In 1995, South Africa's new, black-majority government set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the murders and torture that occurred under state-sanctioned apartheid. Headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission heard testimony from the perpetrators of the crimes as well as its victims and sought a way to reach some sort of tenuous closure.

Country of My Skull is a response to the commission's findings, but it is also a compelling meditation on violence and its aftermath. In the same way that The Haunted Land revealed how communism's sins still echo in the eastern Europe of today, Country of My Skull tells of the desperate attempts of South Africa to recover from the nightmare of apartheid.

As an award-winning Afrikaner poet and a reporter for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Antjie Krog is uniquely qualified to write this masterful blend of memoir and reportage. As she recounts the ways in which blacks and whites must confront the injustices of the past and the uncertainties of the future, Antjie also reveals the soul-searching and agony her reporting wrought on herself and her family. Her work fuses a poet's sensibility with a reporter's relentless pursuit of the story.

From the chilling testimony of the Afrikaner police who murdered Steve Biko, to Desmond Tutu begging Winnie Mandela to apologize for the violence she engineered, to the heartbroken voices of apartheid's victims, this is a wrenching story of a nation in turmoil, told by one of South Africa's most articulate and perceptive voices.

Editor:

Luke Mitchell

Publisher:

Broadway Books

ISBN:

9780812931297

Publication date:

August 2000

Length:

212mm

Width:

142mm

Thickness:

24mm

Weight:

349g

Pages:

432

One of the best books of the year.
-- The Economist
This is a deeply moving account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission--South Africa's attempt to come to terms with her often horrendous past. Antjie Krog writes with the sensitivity of a poet and the clarity of a journalist. Country of My Skull is a must-read for all who are fascinated by this unique attempt to deal with a post-conflict context. It is a beautiful and powerful book.
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Trying to understand the new South Africa without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be futile; trying to understand the commission without this book would be irresponsible.
-- Andre Brink, author of A Dry White Season
Antjie Krog has rendered the world a great service. This elegant manifesto for justice will haunt the soul long after the reading is done.
-- Douglas Brinkley, professor of history and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans
Here is the extraordinary reportage of one who, eyes staring into the filthiest places of atrocity, poet's searing tongue speaking of them, is not afraid to go too far. Antjie Krog breaks all the rules of dispassionate recounts, the restraints of 'decent' prose, because this is where the truth might be reached and reconciliation with it is posited like a bewildered angel thrust down into hell.
-- Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature