7 November, 2011 – The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory recommends to readers the just-published Writing the Deep South: The Mandela Lecture and Other Mirrors for South Africa by Ariel Dorfman.
The collection opens with Dorfman’s acclaimed 2010 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, and offers readers a sustained encounter with one of the world’s premier authors expressing a deep connection to South Africa.
In his foreword to the book, Centre chief executive Achmat Dangor says: “Ariel Dorfman displays a deeply analytical ability, yet never loses his poetic gifts. He has created a body of work that never descends into sentimental nostalgia, even though so much of what he writes is inspired by “wrestl(ing) with the dilemmas of how you confront the terrors of the past.’”
Head of memory programming at the Centre, Verne Harris, says: “Ariel never disappoints. He takes you out of the strictures of your own experience at the same time as drawing you into the depths of your own soul.”
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Published by Pan Macmillan South Africa under the Picador Africa imprint, the book is now available in bookshops. Also look out for a new edition of Dorfman’s memoir Heading South, Looking North, also just published by Picador Africa for southern African audiences.