The First Life of Adamastor

(Paperback)

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'Terrifically well-written... Andre Brink is confidently at home with his myth. The details are fresh, convincing and bawdy' - Observer The First Life of Adamastor has it origins in an act of rescue- what, wondered Andre Brink, lay behind fragments of myth that have been handed down about the mountains of the Cape Adamastor, the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocks of the Peninsula, first appears in European literature in the sixteenth century - much about the time of the first known contact between seagoing European explorers and the natives of Southern Africa. How, Brink asks, would that meeting have looked from the landward side What role would the visitors take in the mythology of an utterly different culture, with its own deities, its own accumulated story Brink, in this extraordinary, moving and potentially explosive creation has unearthed from the sun-carved land itself the missing meanings of a myth that has waited five centuries to be invented.

Reviews

A wonderfully entertaining work of fiction -- Mario Vargas Llosa * New York Times Book Review *
A simple love story... A joyful psalm sung through the collective unconscious that unites all people... fun, fresh and firmly recommended... He is a writer of inspired violence and his shifts of viewpoint are thrilling and significant, and deeply honouring to the profession of literature * The Times *
[Enjoy] the pleasure of Brink's playful wit and his colonist's skill in surveying an unknown mental landscape * Independent *

Author Bio

Andre Brink (1935 - 2015) was one of South Africa's most prominent writers and is the author of several novels, including A Dry White Season, Imaginings of Sand, The Rights of Desire, The Other Side of Silence and Philida. He has won South Africa's most important literay prize, the CNA Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His last novel, Philida, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012.