Emergency Continued
Rive’s classic novel EMERGENCY CONTINUED takes as its starting point the tense relationship between older and younger generations of South African blacks in their decades long struggle against racism. A father’s search for his runaway son carries the older man on a journey through the confusion and violence that marked the closing years of apartheid.
Richard Rive is one of South Africa’s most important black writers, giving a nuanced and humane view of family tensions in the face of oppression. Tragically his homophobic murder just after he completed this work meant that he did not live to see his country’s struggle to recover from racial strife and take its place as today’s Rainbow Nation.
This U.S. digital edition celebrates thirty years since the first post-apartheid election of 1994 in South Africa.
“The events Andrew is involved in during his search for his son illuminate what turned out to be the final onslaught that caused white power – in its own self-interest – to abandon the trappings of apartheid. Richard Rive gives us an unusual glimpse of the dissension behind the barricades of the anti-apartheid movement. Andrew’s detestation of the coerciveness of the activists makes him a traitor in the view of some of his colleagues and students…. The resolution [at the end] seems an act of faith denying despair. This is apt, perhaps, given the uncertainty that lies ahead in the rebuilding of a South Africa freed from apartheid that Rive tragically did not live to witness.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“The fictitious author shuttles uneasily between the violence of the streets, where stones and petrol bombs are pitted against guns and Casspirs, and the privileged seclusion of his study…. But he also begins to sense the sterility of his withdrawal, the irrelevance of his liberal stance of principled individualism while the regime inexorably picks off its opponents by arrests and assassinations. It is this realization, in which one senses Rive’s personal dilemmas, more than the chronicled events, that gives this novel its tragic resonance, which is increased by the fact that it was the author’s last.” TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (LONDON)
“A ‘docu-novel’ about the schoolchildren’s uprisings in Cape Town in 1985, this sets the private experience of a ‘colored’(mixed-race) teacher [Andrew] against the violent confrontations in the classrooms and on the streets…. In his search for his fugitive son, Andrew is a committed and intelligent witness, who confronts the elemental struggle against apartheid and also the deep conflicts between the generations.” ALA BOOKLIST
“For its exciting plot, urbanity, and challenging issues this novel belongs in every academic library.” CHOICE
Cover art by South African naive artist Alfred Thoba, inspired by the famous photo by Sam Nzima of the 1976 South African schoolchildren’s uprising.