Dog Heart: A Memoir

In this memoir, Breyten Breytenbach journeys to the South Africa of his youth. He is captivated in turn by trace memories of the land that is no more and of the child he must have been. He looks at his homeland through the prism of memory to uncover a new landscape.. "Along with his wife and daughter, we accompany him to an estate belonging to the daughter of Alex Boraine who, with Archbishop Tutu, chairs the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which excavates and shapes the memory where needed "to serve as backbone to the new history of the new nation." Breytenbach takes us to Barrydale to the annual Muscadel Festival, where he is greeted by President Mandela who hugs him says: "Gee whiz, what are you doing here?" But even in these reminiscences, the eye of the artist and the voice of the poet are always present. We read of the ouvolk, the moon and stars and trees and shrubs and rocks that are petrified shamans, subterranean travelers, death dancers who change themselves into rocks to become invisible to those who invade the land.