André Brink (1935-2015) Tribute List

André Brink, the celebrated South African novelist, died on February 6th at the age of 79. Brink's fiction is credited with reaching out to of Afrikaaners, the controlling white majority under the system of Apartheid, and Brink faced censorship for his depictions of black and white life. Brink's prose flowed rapidly, at times almost at a breathless pace, and he was equally adept at portraying bleakest despair and romantically-imbued hope. Here are twelve words from Brink's writings.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. exuberant
    joyously unrestrained
    Sometimes, in one of his more exuberant or desperate moods, Pa would go out in the veld and sprinkle brandy on the daisies to make them drunk so that they wouldn't feel the pain of shrivelling up and dying.
    – The Rights of Desire
  2. refuge
    something or someone turned to for assistance or security
    “My library was -- all libraries are -- a place of ultimate refuge, a wild and sacred space where meanings are manageable precisely because they aren't binding; and where illusion is comfortingly real. To read, to think, to trace words back to their origins real or presumed; to invent; to dare to imagine.
    ― The Rights of Desire
  3. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    Alone. Alone to the very end. I… every one of us. But to have been granted the grace of meeting and touching so fleetingly: is that not the most awesome and wonderful thing one can hope for in this world?
    – A Dry White Season
  4. preposterous
    inviting ridicule
    In love, no question is ever preposterous.
    – Before I Forget
  5. superfluity
    extreme excess
    “With all the experience of winters and summers; all the superfluities of adolescence and spring stripped away; no need for deviation or illusion, unashamed about the sincerity of either desire or disgust. Essentially naked, exposed to light and pain, no longer prepared to betray others or fool herself.
    — Rumours of Rain
  6. apathetic
    showing little or no emotion or animation
    It's not a cruel land, just apathetic. It takes from you what is redundant: wagon and oxen, guide and husband and child, camp and shelter, conversation, help, imagined security, preparation and presumption, clothes. Whittling you down to yourself.
    — An Instant in the Wind
  7. abyss
    a bottomless gulf or pit
    I love you, here is my life, I'm holding yours in security: here is my hand, take it, let's jump into the abyss, whatever happens; even if we fall to death, let it at least be hand in hand.
    – An Instant in the Wind
  8. conspiracy
    a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act
    When the conspiracy of lies surrounding me demands of me to silence the one word of truth given to me, that word becomes the one word I wish to utter above all others.
    – Mapmakers: Writing in a State of Siege
  9. incomparable
    such that comparison is impossible
    I can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it - but I can never be on the inside of it with you. I cannot even be sure whether I really know what it is like. Is it 'like' my own? Or incomparable? ... We look at a colour. We both call it red. But it is only because we have been taught to call it by that name. There is no guarantee - not ever - that we see it in the same way, that your red is my red.
    – Before I Forget
  10. ineluctable
    impossible to avoid or evade
    The end seems ineluctable: failure, defeat, loss. The only choice I have left is whether I am prepared to salvage a little honour, a little decency, a little humanity -- or nothing. It seems as if a sacrifice is impossible to avoid...But at least one has the choice between a wholly futile sacrifice and one that might, in the long run, open up a possibility, however negligible or dubious, of something better, less sordid and more noble, for our children…
    – A Dry White Season
  11. dubious
    fraught with uncertainty or doubt
    The end seems ineluctable: failure, defeat, loss. The only choice I have left is whether I am prepared to salvage a little honour, a little decency, a little humanity -- or nothing. It seems as if a sacrifice is impossible to avoid...But at least one has the choice between a wholly futile sacrifice and one that might, in the long run, open up a possibility, however negligible or dubious, of something better, less sordid and more noble, for our children…
    – A Dry White Season
  12. sordid
    foul and run-down and repulsive
    The end seems ineluctable: failure, defeat, loss. The only choice I have left is whether I am prepared to salvage a little honour, a little decency, a little humanity -- or nothing. It seems as if a sacrifice is impossible to avoid...But at least one has the choice between a wholly futile sacrifice and one that might, in the long run, open up a possibility, however negligible or dubious, of something better, less sordid and more noble, for our children…
    – A Dry White Season
Created on Sat Feb 07 16:18:49 EST 2015 (updated Sat Feb 07 17:50:07 EST 2015)

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