End Papers. Essays, Letters, Articles of Faith, Workbook Notes by Breyten Breytenbach

FIRST US EDITION, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986, hardcover, 268 pages, condition: basically as new.

The book collects the author's political writings from both in and out of prison. Included in the volume are polemical essays about the present political situation in South Africa and prescient statements about the future.

A collection of Breytenbach's essays from before his journey through prison, headed by the title "Blind Bird," and from after his prison stint, headed by "Burnt Bird," these are great snapshots in essay form of Breytenbach's fiery career: a restless critic, a stridently antiapartheid voice, a poetic innovator, a thoughtful & passionate writer. Across the span of the collection they also help illustrate his self-acknowledged transformation from sightless to scorched or, in other words, from an idealist and humanist writer earnestly taking on the troubles of his world to a more embittered, wary voice paradoxically more open to humanism, if a humanism of a different kind.