The Murder of a Young American, a South African Township, and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation
by Justine van der Leun
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2016
544 pages
Genre: True Crime
Publication Information
A gripping investigation - in the vein of the podcast Serial - that reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class.
The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa: The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents' forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn't the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then van der Leun stumbled upon another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The true story of Amy Biehl's death, it turned out, was not only a story of forgiveness but a reflection of the complicated history of a troubled country.
We Are Not Such Things is the result of van der Leun's four-year investigation into this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, and compassion. The bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath - and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and in the decades that followed - come together in an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and paints a stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents. We come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation are universal in scope and powerful in resonance. We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history.
"Van Der Leun succeeds in telling a complex, nuanced, and perhaps ultimately unknowable story that will captivate all readers." - Publishers Weekly
"This frequently gripping, occasionally meandering true-crime narrative provides an intimate, intricate depiction of embedded journalism. Lengthy but powerful." - Library Journal
"The author's vivid details of South Africa's persistent racism, abject poverty, and continuing oppression are undermined by unnecessary repetition." - Kirkus
"This suspenseful and engrossing story calls into question the simplicities people yearn for when justice is sought for a vicious crime. Justine van der Leun shows how a powerful desire for reconciliation can in fact obscure the truth, a truth we need in order to establish the equity and justice that all people deserve." - Piper Kerman, author of Orange Is the New Black
"What an achievement! This absorbing account of the pursuit of the truth about an infamous and symbolic crime is consummate in its reach and penetration." - Norman Rush, author of Mating
"This is a murder story told with the dramatic tension of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and the precision of the very best nonfiction reporting. Each page bursts with fresh insights into the contradictions of modern-day South Africa as well as the elusiveness of finding the absolute truth." - Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy and Logavina Street
"A fascinating, clear-eyed journey into the disheartening political reality of contemporary South Africa." - Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside
"This is a troubling, deeply felt piece of work. Van der Leun's excellent reportage reveals that things are not what they seem in South Africa." - James McBride, author of Kill 'Em and Leave
"Grants the reader an extraordinary and profound privilege: the capacity to inhabit fully a place, a history, a moment, a human heart." - Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
This information about We Are Not Such Things was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Justine van der Leun is the author of the travel memoir Marcus of Umbria. She has written about South Africa for Harper's and The Guardian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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