A Dry White Season — Andre Brink

New York Times Notable Book: This story of life and death in apartheid-era South Africa is “a powerful novel that you will not easily put down or forget” (Los Angeles Times).

Winner of a Martin Luther King Memorial Prize

As startling and powerful as when it was first published more than forty years ago, André Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.

Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies -- until the sudden arrest and subsequent “suicide” of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair -- a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

“His most impressive novel thus far . . . [a] compelling angle from which to view apartheid and its corrosive effect on all of South African society.” -- The New York Times

“Excellent . . . [a] harrowing and surprising story.” -- Scotsman

“Andre Brink's writing is built on conviction . . . A Dry White Season describes the triumph of tyranny.” -- The Times

“Powerful and provocative . . . exciting, well written, and a literary achievement of the first rank.” -- Houston Chronicle

“Impossible to recommend too highly.” -- Time Out