Before I Forget by Andre Brink (and a few comments on the other two books from South Africa)

When I first started reading this novel/memoir I sighed heavily. Why do male writers find it absolutely necessary to detail all of their sexual experiences in a book? "Here are all of the women I slept with and the effect it had on me." Yawn. However, the book is well written, and Brink's narrator (who I'm pretty sure is Brink masquerading as a fictional South African writer) has some humorous and poignant things to say about growing old and still having sexual desire. The character (73 years old) has some hilarious dialogs with his 90-something year old mother, who perhaps is the most sane character in the book despite her mind going. The story is framed by a friendship that the writer has with a younger woman and her husband. Inevitably, the apartheid years play an important role in the book (the writer is exiled after writing a book about Sharpeville). Also interesting to me was the fact that the writer is an Afrikaaner who basically rebelled against his father, who was a powerful man and a stern believer in the principles of apartheid (but also a total dog with women, like his son). The ending is pretty depressing and made me not want to get old.

I didn't plan it this way, but the three South African books I wound up reading had Xhosa, English and Afrikaaner narrators. Interestingly, Coconut (with the Xhosa narrators) had the least to say about the apartheid years; most likely this was because it took place in the present time. I also gathered from the story that life hasn't changed much for most blacks in South Africa post-apartheid. There are new middle-class blacks like Ofilwe and her family, but people like Fiks are still struggling to make a living, and all blacks still suffer the sting of racism.