Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country

by Gillian Slovo (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2009

  $3.25

  A passionate witness to the colossal upheaval that has transformed her native South Africa, Gillian Slovo has written a memoir that is far more than a story of her own life. For she is the daughter of Joe Slovo and Ruth First, South Africa's pioneering anti-apartheid white activists, a daughter who always had to come second to political commitment. Whilst recalling the extraordinary events which surrounded her family's persecution and exile, and reconstructing the truth of her parents' relationship and her own turbulent childhood, Gillian Slovo has also created an astonishing portrait of a courageous, beautiful mother and a father of integrity and stoicism.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.25

  This autobiography provides an investigation into the past of Gillian Slovo's family and country. Brought up in exile, Gillian Slovo retains the closest of ties with South Africa. After her father Joe's death in 1995, she travelled back to South Africa to piece together her family's past. As the daughter of two of the most heroic anti-apartheid campaigners (her mother was Ruth First, heroine of the film A World Apart ) it is a story that intersects with much of South Africa's bloodiest history, and tracking down the men who ordered her mother's killing is only one of the painful and intimate secrets that she had to face. Slovo and her family were close witnesses of the events in South Africa over the past 30 years and are close friends of Nelson Mandela.