Philida, Andre Brink
Philida, Andre Brink
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Philida

Author: Andre Brink

Narrator: Carla Mercer-Meyer

Unabridged: 12 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/11/2013

Categories: Fiction, Family Life


Synopsis

This is what it is to be a slave: that everything is decided for you from out there. You just got to listen and do as they tell you. You don't say no. You don't ask questions. You just do what they tell you. But far at the back of your head you think: Soon there must come a day when I can say for myself: This and that I shall do, this and that I shall not.

André Brink—"one of South Africa's greatest novelists" (the Telegraph)—gives us his most powerful novel yet; the truly unforgettable story of a female slave, and her fierce determination to survive and to be free. It is 1832 in South Africa, the year before slavery is abolished and the slaves are emancipated. Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink, the son of her master. When Francois's father orders him to marry a woman from a prominent Cape Town family, Francois reneges on his promise to give Philida her freedom, threatening instead to sell her to new owners in the harsh country up north.
 
Here is the remarkable story—based on individuals connected to the author's family—of a fiercely independent woman who will settle for nothing and for no one. Unwilling to accept the future that lies ahead of her, Philida continues to test the limits and lodges a complaint against the Brink family. Then she sets off on a journey—from the southernmost reaches of the Cape, across a great wilderness, to the far north of the country—in order to reclaim her soul.

About Andre Brink

Andre Brink is the author of numerous novels, including A Dry White Season, Imaginings of Sand, The Rights of Desire, and The Other Side of Silence. He has won South Africa's most distinguished literary prize, the CNA Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.


Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on June 04, 2020

i have finally read an andre brink novel! hooray! and reading the afterword, it seems that this book contains characters, real people or imaginary, from his other books, which really just whets my appetite for more brink, because i have a bunch here, but without the "gotta read this or i will disapp......more

Goodreads review by Tania on September 12, 2014

I was worried that Philida would be similar to Brink's books published over the last few years, which all felt like thinly disguised memoirs, and did not impress me. I am happy to say this historic novel is definitely one of his best. I read the afrikaans version, and I delighted in his magic with w......more

Goodreads review by Jill on May 31, 2016

From exquisite pain sometimes comes exquisite beauty. Andre Brink tackles a harrowing time in our world history: slavery in South Africa in the 1830s, when brutal thrashings from those who held a Bible in one hand and a whip in the other were commonplace. Yet he tells the tale with such eloquence an......more

Goodreads review by Madeline on June 04, 2013

The thing I liked (well not really liked… appreciated?) most about this book is how it made me realize just how self-centered Americans are. The fact that when I picked this book up at the library I didn’t realize that slavery had been just as bad in South Africa is a tribute to my glorious USA-cent......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on May 29, 2016

A brutal glimpse of the violence of South African slavery, and a focus on the sexualized nature of much of that violence. The first half of this book is a very painful read, as Brink takes us up close to the minutiae of that brutality and, uncomfortably, to the prurient voyeurism that lurks just beh......more