Breytenbach clearly is (one of?) my favourite author(s), and this is a book illustrates why this is the case: Breytenbach is clever, he is a wizard of language and makes quick and unexpected connections, invents new words, changes meaning and context of known words and all in all – from often the most simple outset – leads his readers to unexpected and enriching experiences.

On the other hand, he also is a man with a cause, and that cause is over. It is – or rather was – the fight against the inhuman apartheid-regime of his mother country; a fight which led him into French exile when he was only in his twens, a fight which cost him seven years of his life when he returned on a secret and ill-planned underground mission which failed and landed him in South African jail.

 The texts collected in The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution are almost all from the early transformation phase in South Africa between Nelson Mandela's liberation (1990) and the first free elections (1994). A time in which Breytenbach needed to redefine his role in the political life of South Africa, a time, indeed, in which he needed to re-eveluate whether there should or could be such a role at all. After all, he had spent most of his life outside South Africa. His political cause did not touch his personal circumstances – he is neither black nor is his life affected by South African politics.

As always, some of his texts are rather cryptic and may at least in parts be not much more than some nonsense hastily put together to deliver a required speech for a conference or a text for a catalogue. It may of course be my lack of understanding, but my concept of Breytenbach's character as more of a player than a regular worker and a person who can tongue-in-cheek test his audience rather than fulfill their expectations makes the idea of him producing nonsense at least a valid possiblity.

Still, there are also a lot of rich texts very much worth reading and thinking about which is enough to make this book a recommendation for those interested in the relation between outside world and inside, quest and identity, true self and perceived personality.