240pp., illus., paperback, Penguin Books, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781776391813

Antjie Krog on her relationship with her mother, the writer Dot Serfontein.

Also available in Afrikaans as Binnerrym van bloed.

"Poet and celebrated author Antjie Krog has just published a majestic 'autobiographical novel', ... traversing the lifelong writing bond with her mother, Dot Serfontein ... Serfontein, also a celebrated editor, journalist, essayist, writer of popular short stories and prose, daughter of a Free State cattle farmer and formidable mother of five, including Krog, died at the age of 91 on 4 November 2016. For what she has claimed is her last book, Krog returns to her childhood landscape, not only to capture two significant chapters in well-lived, waning lives, but to excavate a deeper source of epigenetic fear, terror and anxiety always close by. This is a 'genre-busting' journey, a stripped-bare search for the origin of her own as well as Afrikaner neurosis, which runs like an exposed nerve through generations ... If you are able to read it in its original Afrikaans do so, but the English translation is nourishing" Marianne Thamm, Daily Maverick

Antjie Krog was born and grew up in the Free State. Her first poetry collection was published when she was seventeen years old, and was followed by another thirteen collections, including Januarie-suite (Eugène Marais Prize), Lady Anne (Hertzog Prize), Down to My Last Skin (FNB Prize), Verweerskrif (Protea Prize), and Mede-wete (Elizabeth Eybers Prize and Hertzog Prize).

She was editor of the Afrikaans current-affairs magazine Die Suid-Afrikaan and worked as a radio journalist covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings. She and her radio colleagues received the Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for their coverage of the hearings. Her book, Country of My Skull, a personal account of the TRC, won the Alan Paton Award and the Olive Schreiner Prize. She has also been a recipient of the Stockholm Award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture and the Open Society Prize. Her other non-fiction titles are Change of Tongue and Begging to Be Black.

BLOOD'S INNER RHYME, an autobiographical novel

: Krog (A.)

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