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Blood's Inner Rhyme

ISBN 
9781776391813
Format 
Trade Paperback
Recommended Price 
R360.00
Published 
May 2025
About the book: 
I came to know the country, I have enacted my life not better or worse than others, the harvest was not richer or poorer than that of others, though full of good shoots. But I knew that I was coming to die here next to the river; I came to look for it like the elephants do.
 
Poet Antjie Krog returns to the landscape of her childhood. The Free State plains enchant her – it is her home, and the home of her mother, the writer Dot Serfontein. In her nineties, Dot is frail and needs full-time care, but her intellect and sense of humour are razor-sharp, and her writing is comparable to that of her daughter.
 
In  Blood’s Inner Rhyme,  Antjie Krog breaks the boundaries between genres and writes about this relationship that continues to fascinate and torment her. Using letters, diary entries and care-home records, the book explores creative influence, ideological disagreements and the realities of ageing.
 
Krog exposes the insurmountable differences between generations but also shows the love and mutual admiration between two highly skilled writers. Beautifully and poignantly written, Blood’s Inner Rhyme delves into cultural heritage, the country›s Anglo-Boer War history, issues of land ownership and race, as well as romantic relationships across racial boundaries.
 
The story of the relationship between mother and daughter, this is Krog’s most personal book, as well as the most universal.
Other titles by this author 
About the Author
Antjie Krog was born and grew up in the Free State. She became editor of the Afrikaans current-affairs magazine Die Suid-Afrikaan and later worked as a radio jounalist covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, all the while writing extensively for newspapers and journals. She and her radio colleagues
received the Pringle Award for excellence in journalism for their coverage of the Commission hearings, from which came the best known of her three non-fiction books, Country of My Skull.

She has won major awards in almost all the genres and  media in which she has worked: poetry, non-fiction and translation. But, mainly, she has lived as a poet. Krog’s first volume of poetry was published when she was seventeen years old and she has since released thirteen volumes of poetry and received among others the Eugène Marais Prize, the Hertzog Prize, the FNB Prize, the Protea Prize, and, for non-fiction, the Alan Paton Prize and the Olive Schreiner Award. She has also been a recipient of the Stockholm Award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture and the Open Society Prize. She is married to architect John Samuel.

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