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List Price: $11.99


On Sale: February 05, 2013
Pages: 320 | ISBN: 978-0-345-80504-1
Published by : Vintage Knopf
Philida Cover

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This is what it is to be a slave: that everything is decided for you from out there. You just got to listen and do as they tell you. You don’t say no. You don’t ask questions. You just do what they tell you. But far at the back of your head you think: Soon there must come a day when I can say for myself: This and that I shall do, this and that I shall not.

In Philida, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, André Brink—“one of South Africa's greatest novelists” (The Telegraph)—gives us his most powerful novel yet; the truly unforgettable story of a female slave, and her fierce determination to survive and to be free.

It is 1832 in South Africa, the year before slavery is abolished and the slaves are emancipated. Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink, the son of her master. When Francois’s father orders him to marry a woman from a prominent Cape Town family, Francois reneges on his promise to give Philida her freedom, threatening instead to sell her to new owners in the harsh country up north.  
Here is the remarkable story—based on individuals connected to the author’s family—of a fiercely independent woman who will settle for nothing and for no one. Unwilling to accept the future that lies ahead of her, Philida continues to test the limits and lodges a complaint against the Brink family. Then she sets off on a journey—from the southernmost reaches of the Cape, across a great wilderness, to the far north of the country—in order to reclaim her soul.


Excerpted from Chapter One



In the beginning I feel scared, my throat is tight. But after the second or third question I start feeling better. All I can think of is: If it was me that was knitting you, you’d look a bit better, but now whoever it was that knitted you, did not cast you off right. Still, I don’t say anything. In this place it’s only him and me and I don’t want to get on his wrong side. I got to tell him everything, and that is exactly what I mean to do today, without keeping anything back.
Eight years ago.
You sure about that? How can you be so sure?
How did it begin? What happened?
What do you mean, his thing?
So I tell him: Then Frans take me with him, away from the longhouse, through the vineyard where the old cemetery is. Down to where the bamboo copse make its deep, dark shade in the elbow of the river, that’s the Dwars River that run across the farm, and there I begin to cry for the first time and that is when Frans –
You mean Baas Frans, the tall bony man remind me.
Behind the dusty thick glasses the man’s deep eyes seem to be looking right into me as he ask: Yes, and what did he do then?
I can feel myself going blunt inside, but I know I can’t stop now, so I bite on my teeth and tell him: He do what a man do with a woman.
And what would that be?
I’m sure the Grootbaas will know about that.
He say: I want to know exactly what he did.
He take me.
I tell him: He naai me.
Grootbaas, in the beginning I try to, but that is when Frans begin to talk to me very nicely and tell me I mustn’t be scared, he won’t hurt me, he just want to make me happy. If I will let him push into me, then he will make sure to buy me my freedom when the time is right, that is what he promise me before the LordGod of the Bible, he say he himself will buy freedom for me. But I remember thinking, how can it be that a thing like freedom can hurt one so bad? Because it was my first time and he didn’t act very gentle with me, he was too hasty, I think it was his first time too.
And then what happened?
It is just as well the man don’t give me much time to think, because the questions start coming again and they getting more and more difficult.
I don’t know about that intercourse thing and the consequences, Grootbaas.
How many times?
Many times, Grootbaas.
Two times? Three times? Ten? Twenty?
I fold my hands around my shoulders. And once again I say: Many times, Grootbaas.
Unexpectedly he ask: Was he the first man that was with you?
I just shake my head because I don’t feel like answering. I already told him mos it was my first time.
He change the question a little bit: Have you had a lot of men?
I tell him, It’s only Baas Frans I come to complain about.
Look, if you have a complaint, you’ve got to tell us everything now. Otherwise you’re wasting our time.
Once again I say: It’s just about Baas Frans that I am here.
Did he hurt you?
No, Grootbaas. It was a bit difficult but I can’t say it hurt me too bad. I had badder things happen to me.
Then what are you complaining about?
Because he take me and he promise me things and now he is going away from me.
What did he promise you?
He say he will give me my freedom.
What did he mean when he said he would give you your freedom? He say he will buy me freedom from the Landdrost. From the Govment. But now instead of buying my freedom he want going away from me.
How is he going away from you?
They say he want to marry a white woman. Not a slave or a Khoe but one of his own kind. So now he want to sell me upcountry.
How do you know that?
I hear him talking to the Ounooi about it. They want to put me up on auction.
Why would they want to do that?
Because they want to take my children away from the farm before the white woman come to live here.
What can you tell me about your children?
That’s mos why I am here, Grootbaas.
How many children do you have?
There is two left, but there was four altogether.
What happened to the other two?
I think by myself: Now it is coming. But after a while I just say: They die when they are small. The first one didn’t have a name yet and the second one was Mamie, but she only lived three months, then she also went.
Who is their father?
Frans and I made them.
Baas Frans?
Baas Frans.
He keep on asking: And the two who are still alive? Where are they?
One is at Zandvliet where we made them. She’s Lena. My Ouma Nella look after her. The last one is this one I bring on my back with me.
For some time he say nothing more. Then he get in a hurry and he ask: When did the other two die?
I don’t look at him. All I can say is: When they was small. One was only three months old.
And the other one?
I have nothing to say about the first one.
Why not?
He die too soon.
He look hard at me, then he sigh. All right, he say. What can you tell me about this one you brought with you?
I don’t say anything. I just turn sideways so that he can see the child in the doek on my back.
I tell the man: He is my youngest. He was born only three months ago. His name is Willempie.
And you say it is your Baas Francois’s child?
Yes, that is the truth, before the LordGod.
Can you prove it?
I ask him: How can I prove a thing like that?
If you cannot prove it I cannot write it in my book.
The Grootbaas must believe me.
To believe something, he says, does not make it true.
Grootbaas, I say, there are things about you that I also cannot see, but I believe they are there and that make them true.
He laugh and I can hear it is not a good laugh. He ask: What you talking about?
It is getting more difficult to breathe, but I know I have no choice and so I ask: Will the Grootbaas give me permission to say it?
He say: Look, we’re getting nowhere like this. So all right then, I give you permission.
I nod and look straight at him and I say: Thank you, my Grootbaas. Then I shall take that permission and say to the Grootbaas that I am speaking of the thing on which the Grootbaas is sitting.
Are you talking about my chair?
I am talking about the Grootbaas’s poephol. That is, his arsehole.
I see him turning red first and then a deep, almost black purple. He pant like a man that climb up a steep hill.
Bladdy meid! he say. Are you looking for trouble?
I am not looking for trouble, Grootbaas, and I hope I won’t find any.
For God’s sake, then say it and have done with it.
Then I shall say it with the permission the Grootbaas give me.
Well, what is it?
I just want to say, that thing the Grootbaas is sitting on: I never seen it and with the help of the LordGod I hope I never will. But I know it is there and I believe it, and so it is true. And it is the same with my children. I know Frans made them.
Andre Brink

About Andre Brink

Andre Brink - Philida




"A soaring, kaleidoscopic account of a slave woman's struggle to protect her humanity. The voice of Philida is wonderfully nuanced and complex—capable of rendering up both the brutality of her experience, and the poetry she manages to wrest from it. A masterful and deeply humane work of art." 
—Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
"Eminent white Afrikaans writer Brink tells a story that is rooted in his own family's ancestry and set in the Cape in the early nineteenth century, before the abolition of slavery. . . . This stirring novel opens up the horror, seldom addressed, of the oppression long before apartheid was the law." 
"Words, and the act of recording the truth, lie at the very heart of Brink's novel, from the necessity of Philida's complaint being written down 'very precisely,' to a spill of ink that obliterates the names inscribed in the back of the Brink family bible. In giving a voice to Philida, Brink isn't just rewriting the sins of the fathers—her consciousness is joined by that of Frans, Cornelis, and a freed slave, Petronella, in a cacophony that indicates the shift in the power balance happening in the Cape during this period. . . . Philida's body may not be her own, but her voice certainly is. Her complaint sets in motion a series of events that sends shock waves through the lives of everyone around her: 'One day there must come a time when you got to say for yourself: This and that I shall do, this and that I shall not.'"
The Daily Beast
"An impossible love story, it is not impossible in the traditional sense of love between mismatched partners, but because it shows how no love is possible between persons fundamentally unequal. Philida's voice is the first voice we hear, and hers is a voice to attend to: idiomatic, lyrical, querulous, searching. . . . The book traces the lacerating trajectory of the sins of parents, parents' scars like open wounds on their children's bodies. There is an astonishing frankness about the facts of life and a visionary lyricism in relation to these cruel facts. The "Acknowledgements" section details the genesis of the novel. In its way, it is as thrilling as the book itself. Extraordinary."
Kirkus (starred review)
"A moving story of one woman's struggle against hierarchies of race and gender that seek her absolute subjugation, Philida vividly dramatises the courage required to lay claim to the protections of the law, to speak out for one's rights even in the moment in which the law is on the wrong side of history. While this is a familiar story, it is one that must continue to be told, not least by white writers willing, as Brink is, to disinter the histories of complicity buried in their own ancestries." 
The Daily Telegraph (London)
The Guardian (London)
The Economist
"As much a biography and autobiography as it is a novel. . . . Brink tells this grand-guignol tale in harrowing style. The book's opening 100 pages or so offer his first successful inhabitation of a genuinely female sensibility. That he inhabits it while also writing in the loose-limbed patois of a 19th-century slave makes the achievement all the more astonishing." 
The Daily Express (London)
"A poignant tale of a slave woman's quest for liberation set in 19th century Cape Town." 
Glass Magazine
The Daily Mail (London)
The Times (London)


About the Book

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Philida by André Brink.

About the Guide

The introduction, questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Man Booker Prize–nominated author André Brink’s masterful new novel: a truly unforgettable story of a South African slave and her determination to be free.

About the Author

André Brink has won South Africa’s most important literary prize, the CAN Award, three times and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town.

Discussion Guides

1. The author André Brink begins each chapter of Philida with a synopsis of what’s going to happen. How does this affect your reading experience—does it spoil what is coming, or does it pique your interest?

2. What does Philida’s experience talking with the government official “Grootbaas Lindenberg” reveal about the way blacks and whites were treated in South Africa in the 1830s?

3. Although Philida is the title character, she is not the only narrator in the novel. Why do you think Brink includes other voices? How does it shape the story?

4. How does this representation of slavery in South Africa compare to what you know about slavery in the United States? And how does the novel compare to books you might have read about the experiences of American slaves?

5. Philida spends much of the novel traveling, usually on foot. How does her physical journey mirror her personal journey toward freedom?

6. Cornelis Brink, Frans’s father says, “We Brinks are a boat that has always hugged the coast, no matter what storms have come, but Philida has now cut a hole into it and we may sink if we don’t watch out” (p.75). What does he mean by this and what influence has Philida had on each member of the family?

7. When they are children, Frans and Philida play a game in which he pretends to sell her, until she decides “that’s now enough. Now it’s your turn to be the slave and I’ll be the Baas” (p.103). How does this foreshadow later events?

8. Cornelis says of his slaves that he “looked after them and cared for them like children” (p.127). He also claims that “if I hadn’t saved [the children Janna brought with her from her first marriage] they would all have gone straight to hell” (p. 213). Do these two statements support each other? Does Cornelis really treat his slaves and his children in ways that are at all similar?

9. Throughout the novel, Philida is regularly seen knitting. What is the significance of this?

10. “If I can write his name, I can send him to hell. Otherwise he’ll keep on haunting me” (p. 189), Philida says about Frans. What is the importance of her being able to write? How does this relate to the power dynamic between masters and slaves?

11. How do Labyn’s efforts to convert, and perhaps woo, Philida differ from Frans’s? Is her decision to be with him really her own?

12. Frans tells his father that what he “wanted from Philida was what I want from a woman who is my wife” (p. 200). Do you believe him? What specific actions suggest that he is either lying or that he is telling the truth?

13. The promise of emancipation looms throughout the novel. Philida tells Cornelis that after leaving his family that “they say that next year in December I’ll be free. But here inside me I’m already free” (p.229). What does being “free” mean to Philida? What does it mean to you?

14. Philida is a book with one woman at its heart, but what do you make of the other female characters? How are Janna, Mrs. de la Bat, Ouma Nella, Maria Berrangé, and the others, presented? How are they like or unlike Philida herself?

15. When she is a child, Philida asks Ouma Nella, “Where am I not?” (p. 116). What does she mean by this, and how does this relate to her decision to travel to the Gariep at the end of the book?

16. The novel concludes with the word “I” (p. 304). What do you think Brink is indicating by ending on this note? What do you think it means that the author chose to end the book with no period after the word?

17. The Brinks in this novel were relatives of the author’s. In his acknowledgements, André Brink writes that “the discovery that [Philida’s] master Cornelis Brink was a brother of one of my own direct ancestors, and that he sold her at auction after his son Francois Gerhard Jacob Brink had made four children with her, triggered this novel” (p. 305). Were you shocked by this revelation? How does the fact that Brink has personal ties to Philida’s owners affect the way you think about the novel?

Suggested Readings

André Brink, A Fork in the Road; André Brink, A Dry White Season; Toni Morrison, A Mercy; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm; J. M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country; Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist; Edward P. Jones, The Known World; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead.

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