I got to talk to if I want to lay a charge, they tell me, this Grootbaas who is so tall and white and thin and bony, with deep furrows in his forehead, like a badly ploughed wheat field, and a nose like a sweet potato that has grown past itself.   It’s a long story. First he want to find out everything about me, and it’s one question after another. Who am I? Where do I come from? What is the name of my Baas? What is the name of the farm? For how long I been working there? Did I get a pass for coming here? When did I leave and how long did I walk? Where did I sleep last night? What do I think is going to happen to me when I get home again? And every time I say something, he first write it down in his big book with those knobbly hands and his long white fingers. These people got a thing about writing everything down. Just look at the back pages of the black Bible that belong to Oubaas Cornelis Brink, that’s Francois Gerhard Jacob’s father.   While the Grootbaas is writing I keep watching him closely. There’s something second-hand about the man, like a piece of knitting gone wrong that had to be done over, but badly, not very smoothly. I can say that because I know about knitting. On his nose sit a pair of thick glasses like a bat with open wings, but he look at me over them,...

Product details

• Authors: Andrae P. Brink, Andre Brink, Andre Philippus Brink, BRINK ANDRE PHILIPPUS
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 05.02.2013
• EAN: 9780345805034
• ISBN: 978-0-345-80503-4
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 205 mm x 17 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature