The Lion Sleeps Tonight
An essay collection that offers “a fascinating glimpse of post-apartheid South Africa” from the bestselling author of My Traitor’s Heart (The Sunday Times).
 
The Lion Sleeps Tonight is Rian Malan’s remarkable chronicle of South Africa’s halting steps and missteps, taken as blacks and whites try to build a new country. In the title story, Malan investigates the provenance of the world-famous song, recorded by Pete Seeger and REM among many others, which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda. He follows the trial of Winnie Mandela; he writes about the last Afrikaner, an old Boer woman who settled on the slopes of Mount Meru; he plunges into President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s; and finally he tells the story of the Alcock brothers (sons of Neil and Creina whose heartbreaking story was told in My Traitor’s Heart), two white South Africans raised among the Zulu and fluent in their language and customs.
 
The twenty-one essays collected here, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa; “a grimly realistic picture of a nation clinging desperately to hope” (The Guardian).
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The Lion Sleeps Tonight
An essay collection that offers “a fascinating glimpse of post-apartheid South Africa” from the bestselling author of My Traitor’s Heart (The Sunday Times).
 
The Lion Sleeps Tonight is Rian Malan’s remarkable chronicle of South Africa’s halting steps and missteps, taken as blacks and whites try to build a new country. In the title story, Malan investigates the provenance of the world-famous song, recorded by Pete Seeger and REM among many others, which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda. He follows the trial of Winnie Mandela; he writes about the last Afrikaner, an old Boer woman who settled on the slopes of Mount Meru; he plunges into President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s; and finally he tells the story of the Alcock brothers (sons of Neil and Creina whose heartbreaking story was told in My Traitor’s Heart), two white South Africans raised among the Zulu and fluent in their language and customs.
 
The twenty-one essays collected here, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa; “a grimly realistic picture of a nation clinging desperately to hope” (The Guardian).
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The Lion Sleeps Tonight

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

by Rian Malan
The Lion Sleeps Tonight

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

by Rian Malan

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Overview

An essay collection that offers “a fascinating glimpse of post-apartheid South Africa” from the bestselling author of My Traitor’s Heart (The Sunday Times).
 
The Lion Sleeps Tonight is Rian Malan’s remarkable chronicle of South Africa’s halting steps and missteps, taken as blacks and whites try to build a new country. In the title story, Malan investigates the provenance of the world-famous song, recorded by Pete Seeger and REM among many others, which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda. He follows the trial of Winnie Mandela; he writes about the last Afrikaner, an old Boer woman who settled on the slopes of Mount Meru; he plunges into President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s; and finally he tells the story of the Alcock brothers (sons of Neil and Creina whose heartbreaking story was told in My Traitor’s Heart), two white South Africans raised among the Zulu and fluent in their language and customs.
 
The twenty-one essays collected here, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa; “a grimly realistic picture of a nation clinging desperately to hope” (The Guardian).

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802194831
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 11/06/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 368
File size: 6 MB

About the Author

Rian Malan has worked as a journalist in South Africa and the United States. My Traitor's Heart was his first book. He lives in South Africa.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

1 Politics 1

The Last Afrikaner 3

Invictus 23

Season of the Leopard 30

Report from Planet Mbeki 45

2 Culture 55

In the Jungle 57

The Beautiful and the Damned 87

Great White Hyena 100

Jewish Blues in Darkest Africa 108

3 Disease 117

The Body Count 119

Among the AIDS Fanatics 151

4 Truth 165

A Truth of Sorts 167

The Queen 176

A Question of Spin 183

5 Light 207

The Apocalypse that Wasn't 209

The People's Republic of Yeoville 215

6 Darkness 227

House for Sale in Doomed Country 229

Ugly Scenes in Boer Provence 235

Nemesis 242

Messiah of the Potato Fields 274

7 Mutations 287

Did You Hear the One About Apartheid? 289

Those Fabulous Alcock Boys 296

Postscript 313

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