was his event. All the literary lions were there, figures from the ghost of your BERNSTEIN . . . Literary prize. writer’s Eng-Lit degree. There are now about six major This year the first prize went to literary awards each year for fic­ Hilda Bernstein, a refugee from tion, but none until now was given Africa, who wrote a book about for unpublished work. her experiences of white dissent in . Clive Sinclair, charismatic ruler that bipartite country. of Sinclair Reserch, has stepped No other prize was intended, into the gap with an award of but such was the standard of the £5,000. The award is in one sense entries that Clive shelled out three restrictive, however: only works of other prizes: £2,000 for the run­ current social or political signifi­ ner-up, and two consolation prizes cance need be submitted. of £500. WORLD CAMPAIGN against military and nuclear collaboration with South Africa

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HILDA BERNSTEIN, the South prize’s criteria for high literary African women’s and black m erit combined iwith contem p­ rights’ campaigner, has won the orary social and political rele­ first annual £5,000 Sinclair vance,” explained Clive Sincleir. Prize for Fiction for her novel. To be published in the New "Death is Part of the Process." Year by Sinclair Browne, Clive Sinclair, head of spon­ “Death is Part of the Process” sors, Sinclair Research, made is 'based otra Ms. Bernstein’s own the award at am evening recep­ experience of political conflict tion in London recently. in South Africa. The judges were Frank Ker- Am outside view of people mode, David Caiute, Richard and organisations that plan and Hoggart, Mervyn Jones and carry out acts of sabotage, it Polly Toynbee. deals with the tensions of act­ "Hilda Bernstein's winning ual events and the complex | novel completely fulfilled the moral dilemmas tlhey provoke. Congratulations from all of us

HILDA BERNSTEIN, the South prize’s criteria for high literary African women’s and black merit combined iwirth contemp­ rights’ campaigner, has won the orary social and political rele­ first annual £5,000 Sinclair vance," explained Clive Sincleir. Prize for Fiction for her novel, To be published in the New "Death is Part of the Process." Year by Sinclair Browne, Clive Sinclair, head of spon>- “Death is Part of tie Process" sors, Sinclair Research, made is 'based on ;Ms. Bernstein’s own the award at am evening recep­ experience of political conflict tion in London recently. in South Africa. The judges were Frank Ker- Ani outside view of people mode, ODavid Oa/ute, Richard and organisations that plan and Koggart, Mervyn Jones and carry out acts of sabotage, it Polly Toynbee. deals with the tensions of act­ "Hilda Bernstein/s winning ual events and the complex novel completely fulfilled the moral dilemmas they provoke. Sinclair Prize for Fiction FOR any aspiring authors among' DAW N s reader­ ship, the National Book League is looking for un­ published novels for entry in this year's Sinclair Prize for Fiction. The prize, which is worth £5,000, will be awarded to the author of the best full-length novel which is not only of great literary merit, but also of social or political significance. Sponsored by Sinclair Re­ search of Cambridge and administered by the National Book League, the prize was first awarded in 1982 to Hilda Bernstein for Death is Part o f the Process. Read­ ers may be interested to know that Frances Bern­ stein, a Research Assis­ tant at Central Office and a contributor to DAWN, is Hilda Bernstein’s daughter. The final date for entries is 31st July, arid entry forms are available from Bar­ bara Buckley, National Book League, Book House. 45 East Hill, Lon­ don SW18 2QZ. Please include a stamped, addressed envelope.

/U s D lfo j) £5,000 awari fo r n o v e l Artist and writer Hilda Bernstein was last night awarded the first prize of £5.000 in the new Sinclair Prize for Fiction for her novel Death is Part of the Process. Mrs Bernstein, who lives in Roth well Street, Primrose Hill, drew on her personal experience of women’s and black rights campaigns in South Africa in writing the novel. PERSON OF THE DECADE

8 C O M P U T IN G F E B R U A R Y 17 1983 PERSON OF THE DECADE Clive Sinclair puts his micro power into a million hands

Mass appeal has turned Clive Sinclair into a million-selling winner. Alan Burkitt traces Sinclair from his start as a j ournalist on Practical Wireless to a future which may see him emerge as a motor car magnate ix months before the first Studies by the company in stake at over£l 15 million. But headed it until 1979 when rial College London was spon­ and computers in the past and copies of Computing West Germany, where sales riches are not new to him: he problems with current pro­ sored by the National Re­ a s, it is h o p ed , the Microvision Slanded on the doormats are running at almost 100,000 bought his first Rolls-Royce ducts— low-cost competition search Development Cor­ will be. of the UK’s dp community, a a year, found that mothers long ago from the rewards of and poor reliability — as well poration (NRDC). Then it In the second half of this former electronics journalist were often the driving force his calculator business. as difficulties in developing came to nothing, but Sinclair year we are likely to see the called Clive Sinclair set the behind the purchase, con­ The astonishing success of new ones finally over­ picked it up in the early 1970s unveiling of the results of the extraordinarily low price of cerned that their children his computers and his newly whelmed the operation with and again won backing from com pany’s collaboration with £79 for his first calculator. should find out about com­ acquired wealth have brought massive losses. the N R D C . ICL. They are working on a A decade of inflation and puters. In the UK, a Sinclair- him fame, with requests to First the NEB came in, ‘The NEB tried to sell off desktop work station, des­ hyperinflation means that sponsored competition in appear on television and give mainly to back the early the tv side of Sinclair tined to be connected to a price would be worth precise­ Woman's Own collected his views on the state of the Microvision venture, and Radionics to the Japanese,’ he digital telephone exchange ly £299 in to d ay ’s money. 50,000 entries. world generally. But he looks then the NEB decided the told Com puting. ‘I found out such as the Mitel SX2000 Though the calculator, called Sinclair has only started. uncomfortable in this role and company should get out of purely by accident.’ which ICL also hopes to sell. It the Sinclair Executive, was ‘We think the personal com- even in private can rarely be consumer products and con­ He protested, and after an will combine telephone and thought revolutionary, it provoked to expand on his centrate on instruments. computer, using the flat could do no more than add, views. ‘The NEB had diametrical­ screen tv tube to provide a subtract, multiply and divide Profiting from One of the many cliches ly opposed views to me about ‘The NEB visual display. eight-digit numbers. products with often repeated about Sinclair the way we should go,’ said The next Sinclair, product, F or the sam e £299 in 1983 it are that his politics are ‘Crom­ Sinclair. ‘The television side tried to sell internally codenamed the is possible to buy both Sinc­ a high creative wellian’, a description usually was potentially profitable; in­ the tv side to ZX83, is likely to be some- lair’s Spectrum and ZX81 attributed to Fortune m aga­ struments were profitable but thingsimilar, but portable and personal computers and still content zine. But Fortune (M arch 8 d u ll.’ the Japanese’ including a floppy disk drive have enough money for the 1982) was simply quoting an But Sinclair is both persis­ and without the telephone. flat-screen Microvision when puter’s going to be a one-per- unnamed company executive tent in pursuit of his ideas and unsuccessful attempt to find a ‘It will open a new m arket,’ it comes on the market this home product,’ said Sinclair and the meaning is vague. stubborn when opposed. The UK buyer, the NEB let the commented Nicholas. Obser­ sum m er. aide Bill Nichols. So far, Sinclair disagrees with the beginnings of the personal new Sinclair Research take vers point to the pricey and But the days of the Sinclair market penetration in the UK conventional view that a computer venture date back a over the project. The planned heavy O sborne 1, and suggest calculator are long gone. Sinc­ is about 3%, with plenty of strong manufacturing indus­ long way, to the days when launch date for the product is there would be demand for a lair Research, the company room for expansion before it try is an essential part of the Commodore and Tandy were about midsummer, and the cheap and lightweight version he founded in July 1979, has is saturated. UK economy. ‘Any products launching their first units. price should still be about £50. of that. But this too could be now sold a million personal ‘Maybe our market share with a strong creative content They claimed to be aiming at Sinclair Radionics suc­ seen as a natural growth from computers. Timex, which has won’t look so healthy in three can be made here profitably,’ the hobby market, but the ceeded when it had a new current products. an exclusive licence to sell an years time, but in volume he said on BBC2 last year. ‘As price was high and small product, dreamed up by Sinc­ So what will be next? As far upgraded ZX81 in the U S, is terms it will be ahead,’ added soon as a product becomes businesses were the major lair and developed by him and as Sinclair R esearch is con­ believed to have shipped Nichols. standardised, by evolution, as custom er. his colleagues. It failed when cerned, the new development 400,000 more. The record of the first three most cars have, it is best made ‘I knew that if I made a it had to compete with the will probably emerge from a It was the introduction of years will be pretty hard to live in less sophisticated and so machine at a lower price, say giantsoftheindustry, particu­ laboratory at Winchester, the pioneering ZX80, laun­ up to. Sinclair Research was cheaper countries to our £100, it would definitely be a larly Japanese calculator and headed by Michael Pye who ched in February 1980 at founded when Sinclair took mutual benefit. hobbyist product,’ Sinclair watch makers, able to cut was with Sinclair Radionics in under £100, and its successor, himself, some colleagues and ‘By the 1990s we must turn recalled. But the NEB ‘chuck­ margins and achieve superb the 1970s and returned to the the ZX81, which led most of some ideas out of the remains from the products of the ed the project out’ of Sinclair output yields and long-term new company a year ago. Computing's panellists to of his old company, the now material to products of the Radionics. Eventually, after reliability. Pye heads a small team nominate Sinclair as the per­ renamed Sinclair Radionics. mind: books, videotapes, tv A decade later, Sinclair working on ‘television and son who has made the greatest That was controlled by the programmes, computer prog­ R esearch has succeeded in the solid state products', but Sinc­ contribution to the industry in National Enterprise Board rams, design services, consul­ Sinclair sold same way by pioneering. lair has a reputation for get­ the UK during the past de­ (NEB), which had decided tancy of all form s.’ Now, however, others have ting cross if anyone tries to cade. ventures into computers and Sinclair began the long trail his house moved in, and current pro­ probe further. They cited his work on consumer products generally working on the magazine and car ducts are facing competition. He is a little more willing to ‘bringing computer power were unlikely to be successful. Practical Wireless and then How will the company stay in talk of what used to be a into the hands of the general Sales in the first full finan­ branched out to sell kits for to start again the business? Sinclair Research project, but public’. One commended his cial year, ending March 1981, electronics hobbyists. His first In one way it has avoided is now under his own direct development of ‘low cost con- were £4.7 million, with pretax book, published when he was much developm ent, it many of the earlier difficulties control: an electric car. Most sumer-oriented IT products, profits of £1.1 million. In the 19, was Practical Transistor emerged as the Grundy New- by refusing to manufacture of the £13.6 million raised by most notably the ZX80’ and second year sales of £28 Receivers. Since then, there brain. itself. Timex and Thorn EMI last month’s share placing has another his ‘marketing of million brought profits of £9.8 has been one more, the British Sinclair had to start again share production of the com­ gone towards that team. computing to the masses’. million. This year Sinclair Semiconductor Survey of after setting up Sinclair Re­ puters; Tim ex will em ploy the ‘It will take about two years He has brought ‘personal Research is heading for sales 1963, according to his entry in search. ‘To fund the develop­ workers on the Microvision to get into production,' he computing to the nation de­ of £50 million and profits of W h o ’s W ho. ment I sold my house and car plant. said. He has been dabbling in spite the Japanese domina­ £14 million or more. A few years ago, one o r two and got a leasehold house.’ Sinclair explains that in­ electric traction for years and tion of this market’, said The financial performance of the older electronics jour­ For even longer he had volvement in manufacturing the results of his persistence another. Someone else added of the company, which em­ nalists would occasionally re­ been nursing the flat screen ‘dilutes management time’, have yet to be seen. It is an that he has brought ‘comput­ ploys only 50 people, was minisce about the days when development, which is at the but his arrangements enable area in which the established ing into the home and within recognised in the City last they had worked alongside heart of the Microvision and him to stay aloof and say, companies — mainly battery the reach of children’. month when Clive Sinclair the young Sinclair, who had has a central role in both the when Timex employees pre­ companies such as Chloride Market research by Sinc­ raised £13.6 million in a pri­ suggested going into business. successor to the Spectrum and test at enforced redundancies, but also automotive firms like lair’s company indicates that, vate placing of shares, reduc­ But they had said no, and a collaborative project with ‘that’s Timex’s problem’. Lucas — have been remark­ while the first purchasers were ing his holding from 95% to turned back to their typewri­ ICL. At the same time the com­ ably unsuccessful. Maybe we almost all 25-40 year old m en, 85% . ters and regretted it ever The principle of the tube pany has to keep running, will see Sinclair turn into a car now the typical buyer is a The sale valued the com­ since. was invented in the early thinking up new ideas which m agnate. teenager— or at least a parent pany at £136 million, and Sinclair Radionics was set 1950s by the late Dr Denis will be as innovative and Alan Burkitt is deputy editor buying for a teenager. 42-year-old Sinclair’s own up in 1962, and Sinclair Gabor, whose work at Impe­ successful as the calculators on Computing.

F E B R U A R Y 17 1983 COMPUTING 9 64— HAM & HIGH, June 24. 1983

* Hilda Bernstein: "A period which should be written about." Prize-winning fiction to shield violent fact HILDA BERNSTEIN’S first novel, the early ’60s and which, even today, social or political relevance”. “I’m not so sure about high which was not only unpublished can be written only as fiction so as to protect various individuals. literary merit, but there’s certainly a but also unsubmitted, may still be “Ever since The World That Was lot of social and political relevance languishing somewhere in the Ours was published people have been in the book, and that’s why, I think, dusty files of the security police asking me why I never wrote about I got the prize.” what is was that we did,” she told me She also notes that when she in Johannesburg. entered the n ovel in thp mm[iptiiior-. last year, she had “no expectation movement in South Africa during the “In the end I decided that it was whatever” of winning it. war, and she showed the only copy of a period which should be written about “All I hoped was that it would the work to the nationalist leader — but it had to be as fiction.” help me find a publisher for the damn Walter Sisulu. Unfortunately, his home But Mrs Bernstein claims that all thing.” was raided a few days later, and Mrs the maior incidents in the book When it won the £5,000 prize she Bernstein’s manuscript was part of the actually took place — “either to me “couldn’t believe it”. “I was quite material taken and never seen again. or to people I knew well.” hysterical with joy.” So there is some poetic justice in Amongst the latter were Nelson The money will be used for travel, Mandela, Robert Sobukhwe, Walter and she is determined that it won’t all the fact that her second novel. Sisulu, Ruth First, Bram Fischer and DEATH IS PART OF THE PROCESS disappear into rates and car repair (published yesterday by Sinclair others who come high on the roll of bills and the like. Browne at £7.95), which also deals honour of the liberation struggle in “This kind of money opens up with the liberation struggle in South South Africa. possibilities in one’s life that just Africa, has won the very first £5,000 The characters in the novel, how­ didn’t exist before, and I intend to Sinclair Prize for Fiction, ever, are wholly fictitious. use it to do something worthwhile.” “The fact is that the police broke There may even be another novel Hilda Bernstein, who lives in the first resistance organisation, and as on the cards, but it won’t be about Rotihwell Street, Primrose Hill, is a result during the ’60s the movement South Africa. There comes a time, better known in this part of London didn’t take off again as it had been she says, when one’s experiences for her distinctive etchings of African hoped. become dated and, after 20 years, one flora and fauna and, more recently, of “That led many people to believe has to relinquish the past. Mediterranean market scenes. that the whole thing had been both a She remains, however, very invol­ She is a diminutive lady with a mistake and a failure. I believe that ved with the freedom struggle in South sweet smile, an engaging giggle, and a it was neither, and that what happened Africa, and is an active member of the soft voice, and it is sometimes hard to was something that had to happen. African National Congress in London. remember that she has more than once The ANC has developed, as she had personal experience of South notes in the prologue to the novel, into Africa’s prisons and that ultimately she Pressure an organisation capable of spectacular and her husband, Rusty, managed to and successful actions against the apart­ escape the apartheid regime only by “When I wrote Death ... I wanted heid regime, like the bombing of the walking all night through the bleakest to show that this early action played giant Sasolburg oil-from-coal plants in possible landscape to cross illegally a significant part in the whole develop­ 1980. into a neighbouring country. ment of the struggle into what it is More recently, the ANC claimed Come to think of it, there is a today. I was also fascinated by the responsibility for the car bomb which hardness to that soft voice, and a whole concept of how people react exploded in Pretoria. How does she determination about her that more under pressure: how some people can react to these events? than fills the gap between her benign break very easily and how others can “I have a mixed reaction, but bas­ appearance and personal history. hold out.” ically I am very happy about them. I The Bernsteins’ flight from South Again, this sort of information is say mixed reaction because I hate vio­ Africa was in the early ’60s, but since drawn from the experiences of people lence and I have always had a pacifist then she has been no stranger to the she knew at the time. Although she streak in me. craft of writing. She wrote, in 1967. the never joined Umkhonto we Sizwe “But things eventually reached a moving and powerful The World That (The Spear of the Nation), the under­ point where violence by the state Was Ours, about their last two years ground resistance movement, she was against people has to be reacted to by in the country. closely associated with the liberation the people, and all too often people More recently she has written movement as a whole and individual who write about South Africa don’t books about Steve Biko and the plight members of the organisation. take that into consideration.” of women under apartheid. The letter, The writing of the book started This state violence takes many For Their Triumphs and Their Tears, some years ago, and continued spor­ forms, from bodily moving millions of is now being rewritten and updated. adically in between the many other people from white areas to black areas Death is Part of the Process is a to the strange deaths in detention of activities Hilda Bernstein is involved some 50-plus people. People like Ruth novel about the change in the South in. African freedom movement from non­ First have been assassinated. Others “One of the discoveries I made have been gunned down in crowds, in violent protest to armed struggle and was just what a tremendous amount sabotage. It deals with the early suc­ of novel writing goes on in authors’ Soweto, at Sharpeville. cesses—and dramatic failures—of the heads all the time—when cooking and “The papers really tell a lot of lies people who laid the foundations for driving and doing other things and about what goes on. The Pretoria car today's organised resistance movement. even at social events while talking to bomb, for example, was parked outside It tells of the whites, blacks and other people!” a military installation and practically Indians who set off the first bombs The final rewrite took place at all the people affected—both black and against railway lines and electricity the beginning of last year and she white—had some kind of military rank. pylons and deserted buildings. But it began looking for a publisher. Six “The reaction by black people gen tells, too. of how the organisation was publishers expressed enthusiasm and erally in South Africa is one of joy, no matter what the so-called Bantustan infiltrated and then almost obliterated were complimentary, but they didn’t by the security police who brought new see any real economic potential for leaders might be quoted as saying. sophistication and terror to the pres­ the book. “Even when black people are kil­ sures of solitary confinement and Then she saw an advertisement led, their reaction is: ‘We bury our dead physical torture. about the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, and carry on the struggle’. And that's It is, in many ways, the book which is specifically aimed at prev­ what my book says as well.” about her own and others’ experiences iously unpublished novels not only of which could not be written at all in high literary merit but also “with Matthew Lewin 12 GUARDIAN WOMEN t n E C U A I

pictures of Hilda Bernstein by Marlin Arglcs 2S million gj®@ple^y©u can’t hang them all That definition held some Fiction" firmly stamped on She was the first and only rified by the idea of any kind What actually happened in taken up nainling and shows problems for the judges (of its cover. Communist ever to be elected of violence." Hilda Bernstein real life was that Nelson her work in her studio with whom 1 was one). What Hilda Bernstein turned out to any post in South Africa, says. " but it was the only Man.lela, and others includ­ justifiable pride. But sbe exactly did "social and poli­ not only to be a remarkable when she was voted onto the way left to go." ing Hilda's husband, weie clearly lives very much as an tical significance" m e a n ? writer but also to have been Johannesburg City Council in So, after Sharpevllle a deci­ arrested in 1963 in a secret exile — all her thoughts and Could anyone imagine a writing mainly from her own IMS. “ Only because after sion was taken by a number headquarters in Rivonia, a preoccupations conecrn South work of great literary merit experience. Though not her­ Stalingrad there was much of ANC leaders to turn to suburb of Johannesburg. Africa. that did not have social self a member of " Unkli less anti communist feeling," sabotage of government pro­ Someone — Hilda thinks she " There has now been a significance ? There is not Onto Wc Siiwe" (Spear of It Was a hard struggle, as perty — though not attacks knows who — had betrayed change in policy, a new much about politics in Jane the Natioir) the group of the only member of her party on human life. In 1961 the them. There were incriminat­ beginning." she says full of Austen, for instance. Would saboteurs she describes in — “ But I am a very good new '' Spear of the Nation " ing papers and documents new hope and vigour. " The she have been disqualified on her book, she was closely con­ u li 11 c speaker, which for about forthcoming sabotage Pretoria railway station bomb these criteria ? No. Clive nected with them in the early Cclpcd." she says, ESE attempts. marked the beginning of a Sinclair said with some Sixties. She was called to order In members — and it is tins It was ...... new stage in the fight — all thought. .lane Austen would At the presentation of Ihe the Council once for alle­ group that Hilda Bernstein’s trial that Mandela a This is ANC p i icy. he eligible. Reassured, the prize, wc all craned to get gedly " using her baby " in book describes. There were were sentenced lo life impri­ Can it hope t i ______a look at our mystery winner. her political campaigning. strong and weak characters, sonment — and in South belter than the ill-fated cam­ judges set about their work. Africa that mean; life. There were some curious She stepped forward smartly When making a speech in a fear and betrayal, indecision paign she describes In the Polly Toynbee and delivered a powerful park she had picked up her and some bungled attempts Hilda's husband was acquit­ book? “ This t im e it’ll entries — I particularly recall ted for lack of evidence and an enjoyable Watership Down- political speech about South bawling infant and kept talk­ as well as successful ones. hecome war. This time war Africa — none of the usual ing while she soothed it. But a bungled prosecution, but is inevitable." She is full of type .saga about ants. One or “ I think one of the prob­ was charged with other CLIVE S I N C I. A IR . the two w e re impenetrably mumbled and inarticulate she was voted out three years lems 1 had in writing about optimism for the chances of electronics genius who cap- the later, once the war was over. offence* While he was on the unarmed, defenceless unreadable. But the winner it was that, as a novelist, the bail Hilda heard that they lured a world market 111 emerged with relative ease ...... glare of publicity. The Communist Party was white characters Involved are blacks against the colossal personal computers, last year Hildas a Bernstein w is a political banned In 1950. In I960 came were about to arrest her and military apparatus of the and grace from the rest. How more interesting. They are she disappeared. founded a literary competi­ lucky, we fell, that the best animal first and foremost, the Sharpevllle shootings and tom between their white, South African Government. tion. He had clear principles book should also turn out to and only a writer (and a good the African National Con­ world, with the white schools ” But it is hard for a while " When they hanged those in mind, and he summoned be the one with the most painter, too) as an after­ gress was also banned. This for their kids, white holiday person to hide. Much easier men the other day. a slogan the first sot of judges to a undoubted political and social thought. She talks as though is where her book takes up resorts and so on. and their for a black.” She was torn appeared on the wall." she meeting to explain why ho significance. The winning there were priros she would the story. desire to change all that. The between the need to keep says. ‘There are 25 million had inaugurated the Sinclair novel tells the story of a far rather have won in her “ We reached a point black characters have more hidden and the need to see of us and you can't hang us Prize. group of political saboteurs life — for there is precious where there was no further devious ^objectives and moti- her children. a ll! " ' The English novel, he said, in South Africa in the early little now to show for so to go. In the beginning there It had hccomc increasingly The book, however, Is more had fallen into a decline sixties. Forceful and moving, many years of political agita- had been ways of organising Oddly enough, the book clear to both Hilda and her than a slogan. It is persuasive of introspection. Hampstead it was clear that the author and protesting but every time doesn't come acrosr. like lhat. husband that they could not through its sharp eye and writers write about the had first hand experience of Hilda Bernstein, born in we used them they were In some ways the agonised stay in South Africa. They perceptive ear. The sccires I-ondon of jmor Jewish immi- ‘ '.Vc ran a potato boy- young white liberal is less were now both so well known thoughts and feelings of the subject. i protest against the that there was little they set in white suburbia have Hampstead writers. Too few It did come as a great rants, left school at 16 anil convincing than eilher the an icy ring of truth. The surprise lo me when we were {y her late teens went off of the convicts in Asian hero, or Ihe black who could contribute to under­ novel nU seem to have anv fields, so they ground activities. Friends characters are more rounded experience of a world beyond told that this winning author to South Africa where an betrays them. The book ends and complex than it might university and the literary was 68. a woman, and that aunt was living. " I was ,___ , _ ~iw banning bov- with descriptions of what helped them to escape across be reasonable to expect from deeply shocked, and emo­ cotts.|Therc was nowhere else they had to undergo In the border near to Mafeking scene. The point of hi* new this was her first novel. It to go.; no other avenue of pro­ terrible journey, lost an author who has lived for prize was to encourage had been written in the tionally torn to pieces by prison, which of them ;iv e so long in a country where ‘seventies and had been what I saw there," she says. test or organisation. We had evidence and which refused. >n foot. writers to reach out to wider to turn to sabotage." good and evil are so clearly horizons. The £5.(100 first rejected eight times hr She joined the Communist There is surprisingly little For 20 years now the delineated. prUc was to be awarded In publishers. Now. at last. Hilda Party — the only mulli-racial Until then the freedom blame attached, even to the family has been living in an unpublished novel ' of .Bernstein's book. Death is party in South Africa — and movement had been heavily betrayer. In a world of such London. Hilda has been writ­ Death is Part of the great literary merit but also Part of the Process, has just influenced by the principles utter madness and arbitrary ing articles ami one or two Process. by Hilda Bernstein, of social or p o l i t i c a l . been published, with " Winner of passive resistance, laid terror it is easier to forgive short stories. Her husband is is published by Sinclair of tho Sinclair Prize for down by Gandhi. " I was hor­ the weak. an architect Now she has Browne. A trek in the London jungle HIGH JINKS that give you the beginnings of the struggle As the dig uncovers evidence of creeps: that was the peculiar FICTION against apartheid in South an 1 ancient, secret place ’ and skilful mixture in Nicholas Africa, and an appropriate where sacrifices were made, so Salaman’s first novel, ‘ The by HERMIONE LEE winner of the Sinclair Prize for the human layers are disclosed, Frights/ which took the lid off Fiction, which requires a com­ and the door is opened, as in the rural upper-class family life in DANGEROUS PURSUITS bination of ‘ high literary Mabinogion, onto ‘ every loss 1942. The setting of Dan­ by Nicholas Salaman quality ’ with * contemporary they had ever sustained, and gerous Pursuits is urban, the Seeker & Warburg £7.50 social and political relevance.’ . . . every ill that had come time is now, but the interest is DEATH IS PART OF THE (Rather lowering, isn’t this? upon them.’ The tyrannical still o n jh e connection between PROCESS Fiction should be good for you.) professor wants to revenge the war gJB vilian life, the manner by H ilda Bernstein Hilda Bernstein has written death of his favourite son on his corinSW deceptively larky, Sinclair Browne £7 .95 books on Steve Biko, on the wife, who plans at last to leave and the target is, again, English OPEN T H E DOOR lives of women under apartheid him. The beautiful Welsh researcher has been betrayed by civilisation. by Rosem ary M anning and on torture in South Africa, the woman she loves. The There are two alternating Cape £7.95 and her close knowledge, team’s alcoholic is mourning narratives — a commonplace THE WINDSURF BOY indignation and hope feed into the loss of his device, but here it makes an by Bel Mooney her writing. effective pincer strategy. One is Cape £ 7.95 wife. I found these characters Taking a small group in rather too collectively ravaged, the mannered voice of Roy Johannesburg— an Indian ex­ Croucher, 46, an eccentric terrorism, surveillance, and and the commentary over- law student, a white liberal portentous, oddly stiff. Never­ veteran of the war in the video production.’ Croucher’s academic and his wife, the Malayan jungles against Com­ enemy and rival in love is the theless, it has a quietly gripping radical daughter of a right-wing effect. munist Terrorists. Having veteran of a different war, suburban family, a black Afri­ fought for an English heritage Vietnam, and an expert in can organiser, another who is a The fatal flaw in Bel (real ale, woodlands, Shakes­ different ‘ pursuit ’ systems hard-drinking loner—she des­ Mooney’s writing is to be found peare’s language, pure women) (voice stress analysers instead of cribes the unlearning of passive in the word ‘upon,’ as in he returns to find it vanished poisoned arrows) in a world resistance. ‘Until we learn to ‘ Barbara gazed upon the river a lot,’ 4 She reached up and her in ‘ the Gadarene rush down the ‘ where everyone is being be like them, as hard as they hand closed around the one that slopes of trans-Atlantic replica­ followed.’ are, as ruthless,’ the battle can’t tion.’ Using the arts of Pursued and pursuer are both rested upon her shoulder,’ 4 A be won. Each stage of the battered brown sofa whose camouflage and defence learned outwitted by the latest kind of ‘process’ (painful in different cover sagged upon the rush- in ‘ the bug-infested swamps of powerful hunter, a millionaire ways for each of the group)— the Lower Bertan,’ he sets out, matting floor.’ The sagging Lebanese businessman for arguing, making bombs, blow­ prose of The Windsurf Boy is an alien in the jungle of modem whom England is just another ing up symbolic targets, going the vehicle for a touching tale Ljondon, to pursue his chosen slice of territory. On the way to to ground, regrouping, detect­ about a 35-year-old abandoned eyfMhBan American Managing a nihilistic denouement we are ing informers, undergoing wife who goes back, with her Exe^Hb of a Video and treated to a rapid build-up of interrogation — is set against small son, to the family’s Security firm, type of every­ farcical scenes and a clever each stage of the reaction: news holiday cottage in a touristified thing he abhors. display of cultural prototypes: blackouts, infiltration, torture. South of England coastal vill­ Croucher’s ‘ pranksome ’ tale the madame of a topless club in In prison, a bitter lesson is age. Our heroine has to come to (full of old-world phrases like Bayswater, the spokesman of a learned: ‘It was the greatest terms with her mother’s termi­ ‘nuptial state’ and ‘avenging software firm, an ugly Ameri­ mistake of all— patience.’ As nal cancer, a romantic passion harpies ’) is deployed alongside can lesbian ‘ into ’ ecology. It’s for the argument that innocent for the handsome young boy of the slick, slack prose of his a compelling satirical fantasy people should not be hurt: the title, and her feelings for her enemies, women who live off a done with verve and cunning, ‘ there are no innocent people.’ dead father. She does it in depraved consumer society and but the pleasure it takes in a In a now well-charted tradi­ phrases like 4 Remembering, men who deal in the software of fanatical reactionary ideology is tion of English women novelists with a catch of love in her espionage and protection, in a as chilling as the horrid carica­ (Jean Rhys, Barbara Pym, chest,’ 41 am alone as she is London which has become ‘ an ture it makes of the human Molly Keane) Rosemary Man­ alone, but in that aloneness she important world centre of race. ning has returned to adult and I are closer together,’ 4 and There is no play of wit in fiction after a gap of 20 years. yet there was an emptiness at Death is Part of the Process Open the Door is a grave, the centre.’ But kinder not to and there doesn’t need to be. It thoughtful novel about the dwell upon the details: it’s an is a straightforward, solid, uneasy cohabitation of an arch­ easy read, after all, and holidays honourable document of the aeological team in North Wales. are here. | a Good Read, Radio 4, 17 July (repeated 21 July): A Unicorn Among \ Lions: The Life of Edith Sitwell, Victoria Glendinning (OUP, £3-95); Social Studies, Fran Lebowitz (Ar­ row. £1-50); Good Behaviour. Molly Keane (Deutsch, £7-95: Sphere, £2-95); The Aspen Papers, Henry James (Penguin, £ 1 -35).

Kaleidoscope. Radio 4, 11 July: Death Is Part of the Process, Hilda Bernstein (Sinclair Browne, £7-95); 12 July: M r Bridge and Mrs Bridge, Evan S Connell (Sinclair Brown, £8•95/£4-95 and £7-95/£3-95); 13 J ^ O r i c U r & H 7 1 A O 11 Northburgh Street London EC1V OJL 01-251 4918 THE BOOKSELLER

13. BEDFORD SQUARE, ISSUE A f t H h i i a a * LONDON. W.C.1 DATED 0 9 JUN 1983

JiJty: Theatre in M y Blood (biography i-John Cranko), John Percival (Her- 1$t, £10-95); Horovitz, Glenn Plaskin (Macdonald, £14-95); 14 July: discussion on Dent Paperbacks’ new series of classic thrillers, Blind Corner, Domford Yates; Bulldog Drummond, Sapper; The Mind of Mr J G Reeder, Edgar Wallace, and Castle Gay, John Buchan (£2-50each).

Critics Forum. Radio 3, 16 July: A Mania for Sentences, D J Enright (Chatto, £12-50). This is the last in the present series; a new series will commence on 3 September.

Round Midnight, Radio 2, 27 July: interview with Michael and Mollie Hardwick about the new imprint, Evergreen Lives, with particular | reference to the first six titles, Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Karl | Marx, Louis XIV, Napoleon and Van Gogh (£3-95 each). There will also be interviews on LBC and Radio London (21 July). Stiff: The Story of a Record Label I (Blandford Press, £3-95): tie-in com- I petition to run on the Daily Mirror I Rock and Pop Club on Radio Luxem- J bourg (12 July). Publishing News J First £5000 prize award Sinclair for Bernstein The first award of the new­ about how capitalism used ly-established £5000 Sinc­ Methodism to tame factory lair Prize for Fiction Mas hands and chapel goers in gone to Hilda Bernstein for the Pennines. The title is her first novel Death is Part Where I Used to Play on the of the Process, a fictional Green and the publisher is account of her perilous cam ­ Gollancz. paign for blacks’ and women’s rights in South John Kilbracken claims Africa. the Times Educational Sup­ “I wrote it because a plement Information Book friend wanted me to tell Award of £150 for chil­ what really happened,” dren’s books with The Easy Bernstein told PN. “ I’d Way to Bird Recognition. written the surface of the Grisewood & Dempsey’s story of when my husband Kingfisher imprint pub­ was on trial and we finally lished not only the winner had to flee the country in my but three of the eight short­ autobiography (The World listed books. That Was Ours, Heine* An annual Literary m ann, 1967) but I had to tell Award for writers living and Sybil Marshall is presented with working in East Anglia was the real story as fiction be­ the £1000 Angel Literary Award cause of people that are still by Patrick Lichfield. inaugurated this year by there.” < Dick and Mary Gough, Publication by Sinclair Curses. proprietors of hotels at Bury Browne next spring accom­ The judges were Frank St. Edmunds, Ipswich and panies the first prize but not Kermode, David Caute, Great Yeldham. the second and third, which Polly Toynbee, Mervyn The first award of the are: £2000 to Gill Edmonds Jones and R ichard Iioggart. £1000 prize has been won by for The Com m on and joint Among further literary Sybil Marshall for her Ev­ third of £500 each to Philip awards Glyn Hughes has eryman’s Book of English Lathan for Sarah Singing won the £750 Guardian Fic­ Folk Tales published by and Aviott John for Chasing tion Prize with a first novel Dent. C->\ v 11 Northburgh Street London EC1V OJL 01-251 4918

NEW STATESMAN 10 GREAT TURNSTILE, LONDON,10 GREAT WC1 TURNSTILE, DA'ISSjjfJ JJJL 1983 objects to her daughter attending political tures who pinion their women with psycho­ demonstrations because ‘at the very least it’s logical cruelty - and manages to work well FICTION undignified’. She is like a garrulous ninny as an exercise in the macabre. Roger Lewis out of Jane Austen and her speeches are In ‘Natural Freaks’ an adolescent wonderful confections of infinite digression. daughter is repelled by her mother’s preg­ Yet she is out of place in Bernstein’s didactic nancy. She sees the mountainous belly as tract. More fitting is Pila Norval, who re­ grotesque whereas the mother extols its Pinball lishes working with the rebels because she beauty. These observations are made while hates her plutocratic father. Thrown into jail visiting Potter’s Museum of Curiosity, a she feels a martyr, and is hurt to be released Victorian freak show with its tableaux of without even being interrogated. taxidermised creatures in little costumes and D eath is P art o f the P rocess It is to jail that all the saboteurs ineluc­ mummified monsters in glass jars. The con­ HILDA B ernstein Sinclair Browne £7.95 tably go. The noises of chains, keys and junction of anthropomorphism with the Telling Tales doors create ‘an opera built on discords and secret inside the mother’s womb has an al­ s a r a mdTLMiD Journeyman £8.95 & £3.75 dissonance’. This is the real South Africa: its most gothic bizarrerie. The most alarming L ’Abb* C heart of darkness. What the government tale is an account of binding the feet of georges bataille Marion Boyars £7.95 finds unpleasant, it locks away. The guards Oriental girls to keep them petite. Un­ justify their cruelty as a means of ‘seeing the derneath the perfumed socks is the stench of law observed’. Dick is made to stand until putrefaction. This represents fettered fe­ As we know, the Caucasian ruling-class in he gives his statement. He is kept in the minity, woman imprisoned; but it is also ex­ South Africa derives much of its wealth and same upright position for several days with­ cellent as literature. comfort from the systematic degradation of out sleep. Indres also stands and is simul­ L ’Abbe C would like to explore the cruel­ the natives. The country is a version of an­ taneously beaten. Thabo is suspended by his ties of eroticism, but Georges Bataille’s no­ cient Rome without the culture: the rich wrists and metal clips are attached to his vel is extremely bad, perhaps because it is so men live in villas where their wives make a tongue and ear-lobes. The police begin to extremely tame. Dotted lines indicate cut tragedy out of a cancelled hair appointment electrocute him and this turns into a harrow­ smut. The author pretends to be an editor and the poor live in tin shacks without a ing pinball game. Each of the torturers takes who arranges the manuscripts we read dur­ toilet. Hilda Bernstein’s novel chills us into a turn at the control, seeing how high they ing sessions with his psychiatrist and the realising that such a grossly unfair social can tip the voltage. story concerns the temptation of a priest by stratification is unlikely to be destroyed. Sara Maitland’s Telling Tales are ulula- his libertine brother. Charles sees Robert as Her book registers the muted desperation of tory fables about womankind. The battle of an extension of himself which has unaccoun­ the blacks and the happy smugness of their the sexes started as soon as Adam missed his tably become devout. He must defile it to masters. rib and altercations have occurred ever since make it conform to the rest of his personal­ Death is Part of the Process monitors the when his sons punish the daughters of Eve ity. The author seems to imply a re-enact­ fumbled attempts of the aggrieved to make for not giving it back. Sara Maitland’s book, ment of original sin. The trouble with their passion felt. They concoct home-made nevertheless, transcends the limitations of original sin, however, is that it has made all bombs and set out to destroy railways and having to view men as the enemy - crea­ subsequent ones derivative. □ power-stations. Emphatically, death is not part of their process: they do not want to kill, only to register the existence of an Op­ position. However, the Special Branch, South Africa’s licensed thugs, descend upon the perpetrators with brutal glee: it is they who are empowered to start a process which can end, if they want, in a death. We begin by following Indres as he is chased through the night by the police. He recalls that the tiny rebellion began when an innocuous exhibition of posters at the Uni­ versity was ripped apart by the authorities. Those who found this over-reaction particu­ larly egregious become the pioneering ‘ter­ rorists’. We, too, are enticed into an alliance with the saboteurs when the rhetorical ques­ tion is asked: ‘How do you organise for change when organisations are banned and everyone who inspires others is taken and jailed?’ The passive resistance of Gandhi seems hopelessly idealistic and the intricate beyond their control and outside their constitutional procedures exist to fox and comprehension.' not to aid the operation of democracy. We aren’t allowed to demur; ‘there are no inno­ ROBERT NYE the Guardian cent people’. For Bernstein, to ignore the injustices is tantamount to condoning them; ‘ THE K-FACTORshows how the fusion of powerful to be silent is to clamour approval. Owing to imagination and sense of history has made Mr Caute one of our this, Death is Part o f the Process becomes most impressive novelists.' less of a novel than an exercise in ethics. We are expected to justify our points of view and Sunday Telegraph there is an array of characters who embody different moral attitudes with which we can The atmosphere of mounting panic and slipping control is identify. frighteningly conveyed.’ Paradoxically, however, the best charac­ ter in the novel is the one whom we are The Times meant to hold in the greatest contempt. Mrs MICHAEL JOSEPH £8.95 Norval, with her liveried black servants,

New Statesman 1 July 1983 27 11 Ntrthburjh Street London EC1V OJL 01*251 4918

m o r n i n g s t a r

75 FARRINGDON ROAD LONDON EC! B O O K S PA G E edited by Colin Chaml: The sky is alight WHEN the general facts of a interrogation — their environ­ mesembryanthemum and portu-l fiction are quite widely known ment must be changed , so that laca, a wall with trailing bells ofl how greater must be the stretch they can breathe. golden shower, a blazing bed of] of the imagination and the creat­ For the whites, certain inner zinnias. . . . ive effort to win and hold our confusions arising from the “It was the same delectable ttention. Hilda Bernstein suc- material benefits around them world in which she had grown eeds magnificently. have to be exorcised. There are up, full of visual delights and so many reasons for not doing tangible comforts: it was like • Death Is Part of Che Process anything. living in a great glass ball, is set in South Africa, the title Here is Margie questioning polished by others, from which . taken from a play by Peter herself: "At what stage do you all that was sordid or distasteful Weiss, Marat, the quote in full stop saying my child, my job, had been excluded." suggesting that life itself is an my home, my possessions? How The murderous, smothering on-going process and death but do you decide what is the most repression of the state is illus­ a part of that continuity. important thing, your personal trated in many ways, yet its The time is phe '60s with the safety and that of the ones you vulnerability made manifest in focus on a group, a mixed group, love, or the need to be human, tihat the successful acts of sab­ attempting sabotage of railways to have integrity, courage, in the otage are denied coverage in and government buildings in a face of so much evil?" the press. bid to break the grip of apart­ The author's stance is rock The authenticity of prison heid. Each one is incisively hard — apartheid is an abomina­ drawn, made known to us. tion that must be consigned to interrogation has been attested There Is Indres, escaped from to by those who have come prison, on the run. seeking to through. It is all here. Some warn die others of betrayal; EDDIE WOODS break under pressure, others Thabo after years of precarious survive — unto death. legality, having to disguise him­ reviews As already said, this is more self to become the Rev. Tomas DEATH IS PART than an indictment at a system Khumalo: Ralph and Dick aban­ of society. In its own right it doning The Council, a univer­ OF THE PROCESS is a gripping story, holding one sity liberal protest forum which by Hilda Bernstein breathless as to the outcome. they recognise is but giving to the Sinclair Brown, £7.95 It is no surprise to read that world a false impression of it won a literary prize for "a democracy. novel which combines high There is also their respective the dustbin of history — but the literarv quality with contem­ wives Margie and Pila, initially telling holds more than the documentary tract. porary social and political rele­ elded from a full knowledge vance." what is happening brut tihen It is alive with compassion, jght up in things: April who discerning of character and the As always with anything has opted for life in a cave inner feelings of people. The written about South Africa, one - • asks how the autihor sees the rather than conform to the im­ natural environment also is gra­ possible restrictions: impetuous phically described: outcome, the hopes for the Sipho who turns Judas. “For behind him now were future. The clue here lies in a Around these central charac­ the lights of tlhe city behind prologue, dated June 1980, in ters all the animaliity of the sys­ the natural humps of the land which a man watches an earth- tem. with its active executants and the mine dumps on the shaking explosion before bury­ in the police and security forces Western fringe, a glow in the ing himself in the nigiht. mouthing their inhuman moral­ sky. the richest city in all Africa. This is Cass, whom we meet ity while inflicting the most Deep dongas pitted the earth, ip the story aged 10. A brief, hideous tortures on their vic­ miniature canyons, their sides one-paragraph epilogue has. the tims. veined and scored by the rain.” same Cass — the whole sky is And in another world, the Pila, who has left home, re­ alight. “It was done. Years of tea and cakes and the self­ turns one day to visit her preparation, years of training. blinded population of whites mother, opens a window, “bur­ They had succeeded: or par­ floating along on tiheir vacant glar bars curled in iron leaf," tially." Contemporary novels of self-perpetuated delusion. looks out and sees “the rockery this stature are rare. You must The blacks, propelled by a pulsating with red and purple read tihis. sense of mission, have little self­ •IOWING STAR Thursday July 7 1983 ■OOKS PA G E edited by Colin Chambers] The sky is alight WHiEIN the general facts of a interrogation — their environ­ mesembryanthemum and portul fiction are quite widely known ment must be changed. so that laca, a wall with trailing bells ofL how greater must be the stretch they can breathe. golden shower, a blazing bed o f| of the imagination and the creat­ For the whites, certain inner zinnias. . . . ive effort to win and hold our confusions arising from the "It was the same delectablel attention. Hilda Bernstein suc­ material benefits around them world in which she had grownl ceeds magnificently. have to be exorcised. There are up, full of visual delights and! Death is Part of the Process so many reasons for not doing tangible comforts; it was likel is set in South Africa, the title anything. living in a great glass ball, I taken from a play by Peter Here is Margie questioning polished by others, from which Weiss, Marat, the quote in full herself: "At what stage do you all that was sordid or distasteful suggesting that life itself is an stop saying my child, my job, had been excluded.” on-going process and death but my home, my possessions? How The murderous, smothering a part of that continuity. do you decide what is the most repression of the state is illus­ The time is nhe '60s with the important thing, your personal trated in many ways, yet its focus on a group, a 'mixed group, safety and that of the ones you vulnerability made manifest in attempting sabotage of railways love, or the need to be human, tihat the successful acts of sab­ and government buildings in a to have integrity, courage, in the bid to break the grip of apart­ otage are denied coverage in face of so much evil?" the press. heid. Each one is incisively The author’s stance is rock The authenticity of prison drawn, made known to us. hard — apartheid is an abomina­ There is Indres, escaped from tion that must be consigned to interrogation has been attested prison, on the run. seeking to to by those who have come warn dhe others of betrayal; through. It is all here. Some Thabo after years of precarious EDDIE WOODS break under pressure, others legality, having to disguise him­ survive — unto death. self to become the Rev. Tomas reviews As already said, this is more Khumolo; Ralph and Dick aban­ DEATH IS PART than an indictment of a system doning The Council, a univer­ of society. In its own right it sity liberal protest forum which OF THE PROCESS is a gripping story, holding one they recognise is but giving to the by Hilda Bernstein breathless as to the outcome. world a false impression of Sinclair Brown, £7.95 It is no surprise to read that democracy. it won a literary prize for There is also tiheir respective novel which combines high wives Margie and Pila, initially the dustbin of history — but the literarv quality with contem­ shielded from a tfull knowledge telling holds more than the documentary tract. porary social and political rele­ of what is happening 'but then vance.” caught up in things; April who It is alive with compassion, has opted for life in a cave discerning of character and the As always with anything rather than conform to the im­ inner feelings of people. The written about South Africa, one possible restrictions; impetuous natural environment also is gra­ asks how the autihor sees the Sipho whx. turns Judas. phically described; outcome, the hopes for the Around these central charac­ "For behind him now were future. The clue here lies in a ters all the ^ilmality of the sys­ the lights of tihe city behind prologue, dated June 1980, in tem, with Its active executants the natural humps of the land which a man watches an earth- in the police and security forces and the mine dumps on the shakdng explosion before bury­ mouthing their inhuman moral­ Western fringe, a glow in the ing himself in the night. ity while inflicting the most sky, the richest city in all Africa. This is Cass, whom we meet hideous tortures on their vic­ Deep dongas pitted the earth, in the story aged 10. A brief, tims. miniature canyons, their sides one-paragraph epilogue has. the And in another world, the veined and scored by the rain.” same Cass — the whole sky is tea and cakes and the self­ Pila, who has left home, re­ alight. "It was done. Years of blinded populaltioni of whites turns one day to visit her preparation, years of training. floatling along on their vacant mother, opens a window, “bur­ They had succeeded; or par­ self-perpetuated delusion. glar bars curled in iron leaf," tially.” Contemporary novels of The blacks, propelled by a looks out and sees "the rockery this stature are rare. You must sense of mission, have little self­ pulsating with red and purple read tihis. 4 MORNING STAR Thursday July 7 1983 BOOKS RAGE edited by Colin Chambers The sky is alight WHEN Che general facts of a interrogation — their environ­ mesembryanthemum and portu- c fiction are quite widely known ment must be changed. so that laca, a wall with trailing bells of t how greater must be the stretch they can breathe. golden shower, a blazing bed of d of the imagination and the creat­ For the whites, certain inner zinnias. ... f ive effort to win and hold our confusions arising from the “It was the same delectable a attention. Hilda Bernstein suc­ material benefits around them world in which she had grown ceeds magnificently. have to be exorcised. There are up. full of visual delights and s. Death Is Part of Che Process so many reasons for not doing tangible comforts; it was like v. is set in South Africa, the title anything. living in a great glass ball, taken from a play by Peter Here is Margie questioning polished by others, from which d Weiss, M arat, the quote in full herself: “At what stage do you all that was sordid or distasteful is suggesting that life itself is an stop saying my child, my job. had been excluded.” 'V on-going process and death but my home, my possessions? How The murderous, smothering ? a part of that continuity. do you decide what is the most repression of the state is illus­ The tiime is Che ’60s with the important thing, your personal trated in many ways, yet its ( focus on a group, a ‘mixed group, safety and that of the ones you vulnerability made manifest in attempting sabotage of railways love, or the need to be human, that the successful acts of sab­ and government buildings in a to have integrity, courage, in the otage are denied coverage in ; bid to break che grip of apart­ face of so much evil?" the press. , heid. Each one is incisively The author’s stance is rock The authenticity of prison drawn, made known to us. hard — apartheid is an abomina­ There is Indres, escaped from tion that must be consigned to interrogation has been attested , prison, on the run. seeking to to by those who have come warn the others of betrayal; through. It is all here. Some ■ Thabo after years of precarious EDDIE WOODS break under pressure, others legality, having to disguise him­ survive — unto death. self to became the Rev. Tomas reviews As already said, this is more Khumalo: Ralph and Dick aban­ DEATH IS PART than an indictment otf a system doning The Council, a univer­ of society. In its own riglht it sity liberal protest forum which OF THE PROCESS is a gripping story, holding one they recognise is but giving to the by Hilda Bernstein breathless as to the outcome. world a false impression of Sinclair Brown, £7.95 It is no surprise to read that democracy. it won a literary prize for “a There is also tiheir respective novel which combines high wives Margie and Pila, initially the dustbin of history — but the literarv quality with contem­ shielded from a full knowledge telling holds more than the documentary tract. porary social and political rele­ of what is happening 'but; Chen vance.” caught up in things; April who It is alive with compassion, discerning of character and the As always with anything has opted for life in a cave written about South Africa, one rather than conform to the im­ inner feelings of people. The possible restrictions; impetuous natural environment also is gra­ asks how the author sees the Sipho who turns ludas. phically described; outcome, the hopes for the Around these central charac­ “For behind him now were future. The clue here lies in a ters all the anilmality of the sys­ the lights of tlhe city behind prologue, dated June 1980, in tem. with its active executants the natural humps of the land which a man watches an earth- Ln the police and security forces and the mine dumps on the shaking explosion before bury­ mouthing their inhuman moral­ Western fringe, a glow in the ing himself in the night. ity while inflicting the most sky, the richest city in all Africa. This is Cass, whom we meet 1 hideous tortures on their vic­ Deep dongas pitted the earth, in the story aged 10. A brief, tims. miniature canyons, their sides one-paragraph epilogue has. the And in another world, the veined and scored by the rain.” same Cass — the whole sky is tea and calkes and the self­ Pila, who has left home, re­ alight. “It was done. Years of blinded population; of whites turns one day to visit her preparation, years of training. floatling along on their vacant mother, opens a window, “bur­ They had succeeded; or par­ self-perpetuated delusion. glar bars curled in iron leaf,” tially.” Contemporary novels of The blacks, propelled by a looks out and sees “the rockery this stature are rare. You must sense of mission, have little self­ pulsating with red and purple read this. 11 Ntrttikurgh S trw t DURIRANT London EC1V GJL 01-251 4318

MORNING STAR ISSUE J O L 75 FARRINGDON ROAD LONDON EC1 D A tE D

^ MORNING STAR Tuesday July 26 I983 uiomcinuii/e edited by Mikki Doyle 'There are 25 million of us

tage of today,” she argues, thinking of the explosion out­ side the military headquarters in Pretoria recently; the partial destruction of the SASOC oil and you can't hang us all' refinery and the bombing of the Koeburg power station in the Cape. ijiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiimiiimiiiiim*: It was a stepping stone she HILDA BERNSTEIN, the first winner of the new Sinclair prize argues. The book's title is taken for fiction, speaks to jo Stanley about the political thriller of I AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS from Marat, by Peter Weiss. “Any animal, plant or man who South African life that won the award. I dies adds to nature’s compost heap, becomes the manure with­ out which nothing could grow, for works of great literary merit those people who slowly changed the agony of not being allowed E nothing could be created. Death but also of social or political to deciding that non-violent to sleep for; five days, who s is simply part of the process.” significance. action wasn’t effective enough. found themselves playing s Much of her pleasure at win­ That nationwide change took bizarre games alone in their S ning the prize is because of the place In ironical circumstances. cells. = Defiance valuable publicity it gives to the In 1956, six years after the Different grades of torture E Not only the current bomb­ fight against apartheid headed by Communist Party had been were meted out, depending on 5 ings reported in Britain reflect the African National Congress — banned, 156 people (including colour. In the book, Dick, the = International Day of the way in which that mulch of which she is an active member her husband, Rusty) were tried white lecturer, got better treat- E has helped a new type of anti­ over here. for treason. But the state had to ment than Indres, the Indian. 5 Solidarity with the Women racist action grow. Ms. Bernstein first went out to prove the violent overthrow of Black Thabo got sleep depriv- = There are also the thousands South Africa from East London the state had been plotted: ation. assault after assault, elec- E of South Africa of unreported actions In the Hilda Bernstein in her late teens. Initially she the emphasis on “violent.” trocution and drowning. E country and “the growing spirit was a member of the all-white After a trial that lasted four- August 9th is South African Womens D ay-the day on of mutiny and defiance.” Labour Party there. Then she which, every year, the world joins with the women of and-a-half-years, the African That spirit had been damped joined the Communist Party be­ National Congress proved it had Sabotage South Africa as a mark of solidarity and support. SLOWLY, reluctantly, blacks cause it was the only organisa­ always advocated peaceful down when Hilda left there to and whites opposed to apart­ tion to bridge the races. means. But by then people had “ These days,” says Ms. Bern­ Women have always played a militant and prominent part come to Britain in the 1960s. stein, “events like Neal Aggett’s 2 in the liberation struggle against apartheid oppression, and But by 1976 the uprising of the heid in South Africa came to decided they were actually going students showed it was growing to have to fight the racist death prove that the worst brut­ 1984 has been declared by the African National Congress realise in the late ’50s that alities are no longer reserved again. their non-violent stance would Council regime’s violence with violent as The Year of the Women means. solely for blacks.” “And it has subsequently not win the fight. Violent act­ Also, she explains, “it was be­ We invite you to share in our celebration of August 9th, 5 shown itself over and over again cause I had a deep belief in a And it is this period that The point of writing this book ion and sabotage were neces­ (her first novel after several non­ to enjoy our singing and visual displays, to listen to our in large-scale strikes, trade sary. And for their actions world of justice and freedom — Death is part of the process speakers and learn about the struggle against apartheid. union organisation and action which I was quite sure it was describes. All the major inci­ fiction works and an autobio­ they were imprisoned, tort­ graphy) was to show that “this taken despite the regime’s op­ possible to make and indeed be dents in it are true: they just Demonstrate your solidarity and support fo r South pression.” ured and murdered by the a part of.” didn’t happen to the characters whole early crude and sad ex­ African women, many of whom are in jail, or under house racist regime. Political activity was integral Hilda Bernstein has created. periment in sabotage was an The thing that really ex­ absolutely necessary part of the — arrest, or banned. presses how people in South Hilda Bernstein knows well rhe to her life from the late ’30s She herself was arrested in onwards. Nineteen - forty - three development of the struggle in Africa feel, she believes. Is the political processes she describes 1960. in the "State of Emerg­ TUESDAY 9th AUGUST 7pm sign that appeared the day when in her book. Death is part of the found her on Johannesburg City South Africa. ency” after Sharpeville, but was the Moroka Three were executed process published by Sinclair Council — the first and only never in “solitary” or tortured. “These early steps were inevit­ Conway Hall Browne (£7.95). And the prize it time a Communist has held such able, they had to take place. earlier this summer. Descriptions of these experien­ Red Lion Square, London WCI “There are 25 million of us won (funded by computer tycoon a post ces in the book came from “And they formed the basis Clive Sinclair) is appropriately She was involved with all comrades wtho’d suffered through for the more sophisticated sabo- ?iiiiiiiiiim iiiiiiiiiiim im iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~ and you can’t hang us all.” S < - + < £

11 Morthburfh Straat London EC1V U L 01-251 4911 THE YORKSHIRE POST LEEDS. YORKSHIRE 2 8 JUL 19*3 DATED

KIRSTY McLEOD on new fiction father’s wives, is less interesting MORRIS W EST’S new novel is than the periphery of her life in based on a psychiatric case-history, Cairo where her old nurse, Zeina, that of a confessed murderess regales her with horrific details of treated by Carl Gustav Jung. Tortured harmony peasant bridal customs, and her In The World Is Made of Glass cousin Marianne fights a valiant (H odder & Stoughton, £8.95), it is Morris West customarily weaves his Clare Boylan, the young Irish are masters of sly, jovial, intelligent rearguard action against an 1913, the year of E urope’s novels. novelist acclaimed for her recent comedy. arranged marriage. swansong. It is also a year of crisis The dust-jacket for Norman first novel “Holy Pictures," has Roy Croucher is an Englishman for Jung, at loggerheads with his M ailer’s Ancient Evenings followed it up with an accomplished of the old school, peering disap­ IN BRIEF: old master, Freud, and himself (Macmillan, £9.95) is itself a work collection of short stories, curiously provingly through an invisible Author from a Savage People by suffering from a protracted manic of imaginative fiction. “. . . titled A Nail on the Head (Hamish monocle at foreigners and promis­ Bette Pesetsky (Bodley Head, depressive illness. recreates a lost civilisation . . . a Hamilton, £7.95). cuous youth. With ingenuity worthy £7.95). First novel by an accom­ Jung^s own account of his world as remote and familiar as This is graceful writing. Clare of the SAS, he persecutes a hapless plished short story writer, a street- encounter with the unnamed killer Homer’s Odyssey . . .” After such Boylan’s style is deft rather than American marketing man who has smart comedy about a woman ghost­ is a brief, non-committal, undated bombast, even Mailer’s prose seems robust, her stories are not particu­ taken up with Chloe, a high-class writer whose client wins the Nobel paragraph in his autobiography. quite subdued. larly striking, but they are full1 of hooker turned English rose. Weav­ Prize. Funny and original. Morris West has dressed the In fact, his new novel is exactly elegant little twists concealed till ing their three narratives together Nothing to Lose, by Consuelo encounter up, has given it a date — what you would expect — a the last moment with feminine with a high-spirited malice that Baehr (Gollancz, £8.95). Timely the twilight year 1913 — and an brilliantly envisaged, bafflingly guile. The title story, set in never dissolves into outright farce. novel set in the American advertis­ emotional impact that brings described (with adjectives such as Metroland, describes a house-proud Salaman concocts an enjoyable, ing business about one, April patient and therapist into such close “urine-cursed”) picture of life in suburban couple’s attempts at stylishly original story. Taylor, and her attempts — through harmony that Jung, too, teeters on the Pharaohs’ Egypt. impromptu bohemian entertaining. Aisha is both the heroine and walking, jogging, pummelling, the brink of breakdown. In this vast 700-page tome, I liked, too, the first tale, title of a first novel (Jonathan dieting, and finally, starving — to Ramses and Nefertiri, their courtier “Housekeeper's Cut," with its Cape, £7.50) by Ahdaf Soueif. escape her prison of fat. "The World Is Made of Glass” is and plaything, Menenhetet, and mocking echoes of "Brief Divided into "Eight Chapters,” Death Is Part of the Process, by written in staccato style, like their dreadful gods, are seen Encounter.” cycles from Aisha’s life, it flits from Hilda Bernstein (Sinclair Browne, jottings from a journal or case-book. through the eyes of a four- With his second novel Dangerous London to Cairo to Alexandria to £7.95). Set in the early 1960s, a Its themes — love, guilt, sexual times-reincarnated citizen, who des­ Pursuits (Seeker, £7.50), Nicholas Paris. thriller with a social conscience obsession and self-forgiveness — cribes in fascinating detail his own Salaman joins the small band of The part where Aisha is a London about the duel between anti­ are not only a psychiatrist's raw incarceration in the Pyramids and English writers — Wodehouse and schoolgirl, fending off questions apartheid activists and the State material, but also the stuff of which his own embalming. Tom Sharpe among them — who about camels and the number of her police. WlOH, I'm —«? POISONED PARADISE HILDA BERNSTEIN’S DEATH IS Is Part Of The Process is her first possibility of peaceful reform. resort trays the longing of those who PART OF THE PROCESS (Sinclair novel, and it has won the first Sin­ to the physical politics of blowing detest the regime to see once again Brown, £7.95) is a novel that had clair £5,000 Prize for fiction “with up power-lines, government offices the scene of its betrayal. to be Written: it is in a way surpris­ contemporary social and political and railways. It could perhaps be said that ing that it has not been done be­ relevance”. The publisher’s own synthesis to those familiar With this sorry fore. This the book most clearly has, is perfectly acceptable. “Repression scene the book has no revelations, Or perhaps it has been, and sot although it deals with South is all around them, in rigid social and such people will find the de­ itself lost in the multitude of pole­ Africa’s generation-before-this, and conventions and the licensed bruta­ tailed explanatory dialogues perhaps mical essays and denunciations of some of that relevance has substan­ lity of the state. Press silence about a little unreal. the dire, damnable, and ultimately tially changed in the past four or their efforts is followed by betrayal five years. Particularly, the "patri­ and arrest. Interrogations, solitary In most people’s experience, doomed society, the beautiful and South Africans, of either racial wretched world of South Africa, so otic sabotage” that forms its theme confinement and torture, described has greatly developed in technical with chilling authenticity, break attitude, do not find it necessary continually denounced and so rarely in mutual conversation so elabor­ described. sophistication since the days when some of the group. Others find new these characters' attempt to blow strength to resist, even to the point ately to justify their point of view. Hilda Bernstein, London born up a train was frustrated because of death.” Neither a “liberal” nor one of and now again a Hampstead resi­ the rain made their matches too The book is by no means a the broederbond has ever been nor dent. lived in South Africa from the wet. tract. It is a compulsively holding could be argued from his or her 1930s until 1964. when she and her In basic character, though, the novel, with straightforward descrip­ entrenched position by logic, -which husband left, illegally, to escape theme is unchanged. It is that of a tive writing of a high order, evoking is why the South African mess will arrest. coherent South African group, of the beguiling charm of that ironic­ never be resolved other than by She has written many accounts the still - accepted three - cornered ally lovely land. Like everyone with force, and with tears. and analyses of political tricks and racial definition—white, black, and the inescapable love-hate feeling for torture in South Africa. But Death Coloured—who, accepting the im­ South Africa. Hilda Bernstein be­ James Camerory 11 Northburgh Street London EC1V OJ 01-251 4918 THE FINANCIAL TIMES

10, CANNON STREET LONDON, E.C.4 l « 5 KJG B8 5

Stories for a sunny summer BY GAY FIRTH Some rattling good reads have d la Secret Service shenanigans, this year Hilda Bernstein won it is possible — though never gether in apparently ordinary poured over the dam this and 14th century Italy d la the the first Sinclair Prize, a new easy—to be clever, and funny, circumstances, spiralling into summer; not much would-be first Pope John XXIII. You can literary award for previously and write “ proper ” novels as reclusive dottiness, dilapidation, literature. It is a time-honoured, take your pick d la w hatever unpublished fiction “ of high well, if you have the courage and death. Dangerous Pursuits careworn, probably faulty pub­ airport bookstand you happen to literary quality with contempo­ of your cleverness and funni­ (Seeker and W arburg. £7.50. 192 lishing axiom that serious—and be stuck in. Each has its quota rary social and political rele­ ness. Kingsley Amis did; and pages) is Nicholas Salaman’s seriously well-written — novels of serious reflection; just vance.” does. So does Frederic Raphael. promise to write a second novel are less likely to flourish under enough to confuse prospective Glittering prizes litter Clive Mr James does not, yet; and as good as The Frights. It shows hot holiday sun. movie-makers, not happy Brilliant Creatures reads un­ us^a high-minded Peeping Tom readers. James’s first “ novel im­ Morris West’s The World is proper ” for our times. Brilliant easily, accordingly. But it is —“ none of your heavy breath­ Made of Glass (Hodder and There is little confusion, less Creatures (Jonathan Cape, brilliantly funny. Take courage, ing behind the double glazing ” Stoughton, £8.95, 315 pages), happiness in Death is Part of £7.95, 317 pages) is so stuffed Mr Jam es. —getting his own back on the Jack Higgins’s Exocet (Collins, the Process (Sinclair Browne, with genuinely funny, genuinely Stephen Benatar and Nicholas decline of morals. Imperial £7.95, 237 pages), and Richard £7.95, 294 pages); Hilda Bern­ clever jokes that you may not Salaman are two relatively re­ military doggedness seeks Condon’s A Trembling Upon stein’s clear, uncompromising notice Mr James substituting cent novelists whose individual hilariously, to stiffen softening Rome (M ichael Joseph, £8.95, tale of conspiracy, sabotage, and caricatures for characters. skills and originality catch the British upper lips. The stand­ 292 pages) are rattling good licensed state brutality in South Notes and Index for plot, and eye—the cold, hard eye of the ard of ironical story-telling, like reads from professionals with Africa in the early 1960s. Her nervous send-ups of literary and reviewer—with respect. Mr Mr Benatar’s, is well above the 44 previous novels between characters, in all colours, are media celebrities for genuinely Benatar’s third novel, When I us.ual summer run: English as them. Solid plots and less-than- as vivid as the rigid social comic tilts at the artificiality Was Otherwise (The Bodlev she should be writ; adventurous. subtle characterisations rampage conventions and repressive and nonsense attached to fame. Head, £7.95, 270 pages) is his across La Belle Epoque a la second journey into old age: Not so Antony Beevor’s attitudes of her setting. Such Now Mr Jam es is easily Clevel­ whose novel The Fau«tfi-m Tact Carl Gustav Jung, the Falklands three elderly relatives living to­ a story is never out of date; and funny enough to know that (Jonathan Cape, .£7.50,. 208 ,es) reads like a comfort­ ingly old-fashioned political thriller, with enough new- i angled political horrors__ terrorists, computer systems, Northern Ireland—thrown in to raft it out of the 1930s. Nina Bawden’s The Ice-House (Mac­ millan, £7.95, 236 pages) begins to melt and drip a bit towards the end, but Miss Bawden is an established novelist who wver writes less tharrVeTC and this story of Ruth and Daisy, friends i efl»Who»d,— now neigl [J>ours in middle-aged mother­ hood. middle-class comfort middle-brow adultery, is beauti­ fully observed: a chilling, well- worked melodrama. There is a lot of adultery about in Nancy Thayer’s Bodies and Souls, too (Hodder and Stoughton, £8.95, 373 pages): an American imnort bristling with bodies in beds, souls in torment; super­ ficial cleanliness and godliness in 7a prettily middle-class New England setting, M. S. Pow er is a new Irish writer well worth watching. Hunt for the Autumn Clowns (Chatto and Windus, £7.95, 160 pages) pegs a delicate piece of story-telling to the Wordsworth poem of the same title. Set in a remote Irish island, to which a disgraced priest, Father Red­ mond, has been exiled, this tale of an idiot boy and a school- marm, Miss Hudson, reminds us that humanity is humanity wherever we find it. that those who may seem less than human are no less human than our­ selves, and that unless we seek humanity in our hearts there is less hope of a more humane world. Mr Power makes the point in a first novel of excep­ tional subtlety, never forgetting that an Irishman’s first duty is to his story-spinning. Four collections of short stories provide a lucky dip of “ good reads ” and real sur­ prises. Robert Nye’s distinctive lone of voice sounds spasmodic­ ally through The Facts of Life and Other Fictions (H am ish Ham ilton, £7.95, 153 pages): 16 stories, some marvellously subtle, others mere experiments with dreams and language—and why not. Hugh Fleetwood’s six stories. A Dance to the Glory of God (Hamish Hamilton, £8.95, 183 pages), look at people who have to invent their own world in order to keep a foot­ hold on the real one: story­ telling about story-telling; sad; frightening. John Gardner, who died last year,, has a fitting memorial in The Art of Living and Other Stories (Seeker and Warburg, £8.50, 283 pages): ten tales ranging from the Middle Ages to the mid-1950s, the Mid- West to lands of Make Believe. And Clare Boylan’s 15 stories in A Nail on the Head (H am ish H am ilton, £8.95, 135 pages) nail human relationships, especially in love, more often than not in a collection evidently hustled out of cold storage to follow her recent first novel, Holy Pictures. The novel is better. But her stories extravagantly written, rattle w ith life. fJirirlrur ' B r a i v n C - » 11 florthburflfc Strwt London EC1V OJL 01-251 4918

THE BO O K SELLER 13, •EDFOWD SOUARE, « « AUG LONDON, W.C.1 0 6 (983

BBC World of Books has recorded( interviews with: Hilda Bernstein, win-1 ner of the Sinclair Prize for fiction, fori Death is Part of the Process (Sinclair \ Browne. £7-95); Melvyn Bragg. \ Melvyn Bragg's Art Series (Piatkus. £5-95 each; one title at £6-95); John Gribbin. Future Weather (Pelican, £3-50): Sarah Pooley. illustrator of the Your Body Series. Vols 1 & 2, Skin and Bone and Blood and Lungs. Dr Gwynn Vevers (Bodley Head. £3-75 each): Zee Edged, joint winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize, for Beka Lamb (Heinemann. £1-50); plus a paperback round-up by Edward Blishen. HUDDERSFIELD DAILY EXAMINER

HUDDERSFIELD, ISSUE , YORKSHIRE DATED2* JUL t983

Death Is Part Of The Process. Hilda Bernstein/Sinclair ____ Browne, £7.95 HILDA BERN- But its literary style is pe­ group ot human rights | STEIN’S novel was re­ destrian rather than of high workers move from paci­ merit and the story line is fism to militancy becomes jected by a growing list simple but thin. dialectic and, sad to say, of publishers over the Mrs Bernstein lived in slightly boring. years until it won the South Africa from 1933 to Their attempts are, first Sinclair Prize for 1964 and both she and her inevitably, doomed, but Fiction. husband were politically ac­ apart from one charismatic tive. They left illegally black African the partici­ The award was offered when they were under pants evoke little sympathy. for a previously unpub­ threat o f arrest. And, despite high and lished novel that combined worthy motives, Mrs Ber­ “high literary merit and a She has published non­ fiction works about that nstein falls into cliche when strong story line with social one white woman makes or political significance ap­ tragic country and uses her wide experience to give the amends for her privilege by plicable to the world bedding an Indian fugitive. today.” scenes, atmosphere and conditions the stamp of The Indian, if, of course, Her book is about the authenticity. cultured and good looking. struggle against apartheid in South Africa and thereby But her attempt to ex­ fulfils the latter condition. plain why a multi-racial Denis Kilcommons Stories for a sunny summer BY GAY FIRTH Some rattling good reads have a la Secret Service shenanigans, this year Hilda Bernstein won it is possible — though never gether in apparently ordinary poured over the dam this and 14th century Italy a la the the first Sinclair Prize, a new easy—to be clever, and funny, circumstances, spiralling into summer; not much would-be first Pope John XXIH. You can literary award for previously and write “ proper ” novels as reclusive dottiness, dilapidation, literature. It is a time-honoured, take your pick a la whatever unpublished fiction “ of high well, if you have the courage and death. Dangerous Pursuits careworn, probably faulty pub­ airport bookstand you happen to literary quality with contempo- of your cleverness and funni­ (Seeker and W arburg, £7.50, 192 lishing axiom that serious—and be stuck in. Each has its quota rary social and political rele- ness. Kingsley Amis did; and pages) is Nicholas Salaman’s seriously well-written — novels of serious reflection; just vance.” _ does. So does Frederic Raphael. promise to write a second novel are less likely to flourish under enough to confuse prospective Rlitlering prizes utter Clive Mr James does not, yet; and as good as The Frights. It shows hot holiday sun. movie-makers, not happy ,Iames.s flrst .. n0Te, im. Brilliant Creatures reads un­ us a high-minded Peeping Tom ■•proper for our times. Brilliant easily, accordingly. But it is —“ none of your heavy breath­ Morris West’s The World is brilliantly funny. Take courage, Made of Glass (Hodder and There is little confusion, less [Creatures (Jonathan Cape, ing behind the double glazing” £7.95, 317 pages) is so stuffed Mr James. —getting his own back on the Stoughton, £8.95, 315 pages), happiness in Death is Part of Stephen Benatar and Nicholas Jack Higgins’s Exocet (Collins, the Process (Sinclair Browne, with genuinely funny, genuinely decline of morals. Imperial £7.95, 294 pages): Hilda Bern­ clever jokes that you may not Salaman are two relatively re­ military dogged ness seeks, £7.95. 237 pages), and Richard1 cent novelists whose individual Condon’s A Trembling Upon stein’s clear, uncompromising notice Mr James substituting hilariously, to stiffen softening Rome (Michael Joseph, £8.95, tale of conspiracy, sabotage, and caricatures for characters, skills and originality catch the British upper lips. The stand- 292 pages) are rattling good licensed state brutality in South Notes and Index for plot, and eye—the cold, hard eye of the ard of ironical story-telling, like reads from professionals with Africa in the early 1960s. Her nervous send-ups of literary and reviewer—with respect. Mr Mr Benatar’s. is well above the 44 previous novels between character's, in all colours, are media celebrities for genuinely Benatar’s third npvel, When I usual summer run: English as them. Solid plots and less-than- vivid as the rigid social comic tilts at the artificiality Was Otherwise (The Bodley she should be writ; adventurous. and nonsense attached to fame. Head, £7.95. 270 pages) is his subtle characterisations rampage conventions and repressive r-nonn/i inumpv into old ace- so Antony Beevors, across La Belle Epoque a la attitudes of her setting. Such Now Mr James is easily clever Carl Gustav Jung, the Falklands a story is never out of date: and funny enough to know that three elderly relatives living to- Pact2r~ pages) reads like a comf I old-fashioned' nol: HAMPSTEAD & HIGHGATE EXPRESS

HAMPSTEAD LONDON NW3 A AUG

HAM & HIGH, July 29, 1983—57 POISONED PARADISE HILDA BERNSTEIN'S DEATH IS Is Part Of The Process is her first possibility of peaceful reform, resoit trays the longing of those who PART OF THE PROCESS (Sinclair novel, and it has won the first Sin­ to the physical politics of blowing detest the regime to see once again Brown, £7.95) is a novel that had clair £5,000 Prize for fiction “with up power-lines, government offices the scene of its betrayal. to be written: it is in a way surpris­ contemporary social and political and railways. It could perhaps be said that ing that it has not been done be­ relevance”. The publisher’s own synthesis to those familiar with this sorrv fore. This the book most clearly has, is perfectly acceptable. “Repression scene the book has no revelations, Or perhaps it has been, and got although it deals with South is all around them, in rigid social and such people will find the de­ itself lost in the multitude of pole­ Africa's generation-before-this, and conventions and the licensed bruta­ tailed explanatory dialogues perhaps mical essays and denunciations of some of that relevance has substan­ lity of the state. Press silence about a little unreal. the dire, damnable, and ultimately tially changed in the past four or their efforts is followed by betrayal five years. Particularly, the “patri­ and arrest. Interrogations, solitary In most people's experience, doomed society, the beautiful and South Africans, of either racial wretched world of South Africa, so otic sabotage” that forms its theme confinement and torture, described has greatly developed in technical with chilling authenticity, break attitude, do not find it necessary continually denounced and so rarely in mutual conversation so elabor­ described. sophistication since the days when some of the group. Others find new these characters’ attempt to blow strength to resist, even to the point ately to justify their point of view. Hilda Bernstein, London born up a train was frustrated because of death.” Neither a “liberal” nor one of and now again a Hampstead resi­ the rain made their matches too The book is by no means a the broederbond has ever been nor dent, lived in South Africa from the wet. tract. It is a compulsively holding could be argued from his or her 1930s until 1964, when she and her In basic character, though, the novel, with straightforward descrip­ entrenched position by logic, which husband left, illegally, to escape theme is unchanged. It is that of a tive writing of a high order, evoking is why the South African mess will arrest. coherent South African group, of the beguiling charm of .that ironic­ never be resolved other than by She has written many accounts the still - accepted three - cornered ally lovely land. Like everyone with force, and with tears. and analyses of political tricks and racial definition—white, black, and the inescapable love-hate feeling for torture in South Africa. But Death Coloured—who, accepting the im­ South Africa, Hilda Bernstein b

DATED 17 SEP I983 Long list for the Booker

b r o w n p a p e r envelope arrived Wedding: Maggie Ross. Milena Allen Lane: Rodney Hall. Just on my desk the other day Constable: Harriett Gilbert, The Relations: Charles Maclean. The Ashowing no signs whence it came. Riding Mistress; David Hughes. The Watcher; Penelope Mortimer. The And in it. once again. I found a list Imperial German Dinner Service Handyman: Carolyn Slaughter. The of all the titles submitted by p u b Daedalus: Robert Irwin. The Banquet lishers for the 1983 Booker McCon­ Arabian Nightmare Macmillan: Nina Bawden. The Ice nell Prize for Fiction. One hundred Dent: David Thompson. Dan House; William Cooper. Scenes titles in all. diprat's Days from Later Life: Ann Schlee. The Here it is. But keep in mind, dear Andre Deutsch: Sally Beattie, A n­ Proprietor; Mary Wesley. Jumping exclud e author, before you reach nie’s Storv; Molly Keane. Time the Queue for tMplephone to your publisher, After Time: Roger King. Horizontal Methuen: Maureen Duffy. that nBjudges are entitled to call in Hotel Londoners: Sarah Gainham. The titles in addition to these (and that Duckworth: Alice Thomas Ellis. The Tiger, Life: David Nobbs. Second some publishers witirbioated fiction Other Side o f the Fire: Sian James. from Last in the Sack Race lists are sometimes thought to leave Dragons and Roses: Carol Jones. Murray: Meira Chand. The Bonsai some titles off their Booker entries in Late in the Day: Crispin Kitto. The Tree: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In the confidence that they will be Antarctica Cookbook Search of Love and Beauty called in by the judges anyway). Faber: Lawrence Durrell. Sebastian, Peter Owen: Peter Vansittart. Three Here we go: or Ruling Passions; Maggie Gee. S ix Seven Alison Press: Nicholas Salaman. The Burning Book: Jane Rogers. Piatkus: Peter de Polnav. The Other Dangerous Pursuits Separate Tracks S elf W H Allen: Peter de Polnay. O f Victor Gollancz: Georgina Lewis. Prosperity Publications: Lola Halil. Venison and Victims The Winter Tree: Robin Lloyd Aphrodite's Lament Allison & Busby: Aidan Higgins. Jones. Lord of the Dance: D M Robson Books: Vernon Scannell. Bornholm Night-Ferry; Katharine Thomas. Ararat: Ian Watson. Ring o f Truth Moore, Summ er at the Haven Chekhov’s Journey Routledge: Sasha Moorsom. In the Bodley Head: Peter Dickinson. Granada: Ted Allbeury. Pay Any Shadow o f the Paradise Tree Hindsight-, Moris Farhi. The Last of Price: G F Newman, the Nation's St Pancras Press: Peter Preston. the Days: William Trevor. Fools o f Health; John Ralston Paul. Baraka: Vertical Line Fortune; David Wheldon, The Alan Sillitoe. The Lost Flying Boat Salamander Press: John Fuller. Fly­ Viaduct Hamish Hamilton: Peter Ackroyd, ing to Nowhere Brilliance Books: Peter Hazeldine. The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde: Seeker: Malcolm Bradbury. Rates o f Rapture o f the Deep Anita Mason. The Illusionists: Shiva Exchange: Melvyn Bragg. Love and Cape: Anita Brookner. Look at Me; NaipauL A Hot Country; A N Glory : J M Coetzee. Life and Times George MacBeth. Anna's Book: Wilson. Scandal o f Michael K Berna^^MacLaverty. Cal: Brian Heinemann: Penelope Lively. Per Sheba: Jo Jones. Come. Come MooHW Cold Heaven: Salman feet Happiness: Graham Swift. Sinclair Browne: Hilda Bernstein. Rushdie. Shame: Lisa St Aubin de Waterland Death is Part o f the Process Teran. Slow Train to Milan: Emma Hodder: Janice Elliott. Magic: Janet Springwood Books: Derek Clifford, Tennant. Woman Beware Woman Turner Hospital. The Ivory Swing: The Affair o f the Forest Chatto & Windus: Howard William Mcllvanney. The Papers of Virtuoso Books: Soloman Candy. Jacobson. Coming From Behind: Tony Visitch: Gillian Tindall. Look The Next Prime Minister Neil Jordan. The Dream o f a Beast: ing Forward Weidenfeid: Paul Ferris. A Distant Jessie Kesson. Another Time Hutchinson: Zulfikar Ghose. Don Country: Monica Furlong. Cousins: Another Place: Iris Murdoch. The Bueno: Francis King. Act o f Dark Patrick McGinley. Foxprints: Har Philosopher's Pupil: Patricia ness: Stanley Middleton. Entry into riet Waugh. Kate's House Roberts. Tender prey Jerusalem Women's Press: Elizabeth Baines. Robin Clark: Helen Stancey. Michael Joseph: David Caute. The The Birth Machine: Sheelagh Words: J V Stevenson. Through the K Factor; Barry Hines. Unfinished Kanelli. The Nets: Michele Roberts. Kaleidoscope Business: Jonathan Smith. Come The Visitation William Collins: Gillian Avery. Back: Jane Somers. Diary o f a Good World’s Work: I 1 Magdalen. Ana Onlookers; John Moat. Mai's Neighbour P ^ HB the boy had driven the tractor without per­ mission. He claimed a goat from the child’s parents as compensation for his tractor! It should be remembered that the par­ APARTHEID- ents do not want their children to work, but have no alternative. The children’s meagre THE FACTS income stands between them and starvation. Besides, the rights of residence and of move­ ment of Blacks are monitored and controlled Hilda Bernstein: Death is Part o f the Process, through the pass laws, influx control meas­ (Sinclair Browne, London, 1983, £7.95) ures and the migrant labour system. Child labour is morally abominable. This novel is set mainly in Johannesburg, Poverty, deprivation, illiteracy, drug addic­ where the writer was politically active for tion, malnutrition, prostitution, endemic al­ many years, and it deals with the beginnings coholism, etc, are its side effects. of Umkhonto We Sizwe, in the early sixties. What is often forgotten is that agriculture A small network of sabotage groups is set up, - which makes use of child labour - contrib­ composed of people who want to fight op­ utes a lot to South Africa’s gross domestic pression and injustice. The groups train, carry product, and agricultural exports also make out acts of sabotage, and are broken up by an important contribution to South Africa’s arrest; as one comrade turns out to be a revenue. Besides the economic angle, there is police informer, and others are, in different also the political angle. South Africa’s ability ways, destroyed in the interrogation room, to export food when millions in the the members of the groups learn the reality of country have no food has become an im­ illegal struggle. At the same time, a new portant element in the racist government’s generation of freedom fighters is watching, plan for the creation of the so-called constel­ learning and growing up. lation of South African states under South Perhaps the strongest presence in the African hegemony. It was none other than the novel is that of light, which accompanies all Minister of Agriculture who, in 1979, stated crucial events in the plot. Sunlight is Vibrant’ that “full grain silos will mean we can talk in Dick’s garden the day his concern over his and negotiate from a position of strength. servant causes him to make his choice; it re­ With rising populations all around us, more flects off metal in ‘blinding flashes’ at the and more black states will depend to some moment the police capture Thabo, the extent on this country for basic foods. It is bravest of them all. When Indres and Sipho strongly in our interests that we should be blow up the pylon, the light is ‘incandes­ able to meet the demand.” cent,’ and it is ‘brilliant’ at the end of the That sums it all up. Those who are story, when Cass carries out his triumphant against sanctions because apartheid is an ‘in­ act of resistance. The strong natural light of ternal’ problem of an ‘independent’ state the highveld is in this way identified with should listen. the fires that are the harbingers of freedom; This booklet is valuable for many reas­ Africa was created light, the novelist suggests, ons. But it has serious weaknesses. In parts it and to light it will return. tends to moralise on the injustices and mal­ The absence of light plays an opposite practices of apartheid. Its conclusions are role in this system of imagery. In the power­ weak. What we need is a strategy that will ful description of Thabo’s suffering and link the question of child labour to the whole death under torture, it is ‘darkness’ that question of apartheid and the struggle against finally explodes ‘in his skull.’ The child of it. Dick and Margie, too innocent to understand FM racism, fears not the light but the dark; while Pila’s sister, silly, spoiled and racist, has to wear a cardboard shield to protect part of her face from the sun. In the Sunday conversation o f Pila’s fam ­ ily, the dialogue quickens and becomes the living voice of white Johannesburg masters and madams, talking carelessly and callously about money, investments, black servants, black thieves. On the other hand, there are characters like the woman who works for Dick and Margie, and who sits patiently baby-sitting, but cannot quite overcome her resentment of the child she is obliged to look after, while her own is far away. Hilda Bern­ stein’s pictures of Johannesburg are auth­ entic, these characters are consistent and credible. Apart from Thabo (whose soundness and strength are shown to derive from his sense of being one with his people) and per­ haps Indres also (who gains stature from his driving determination to finish the work he has to do), the central characters are insub­ Umkhonto? — we see only his anger at the stantial. They seem too slight for the part plight of black prisoners in the police cells, they play in the plot, and lacking in any and we are told he was on a ‘committee’ at kind of real motivation or seriousness. the university. This adds up to a character The naive and well-meaning Pila, whose scarcely more solid than Pila. Even Ralph, brief and peripheral involvement in political the organiser, has few revealed motives; he activity comes to a pathetic and ignoble exists as a shadowy leader figure, recruiting close, would be satisfactory at one end of a Dick into Umkhonto We Sizwe (though not range of characters, but the range isn’t there. into any political organisation) because of Margie, Dick’s wife, has little more weight; Dick’s technical ‘expertise,’ and later, urging she learns some kind of independence while Dick not to become a state witness. Dick is in detention; she harbours Indres,and In the course of their experience, these while harbouring him gives him the kind of characters don’t seem to gain any further consolation she has learned to give in her political knowledge or understanding, and years as a sheltered wife;but her political in­ the training received by little Cass, the future volvement and her political education end freedom fighter, is concerned with the mech­ there. When it seems that Dick may be going anics of underground work rather than with to give state evidence, the only support she the political theory that should inform it. seems able to offer him is a message that he The effect (though this is not intended) is to must do what he wishes. imply a certain triviality in the organisation While Dick is in solitary confinement, these characters are working in. his self-centred urge to protect himself at all The impression of the central characters costs from the pressure of his environment is gained by the critic David Caute is quoted shown with great insight (and indeed this on the dust jacket. He describes them as, “the chapter is one of the best pieces of writing in small band of despairing rebels ... who embark the book), but before he goes to gaol, he is on a heroic but doomed campaign o f sabotage sketchy. Why did he take the step of joining in protest against apartheid.” 29 Despairing? Doomed? the organisation that is the subject of the story is Umkhonto We Sizwe, the South African people’s army; the novel doesn’t seem to have communicated any feeling of its dignity and purpose, only a kind of romantic thoughtlessness. The history of Umkhonto in later times has been charac­ terised by courage, dedication to the struggle, level-headedness and political clarity; these qualities are not demonstrated in the novel. HflMBfl Death Is Part o f the Process won the Sinclair Award for 1983. It should be of interest to readers who never knew the time and place it is set in, as well as to those who KflHliE, did.

JM CANON DEATH IS PAR T OF CBliflTfl THE PROCESS On Saturday, June 25th, more than 3 000 Apartheid - The Facts: (International people carrying ANC flags and banners Defence and Aid, London, 1983, £3.00) braved midwinter weather in Cradock to bury Canon James Arthur Calata. The Rev. This book is intended to explain the history Calata, died on J une 16th - a significant day of apartheid laws, from the days of the first in the political history o f South Africa. white settlement; how the legislation oper­ ates; what it means for the exploited black Mourners from all over the country con­ majority; how it is defended by the white verged on lingelihle Township to listen to minority government, and the struggle for tributes to the Rev. Calata by representatives liberation. of various organisations. Archie Gumede, International Defence and Aid prides it­ the Natal chairman of both the United self on the accuracy of its information, and Democratic Front and the Release Mandela there is a great deal of information here, up Committee, and former cell-mate of the Rev. to date, concisely put, and arranged under Calata, said: headings. It is a very useful book, at an acces­ sible price. “During his time he was the spine of the The photographs are good. Some speak African National Congress, and he never for themselves, some are captioned; some changed his mind until the last day of aren’t captioned, but should be. his life ... “Of the many sons and daughters of JM Africa, Rev. Calata was surpassed by

3 0 few in nobility and patriotism." 1

This portrayal clearly illustrates the brutal methods, which the representatives of Political thriller the apartheid system have inherited from the nazis and further refined. Even while from South Africa torturing a saboteur, the brutal hench­ men do not hesitate to discuss their The book.: small family affars and what their Hilda Bernstein chilcfren want amongst themselves. Death ia part of the process Translation: Eva fefl Ahlander The whites who have been caught are Hjulet better treated than the coloureds. They may sleep in beds, while the others must THE PUBLISHERS present the book as a always sleep on the floor, to mention one political thriller from South Africa. This is example. With a sophisticated insight fa an accurate description of Death is Pan sowing distrust, the torturers allow the o f the Process. No cleverly composed blacks to learn not only that the whites detective story could offer cheater are clearly not exposed to the same suspense than this book. In addition, treatment as they are, but that the whites even in its Swedish translation by Eva M are also prepared to betray them. A Ahlander, this portrayal is in a language young white woman felt lucky to be which it is a pleasure to read. detained at the same time as the others. But she realized that they would regard It would be incorrect towards the pre­ her as a traita when her father, thanks to sumptive reader to describe its course of his good connections, managed to get events in detail. Briefly it can be said her released. Her white skin excluded that a group of blacks, Indians and her from the wider community and whites who engaged in a series of acts deprived her of her right to the country of sabotage against the apartheid she loved. regime in the early sixties are portrayed. They worked in small g'oups, sometimes The Indian had the yeatest difficulty in blindly, since the mass media mentioned avoiding his pursuers. He was unable to very little or nothing about the sabotage. solicit help like the whites n a to hide In other wads, the media played into the himself in a township like the blacks. He hands of the regime. The destruction belonged to a minaity which, to top it all. caused by each act of sabotage is was split in its attitudes to the apartheid intended to arouse dead or reflection regime Nonetheless it was one of the amongst those who want to support the blacks who broke down and became an regime, or those who carefully wait on infamer. Skilfully Hilda Bernstein por­ the sidelines hoping to avoid discomfort. trays how interminably difficult it is to struggle fa human rights in a society in When the nazi outrages were revealed which everything is based on injustice after the fall of the Third Reich, there was from birth and where people live a measure of truth in the excuses that completely separated from one another, one had not taken a stand because of in alien walds. ignorance of what was occuring within those borders. This excuse is not valid As a childminder fa a white child, a today. Particularly those of us who live black woman may travel in a bus fa outside the borders of South Africa whites. But not with her own child, which constantly receive information on out­ 6he has been faced to send to it6 rages which occur there. Not all details, Srandmotha who lives far away. Oh, it nor sufficiently forcefully, but enough for can't be fun to live with granny, says the us to perceive the chain of events. ingenuously auel white child. 2

QOOQ

IT is impossible to put the book aside without having finished it even if that requires reading far into the night. What remains is wonder over how anyone could hit on the idea that the colour of someone's skin should determine one's worth as a human being. It is such an absurd thought that anyone who accepts it ought to feel degraded.

The reader is also left with anguish at the prospect of the appalling showdown which appears ever more unavoidable in South Africa. The only possible escape appears to be such strong pressure from the outside that the whites realize that, for their own sakes, they must make peace with the country’s black majority.

Hilda Bernstetn's message does not allow for prevarication. Even the passive take a stand.

Ingrid Segerstedt Wiberg

Gdtebcrgs-Posten 29th September, 1987 Translation and photo by Madi Gray.

Caption: Hilda Bernstein's message does not aHow for prevarication. Even the passive take a stand.

Collection Number: A3299 Collection Name: Hilda and Rusty BERNSTEIN Papers, 1931-2006

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Publisher: Historical Papers Research Archive Collection Funder: Bernstein family Location: Johannesburg ©2015

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