The First Life of Adamastor

Jan 30, 2026 6:15 AM

Author:André Brink

The First Life of Adamastor has it origins in an act of rescue: what, wondered André Brink, lay behind fragments of myth that have been handed down about the mountains of the Cape? Adamastor, the Titan whose body, legend has it, formed the rocks of the Peninsula, first appears in European literature in the sixteenth century - much about the time of the first known contact between seagoing European explorers and the natives of Southern Africa. How, Brink asks, would that meeting have looked from the landward side? What role would the visitors take in the mythology of an utterly different culture, with its own deities, its own accumulated story?

Brink, in this extraordinary, moving and potentially explosive creation has unearthed from the sun-carved land itself the missing meanings of a myth that has waited five centuries to be invented.

Reviews

A wonderfully entertaining work of fiction

—— Mario Vargas Llosa , New York Times Book Review

A simple love story... A joyful psalm sung through the collective unconscious that unites all people... fun, fresh and firmly recommended... He is a writer of inspired violence and his shifts of viewpoint are thrilling and significant, and deeply honouring to the profession of literature

—— The Times

[Enjoy] the pleasure of Brink's playful wit and his colonist's skill in surveying an unknown mental landscape

—— Independent

Wild hilarity

—— Sunday Telegraph

Extremely funny

—— Observer

Exhibits extraordinary originality

—— John Bayley , Independent

Saramago can transform banal sentiments into unexpected profundities

—— David McAllister , TLS

Earle seems to have little trouble expanding his range from a three-minute song to a 300-page narrative... And though the novel comes no closer to establishing the facts of Hank Williams's death, it certainly reveals a good deal of truth behind it

—— Alfred Hickling , Guardian

A witty, heartfelt story of hope, forgiveness and redemption

—— Booklist

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