This is an impressive book, but my copy was also a feat of endurance. A hard back library copy, it was so heavy I could barely hold it up, oh for a kindle copy!But that would mean spending money. It's a fascinating insight into what could motivate someone to acts of violence under a repressive regime, in this case, South Africa's State of Emergency in the last few years of Apartheid. The main character, Thomas Landman, is such a nice guy, but he sets off a bomb which kills 6 innocent people. How to reconcile nice guy Thomas with his actions? And what were the alternatives for opponents of the regime? Once you accept that this is not a linear narrative, but a few weeks in a man's life, lots of flashbacks to his past, and lots of the incidents told from the points of view of other characters,then it's a realy interesting book.It's a long book, over 600 pages, and then there's the supplement, which is the family history that Thomas has been writing, which tells the bizarre stories of 13 generations of his Afrikaner family in SA.I wasn't going to read this, another 200 pages, but I got hooked. It was really a fascinating potted history of SA, including ancestors who had visions, married slaves, were giants, built arks in the desert and disappeared on them!If you're not daunted by a long book, I recommend this book for the thoughtful reader. Brink is an accomplished writer, and an afrikaner. I'll bet he ruffled a few compatriots' feathers when this book was published just a couple of years after it was set, as they were just starting to dismantle Apartheid. ( )