Writing in A State of Siege: Essays on Politics and Literature

Within South Africa the writer in opposition must wrestle with his own purposes as intensely as he does against the system. In these essays written over 15 years, a prizewinning Afrikaner novelist illuminates the relationship between art and moral commitment, exploring the distortion of truth in South African society, the perpetuation of the master-slave relationship, the failure of censorship to extinguish "the rumour of freedom." His role, as he sees it, lies in "countering the tactics of secrecy with exposure: the dark fears nothing quite so much as the light."