Often I get interested in a particular topic and I read a number of books about that topic. After a while I feel like I have learned something from a few different directions, I get sated, and I start to sort of sum things up in my head.

So I’m trying something a little bit different book-wise. Whenever I have finished a few different books on a topic that I like, I’m going to bunch them together and write something about them. This is useful from my point of view - when I’ve read several good things on a topic it’s the time that I want to reflect, and writing a blog post is a good way to reflect. I’m not particularly convinced that it’s good for you the reader to read my comments on books in this way. But, we’ll see.

I guess this isn’t all that different - I’ve gathered book reviews together before on the topics of Africa, biographies, and mopey books. Perhaps I should say, I like this format and I’m sticking with it.

Today’s book review topic is a narrowing of the last topic - not just Africa, but specifically South Africa.

Life & Times Of Michael K

This book is good in a literary sense. It isn’t my favorite Coatzee - I liked Waiting For The Barbarians better. The main character has this idea that sticks with me, that he is sort of “dissolving into time” as he sits around doing nothing.

The South African regime seems Nazi-like or Stalinesque here. Prison camps, work camps. I feel like still don’t know very many core details about South Africa despite all this reading. This book hits the emotional angle but not really a factual one.

The way you can stake your whole life on basically nothing when you have no other alternative… I don’t have a verb phrase for this sentence, but that thought, this book.

Born A Crime

I rarely read the genre of book that is “popular autobiography of a popular comedian” but the other day I was at a bookstore, picked this one up to leaf through it, and just found it really compelling. He was born to a mixed-race couple when that was illegal in South Africa so his autobiography just gets off to a really exciting start, dodging the law with a newborn.

I like it a lot. You sort of know how the story ends up - he becomes successful in a weird career - although I actually haven’t watched any of The Daily Show since he started hosting. But it’s really just interesting for the stories of South Africa from an unusual racial background.

I didn’t realize just how many racial groups were fairly prominent in South Africa. Xhosa, Zulu, maybe a dozen others. It gives me this feeling of a whole world that I have only barely scraped the surface of.

Triomf

This book is a bit of a crazy one. It was unexpected to me how this and the Michael K book are from the point of view of white citizens of South Africa, and yet the main characters are completely and utterly miserable, suffering with a terrible life, like if these had been in countries where they were racistly kept down it would make total sense, but these aren’t even the people bearing the brunt of the South African regime!

In the US these characters would be “white trash”. In South Africa there is probably some analogous pejorative, I just don’t know it.

The characters are just so, so lost. So far from any happy life outcome. I just can’t imagine an alternative storyline where they end up succeeding. And yet are they really unhappy? I don’t know.

Conclusion

It’s funny I’m reading all these books about South Africa as I road trip around the Pacific Northwest. Often I like to read books about a place as I travel through the place. This is more like doing the opposite.

I must have learned about South Africa in reading these books. But emotionally I feel like my level of understanding of South Africa is lower than it was before. It’s one of those cases where every question you answer, you learn about three more questions that you don’t know the answer to.

My best book recommendation from these is honestly not even one of the ones listed, it’s that I’m reminded of Waiting For The Barbarians which I liked better than any of these. So go read that one. It is kind of about South Africa, too, although it nominally isn’t, and I didn’t realize it when I first read it.