Antjie Krog’s career as a poet began with resistance to language and authority. This was more than simply youthful rebellion – it was a desire to free language itself from all constraints. In this, her first book of poetry in eight years, Krog once again disrupts language to create new meaning as she re-engages with her deep attachment to the land of her birth and its complex history. Amongst poems expressing her anger at social injustice, there are poems on the nature of memory and conscience and touching family poems about generations – future and past – in which everyday conversations resound. There are also poems about leave-taking, of which a tribute to Mandela is a highlight. Throughout, the language is raised to a new intensity. Synapse is the work of one of South Africa’s finest voices. Also available in Afrikaans as Mede-wete.
