André Philippus Brink, (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015, http://literature.britishcouncil.org/andra-brink) was a South African novelist. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and was a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. His 1979 novel A Dry White Season is as startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, even knowing everything that we do know about South Africa in the intervening years. It is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality.
The summary is as follows. Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies—until the sudden arrest and subsequent “suicide” of a black janitor from Du Toit’s school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man’s death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair—a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder. This is challenging political fiction that still speaks to scores of similar contexts of oppression throughout the world today.
Enquire at your local library or consult http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Season-Andre-Philippus-Brink/dp/068803568X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1441915851&sr=8-1 for full bibliographic details.
This story was brought to the screen in 1989 by Euzhan Palcy with Donald Sutherland as Ben du Toit, Janet Suzman as Susan du Toit, Susan Sarandon as Melanie Bruwer, Marlon Brando as Ian McKenzie and Zakes Mokae as Stanley Makhaya. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097243/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm)
It is available on DVD at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dry-White-Season-DVD/dp/B000PI3UHW/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1441917271&sr=1-1&keywords=dry+white+season
320 pages in Vintage paperback
First published 1979
ISBN 978-0749399894
Andre Brink