Synapse

by Antjie Krog

Overview

Antjie Krog’s career as a poet began with resistance to language and authority. This was more than simply youthful rebellion – it was a desire to free language itself from all constraints. In this, her first book of poetry in eight years, Krog once again disrupts language to create new meaning as she re-engages with her deep attachment to the land of her birth and its complex history. Amongst poems expressing her anger at social injustice, there are poems on the nature of memory and conscience and touching family poems about generations – future and past – in which everyday conversations resound. There are also poems about leave-taking, of which a tribute to Mandela is a highlight. Throughout, the language is raised to a new intensity. Synapse is the work of one of South Africa’s finest voices. Also available in Afrikaans as Mede-wete.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780798167918
Publisher:	Human & Rousseau
Publication date:	10/24/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Antjie Krog’s first book of poetry, Dogter van Jefta, appeared in 1970. She was eighteen. In the decades since this explosive debut, Krog’s many works – both poetry and prose – have been recognised and acclaimed both locally and internationally. For her poetry she has been awarded the Eugène Marais Prize, the Hertzog Prize, the first RAU (now University of Johannesburg) Prize for Creative Writing in Afrikaans and the FNB VITA Poetry Award. For her prose Krog has been awarded the Booksellers’ Choice Award, the Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture, the Alan Paton Award for Non-fiction and the Olive Schreiner Prize. Her best-selling account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, Country of My Skull, was adapted into a screenplay. Antjie Krog has been Extraordinary Professor of Literature and Philosophy at the University of the Western Cape since 2004.

Read an Excerpt

Antjie Krog’s career as a poet began with resistance to language and authority. This was more than simply youthful rebellion – it was a desire to free language itself from all constraints. In this, her first book of poetry in eight years, Krog once again disrupts language to create new meaning as she re-engages with her deep attachment to the land of her birth and its complex history. Amongst poems expressing her anger at social injustice, there are poems on the nature of memory and conscience and touching family poems about generations – future and past – in which everyday conversations resound. There are also poems about leave-taking, of which a tribute to Mandela is a highlight. Throughout, the language is raised to a new intensity. Synapse is the work of one of South Africa’s finest voices. Also available in Afrikaans as Mede-wete.