How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitor's Heart.
How far and in what ways do you consider that Malan presents the black person viewpoint in My Traitor's Heart.
Malan wrote a different book to the one he set out to write but this finished autobiographical memoir was written because he was "searching for a way to live in this strange country-for an alternative, if one existed, to the law of Dawid Malan". To live in this world he needs understand the world and in this quest he needs to understand the problems that his country must endure.
The tale of the Hammermans murders is told by Malan but it is not told in his typical criminal journalist way it is told almost as if it were a story. Introducing the characters, telling the reader of their lives "Dave and Jay used to smoke zol and jol, but they've outgrown all that. They're both turning thirty, both newly 'turned onto free enterprise'. Then once the reader has identified with them he (Malan) tells of their killings " Jay is slumped against the wall, dead with a dozen hammer holes in his skull. His half naked wife is lying on the floor. She'd spent hours spinning around in a pool of her own blood, trying in vain to get up."
