222 mm x 146 mm, 320 pages RRP: R200, ISBN 978-1-4152-0049-0 Publication date: 15 May 2008, Category: Current Affairs Description Winner of the 2009 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction and the 2009 Booksellers' Choice Award, In a Different Time is set in a South Africa gripped by unrest and political tension, when the ANC was in exile and repression at its height. It tells the story of four young South Africans who, in 1987, embark on a mission that will ultimately take them to Death Row. Jabu Masina, Ting Ting Masango, Neo Potsane and Joseph Makhura form a highly trained and experienced assassination squad reporting directly to Chris Hani, commander of Mkonto we Sizwe (MK, the anti-apartheid resistance movement). The narrative details their infiltration into the country, their operations, arrest and subsequent trial – showing these men to be the foot soldiers who have sacrificed everything. As their trial unfolds, with their attorney fighting againsts impossible odds to save them from the gallows, so too does the story of their own lives and the choices they make. Into this storyline Peter Harris, the attorney to the four and narrator of the book, weaves another strand of narrative: the construction of a bomb and its deadly journey towards its target. The result is a tale of bizarre coincidence and tragedy, a riveting courtroom drama, and a real-life political thriller that tells of the acts people will commit to preserve the status quo, and the extraordinary lengths to which people go in order to fight for what they believe. In a Different Time also won the Jenny & Co Best Non-fiction Book of the Year 2008 and the Jenny & Co Best Book of the Year 2008. From In a Different Time, page 75 I am wondering which is worse: the highway to Pretoria, or flying to Lusaka on Zambian Airways. Tough call. I need to get to Lusaka as quickly as possible and the first available flight is on Zambian Airways. The reason they can take a last-minute booking becomes apparent the moment I get on the plane. The steward says brightly, ‘Sit anywhere. Except in the toilets.’ I am travelling with one of my partners, Thabo Molewa, who has done some work on the case, but on this occasion is consulting the ANC on another issue. Thabo is not a good flyer and I can see that the steward’s request not to take his seat in the toilets has rattled him. Me too, for that matter. My meeting with the ANC has been arranged through Penuell Maduna, deputy head of the organisation’s legal department in Lusaka. I am taking whisky and chocolates. These are always appreciated by those on low stipends. To read on Comment from author Mike Nicol Written with the compulsion of a thriller, this extraordinary, true story of an MK hit squad fighting a guerrilla war in the 1980s will have readers turning the pages through to the unexpected gut-wrenching twist at the end. From the reviews When Ivan Vladislavic, winner of numerous awards including both the Sunday Times Award for Fiction AND the Alan Paton Award (for non-fiction) states that the author "writes with a sense of urgency, because he is dealing with matters of life and death, and he has been entrusted with a story only he can tell," you sit up. When a colleague of mine, David O'Sullivan, barges into my studio and says: "It's brilliant, it's brilliant," I sit up even straighter. – Jenny Crwys-Williams, It-Book of the Month In A Different Time is the most wonderfully good book about South Africa I have read in a decade … This isn’t a book review, however. It is a plea to buy and read it. I absolutely promise you you’ll enjoy every page … [The book] is one of those rare creations that helps make one isolated but hitherto divisive experience a new patch of common ground for us all. – Peter Bruce, editor, Business Day Read Tymon Smith’s interview with Peter Harris in the Sunday Times. Read a review in the Mail & Guardian. Watch Peter Harris’s Alan Paton Award acceptance speech. E-mail us a comment on this book. (Comments may be edited and used on this website.) To buy this book www.exclusivebooks.com www.kalahari.net home   writers   books   contact   buy   rights all content © Umuzi, Random House Struik this website designed and maintained by Guanaco.co.za