MOUROIR, (bespieëlende notas van ‘n roman)
239 pp., illus., ownership stamp on f.f.e.p., paperback, mild edge toning, top edge & fore-edge foxing, Taurus, Johannesburg, 1983
Journal article by Susanna Egan
Published in The Journal of Narrative Technique, titled Breytenbach’s “Mouroir”: The Novel as Autobiography.
In the introduction, Egan writes:
“In 1975, Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaans poet, was sentenced to nine years in a South African prison for his anti-apartheid activities. He served two years in solitary confinement at Beverly Hill Maximum Security in Pretoria. In a television interview made after his release, he described living among the death cells—impregnated by the chanting of the condemned, able to see only the passing feet of his fellow prisoners… It was here that he wrote Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel, thirty-eight semi-connected prose studies of life and death.”