The Other Side of Silence [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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
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“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

The story of a young girl who escapes her orphanage on Bremen to join a shipload of girls travelling to German South-West Africa in the early twentieth century from the author of }A Dry White Season{. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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 in 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 female 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 her the hidden meanings of suffering, revenge, companionship, love and compassion.

André Brink was born in 1935. He has won South Africa’s most important literary prize, the CNA Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker prize.