A Dry White Season

New York Times Notable Book: This story of life and death in apartheid-era South Africa is “a powerful novel that you will not easily put down or forget” (Los Angeles Times).

Winner of a Martin Luther King Memorial Prize

As startling and powerful as when it was first published more than forty years ago, André Brink’s classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.

Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies—until the sudden arrest and subsequent “suicide” of a black janitor from Du Toit’s school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man’s death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair—a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.

“His most impressive novel thus far . . . [a] compelling angle from which to view apartheid and its corrosive effect on all of South African society.” —The New York Times

“Excellent . . . [a] harrowing and surprising story.” —Scotsman

“Andre Brink’s writing is built on conviction . . . A Dry White Season describes the triumph of tyranny.” —The Times

“Powerful and provocative . . . exciting, well written, and a literary achievement of the first rank.” —Houston Chronicle

“Impossible to recommend too highly.” —Time Out

© 2023 William Morrow (Ebook): 9780062031433

Release date

Ebook: November 21, 2023