To Hell With Cronje

(Paperback)

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Description

Two scientists find themselves in a transit camp for those unfit for battle during the Boer War. Captured on suspicion of desertion and treason during a trek across an unchanging desert of bushes, rocks and ant hills to help transport a fellow soldier, suffering from shell shock, to his mother, the two wait for the judgement of General Bergh. They are unsure whether they are going to be conscripted into Bergh's commando, allowed to continue their mission or executed for treason. As the weeks pass and they despair of ever leaving they are suddenly sent on a bizarre mission.

Reviews

"To Hell with Cronj is a grim, dark, unrelenting bookan exhaustive survey of the sensations of war, from headlice and crippling thirst to grief, suffering, and madness. While it may seem curious that Winterbach has chosen to revisit such an old historical wound at a time when many South African writers are just beginning to come to terms with the recent past, it is clear that the memory of the Boer War continues to wield a powerful, outsized hold on the Afrikaner imagination."Anderson Tepper, Words Without Borders Winterbach's novel is a beautifully crafted examination of a war that shaped the modern South Africa ... The narrative walks the fine line between being a story of two friends trying to find their way home, to recording one of the painful birth pangs of a sometimes dysfunctional nation. There are many reasons to read this book. Winterbach's writing sets the mood brilliantly, and she pitches her blend of characters perfectly to create an uneasy, occasionally frightening feel to her narrative ... I have read novels by several South African writers, but To Hell With Cronj felt removed both in chronology and style from all of them, and felt all the more special because of it. It is a novel that will stay in my memory for a long time."Andy Barnes, Belletrista "It's been a long time since Afrikaans has been a major literary language ... However, Winterbach's novel, vibrating with the hideous birth pangs of that nation, has won serious critical adulation."Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle "Winterbach's is a tale told from the other side, of a people formatively stuck between colonizer and colonized."Jeanne-Marie Jackson, Bookslut "An exquisite book, an essential voice."Antjie Krog "With this excellent novel Ingrid Winterbach proves again that she is one of our most original novelists."Louis Viljoen

Author Bio

Ingrid Winterbach is an artist and novelist whose work has won the M-Net Prize, Old Mutual Literary Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing, and the W.A. Hofmeyr Prize. She's also received the Hertzog Prize, an honor she shares with Breyten Breytenbach and Etienne Leroux. Elsa Silke translates from Afrikaans and was the winner of the 2006 South African Translator's Institute/Via Afrika Prize for her translation of Karel Schoeman's This Life.