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Resident Alien
Clean. No writing or folded pages.
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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83 people want to read
About the author
Rian Malan
26 books63 followersRian Malan is a South African author, journalist, documentarist and songwriter of Afrikaner descent. He first rose to prominence as the author of the memoir My Traitor's Heart, which, like the bulk of his work, deals with South African society in a historical and contemporary perspective and focuses on racial relations. As a journalist, he has written for major newspapers in South Africa, Great Britain and the USA.Malan grew up in a middle-class and anti-apartheid Afrikaner family in a white suburb of Johannesburg. He has described how, as a teenager, he formed a rock band that associated with black artists and wanted to rebel against the apartheid system, at a time when he in fact had virtually no interaction with black people. He attended the then Witwatersrand university for a year. To avoid conscription, which was compulsory for all white males (see End Conscription Campaign), he moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and worked as a journalist.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 10, 2017
Rian Malan is quite good as my South African friend wrote to me once ' at saying the unsayable!'. An understated comment in today's Saffa's racially charged discourse. His prose is edgy and keeps you turning page after page of often highly controversial material. Take for example his stance on highly inflated HIV numbers back in Mbekis time - reactions which gave him grief to no end - his investigation into the Boipatong massacre and the ANC's attempt to set up de Klerk - which again caused him immense pain. He has to be the one man who stands up to tell a different tale, even when he knows it might be wrong or heavily criticised. I particularly liked his piece on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Tutu (A Question of Spin). The sheer fact that Winnie Mandela was not found guilty and did not apologise for her involvement in many a criminal act cast the TRC in a different light for me. Clearly he is a white man in a country where now it is almost sacrilegious to mention the W word but he doesnt apologise for it and he certainly isnt scared to be out at the coal face of what he defines mutant South Africa. It would be unfair not to do him justice for some his old materials that are simply superb, such as In the Jungle, The Last Afrikaner, The People's Republic of Yeoville, Those Fabulous Alcock Boys. He has a way of drawing you into his world that is tantalising, dressed up in mock tones, almost self deprecatory. I love his style and will continue reading on as long as he publishes. With Peter Godwin, he has to be one of my favourite all time writers. I struggled to get this book unfortunately as it seems it s out of print. Amazon obliged but had to be shipped in from SA, which only took 3 weeks. I know some of the stories are more than a decade old, but isnt a lack of reprint here a form of censorship? His recent response on Helen Zille's twitter colonial debacle at this link http://www.biznews.com/leadership/201... confirms his stance as a writer you cannot afford to ignore if you are interested in South Africa.
June 7, 2017
This is the second book I've read from this author. The first one being "My traitor's heart...". This title is also a non-fiction novel assembling more than 2 dozens articles the author had written, most of them being published during the 90's and 2000's in magazines around the world. The author divided these articles under several main categories. The articles I liked most were under the "Travel" and "Culture" categories. Most of the articles are about South Africa after the end of the Appartheid and arrival of the Black South Africans in power, the various postive and negatives changes observed by the author. In several articles, the readers can appreciate the fact that the author, a journalist, conduct a full investigation deep beneath the surface to uncover the real hidden truth than just relying on reporting what others do without any investigation.
This book is much lighter than the "My Traitor's heart" novel in terms of amount of violence and crime. It is much easier to read this book. While reading several of these articles, I came into 2 conclusions:
- South Africa has been moving toward unknown and difficult direction and future, but in the right direction for most of South Africans while some of the new political elite's actions might hurt this transition.
- in several cases, there are drastic differences between the "reality" seen live on the field and the "thruth" reported by international mass media.
If you've read My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience , you should logically also read this book. It is about the same country, but in two different periods.
This book is much lighter than the "My Traitor's heart" novel in terms of amount of violence and crime. It is much easier to read this book. While reading several of these articles, I came into 2 conclusions:
- South Africa has been moving toward unknown and difficult direction and future, but in the right direction for most of South Africans while some of the new political elite's actions might hurt this transition.
- in several cases, there are drastic differences between the "reality" seen live on the field and the "thruth" reported by international mass media.
If you've read My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience , you should logically also read this book. It is about the same country, but in two different periods.
March 25, 2024
Congratulations are in order, as this is the first book that's made me publish an entire open letter article in response. But slightly more on that later.
First: this is a good book. Good books are supposed to make you think and they're supposed to be entertaining, and this book is both. And, contrary to what people in certain areas of social media seem to think, books are not things that one has to universally agree with, nor are they obliged to always make you feel good. Resident Alien is full of the same conversational, honest, entertaining writing that I've come to associate with Malan, but I have to admit that I did not find him as likable in this book. Which is fine -- I do not rate books based on how much the author makes me like them. I do not want authors to write books with "being liked" as their primary goal. Good God. How boring. In fact, after reading this book it's become one of my dearest wishes to be seated beside Mr Malan at a dinner party, because I think we would get on wonderfully. (And by "get on," I mean the conversation would likely be animated and unstoppable, if not entirely diplomatic.) Unfortunately, the one downside to this book is that I glimpsed a side of the author that I do not find overly pleasant or trustworthy, and that is an issue.
Malan does some great investigative journalism, and he's very, very good at writing about himself, his country, and the intersection of both. He is also very opinionated, very unafraid to voice these opinions, and dare I charge that he is perhaps a little too obsessed with South Africa. This results in a tendency, spotted clearly in a book where he strays to other subjects outside the ones in which he excels, to confuse journalism with opinion and to be shockingly, cringingly wrong. Now, anyone who's read anything by Malan will probably walk away from it knowing that he's a snob -- he admits this, he's alright with it, and he admits when he's wrong. So long as someone is capable of doing this, I don't mind snobs; they're fun. I was well aware of this when I picked up the book, and even if this snobbery could come on a little heavy at times, it was hardly a problem. Malan has a self-awareness that assures his readers that he doesn't think he's got the divine right to be correct here, but this is just how he feels and that's his truth until proven otherwise. Excellent; this is why I think we'd have fun at dinner parties.
Deeply unfortunate, then, that this kind of attitude strays into places where it is really not appropriate. Namely, his article on Northern Ireland -- the place where I grew up, and where I have my own complicated, guilt-ridden, probably snobby thoughts about identity and place. While Malan has plenty of insightful things to say about this in his own country, when it comes to mine he was deeply offensive and woefully uninformed. It's not so much the lack of understanding that gets me -- the conflict in Northern Ireland is complicated and, like all wars, impossible to adequately describe to someone who did not grow up there. But Northern Ireland is a particularly quiet war, hidden away and declared finished decades before it did. I can hardly blame a foreigner for not knowing the intricate ins and outs, and when it comes to the facts his are mostly solid. What offends me is the lack of empathy. Malan has fallen into a trap that I hoped somebody usually so insightful would avoid: he believes that there is a heirarchy of pain. The war my country endured was not bad enough. The torture that my people suffered was not cruel enough. Only some 3000 people died. My war was, according to Malan, "boring."
My personal feelings aside, this is a moral line in the sand for me. I do not have to be personally affected to state firmly that I do not believe that some types of torture are better than others; I do not believe that one life is inherently worth less than one hundred lives. All torture is bad. Nobody deserves to be tortured. One death is too many. And all war, no matter how great or small, no matter how many people do or don't die, no matter the methods of torture employed, is evil. I will say it again: all war is evil. It is the greatest evil that can befall mankind. Every single war is pain and loss and trauma on an industrial, incomprehensible scale. I extend this to all wars I read about (Malan's included) and all wars I have covered and will go on to cover as a journalist. It is a hard moral for me -- the comparison of trauma is abhorrent. I will not budge on this.
Therefore Malan has regrettably gone down in my estimations. I still find him a brilliant writer, and I find his work thoughtful and engaging. I still think there are places where he is the undeniable expert. But I no longer trust him as much as I once did. I am incapable of separating his writing from the fact that he believes certain torture does not count as bad enough, and certain wars are boring. I read everything much more closely, and I wonder who else he is dismissing in such a thoughtless, flippant manner. Of course, this collection is hardly recent -- perhaps I will read something that assures me this perspective is out of date. But until then it is something I will keep in mind. And even so, it is something I could hardly forget.
This is still a deeply enjoyable collection, but something has changed after my reading of it and at this point I don't quite know whether I like it or not.
First: this is a good book. Good books are supposed to make you think and they're supposed to be entertaining, and this book is both. And, contrary to what people in certain areas of social media seem to think, books are not things that one has to universally agree with, nor are they obliged to always make you feel good. Resident Alien is full of the same conversational, honest, entertaining writing that I've come to associate with Malan, but I have to admit that I did not find him as likable in this book. Which is fine -- I do not rate books based on how much the author makes me like them. I do not want authors to write books with "being liked" as their primary goal. Good God. How boring. In fact, after reading this book it's become one of my dearest wishes to be seated beside Mr Malan at a dinner party, because I think we would get on wonderfully. (And by "get on," I mean the conversation would likely be animated and unstoppable, if not entirely diplomatic.) Unfortunately, the one downside to this book is that I glimpsed a side of the author that I do not find overly pleasant or trustworthy, and that is an issue.
Malan does some great investigative journalism, and he's very, very good at writing about himself, his country, and the intersection of both. He is also very opinionated, very unafraid to voice these opinions, and dare I charge that he is perhaps a little too obsessed with South Africa. This results in a tendency, spotted clearly in a book where he strays to other subjects outside the ones in which he excels, to confuse journalism with opinion and to be shockingly, cringingly wrong. Now, anyone who's read anything by Malan will probably walk away from it knowing that he's a snob -- he admits this, he's alright with it, and he admits when he's wrong. So long as someone is capable of doing this, I don't mind snobs; they're fun. I was well aware of this when I picked up the book, and even if this snobbery could come on a little heavy at times, it was hardly a problem. Malan has a self-awareness that assures his readers that he doesn't think he's got the divine right to be correct here, but this is just how he feels and that's his truth until proven otherwise. Excellent; this is why I think we'd have fun at dinner parties.
Deeply unfortunate, then, that this kind of attitude strays into places where it is really not appropriate. Namely, his article on Northern Ireland -- the place where I grew up, and where I have my own complicated, guilt-ridden, probably snobby thoughts about identity and place. While Malan has plenty of insightful things to say about this in his own country, when it comes to mine he was deeply offensive and woefully uninformed. It's not so much the lack of understanding that gets me -- the conflict in Northern Ireland is complicated and, like all wars, impossible to adequately describe to someone who did not grow up there. But Northern Ireland is a particularly quiet war, hidden away and declared finished decades before it did. I can hardly blame a foreigner for not knowing the intricate ins and outs, and when it comes to the facts his are mostly solid. What offends me is the lack of empathy. Malan has fallen into a trap that I hoped somebody usually so insightful would avoid: he believes that there is a heirarchy of pain. The war my country endured was not bad enough. The torture that my people suffered was not cruel enough. Only some 3000 people died. My war was, according to Malan, "boring."
My personal feelings aside, this is a moral line in the sand for me. I do not have to be personally affected to state firmly that I do not believe that some types of torture are better than others; I do not believe that one life is inherently worth less than one hundred lives. All torture is bad. Nobody deserves to be tortured. One death is too many. And all war, no matter how great or small, no matter how many people do or don't die, no matter the methods of torture employed, is evil. I will say it again: all war is evil. It is the greatest evil that can befall mankind. Every single war is pain and loss and trauma on an industrial, incomprehensible scale. I extend this to all wars I read about (Malan's included) and all wars I have covered and will go on to cover as a journalist. It is a hard moral for me -- the comparison of trauma is abhorrent. I will not budge on this.
Therefore Malan has regrettably gone down in my estimations. I still find him a brilliant writer, and I find his work thoughtful and engaging. I still think there are places where he is the undeniable expert. But I no longer trust him as much as I once did. I am incapable of separating his writing from the fact that he believes certain torture does not count as bad enough, and certain wars are boring. I read everything much more closely, and I wonder who else he is dismissing in such a thoughtless, flippant manner. Of course, this collection is hardly recent -- perhaps I will read something that assures me this perspective is out of date. But until then it is something I will keep in mind. And even so, it is something I could hardly forget.
This is still a deeply enjoyable collection, but something has changed after my reading of it and at this point I don't quite know whether I like it or not.
December 29, 2010
An intriguing read, as (a) someone interested in but hardly immersed in the details of South African politics and society; (b) a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson, the American writer to whom he tends to be compared in bookfront blurbs.
His prose style is engaging - he does make heavy use of an informal style cribbed directly from HST & Tom Wolfe, but shows more comfort with more classic journalistic and essay styles, and is fairly adept at shifting when necessary (often given the amount of exposition added for non-RSA audiences.) And the subject matter is far ranging and never boring, if only because of my own lack of familiarity with the events and people discussed. It's all new to me, even if the South African broadsheets have beaten the stories to death.
The problem with Malan's work is the persistent racism that pops up in his discussion of black South Africans. He caveats, heavily rationalizes, does guilty white guy confessions, and plays up his "Traitor's Heart" conceit to mitigate it; but you cannot ignore that he is consumed with shooting down black leaders and political organizations (based on the inordinate energy he spends doing so), and carelessly perpetuates tropes of the savage native when discussing everything from musical history to basic slice-of-life personal interactions. He really seems to have it in for the Zulus.
I would recommend reading _My Traitor's Heart_ before or in lieu of this one - I wish I had done the same to get a better background & handle on his long-form work before experiencing his more condensed / opinion-oriented pieces, which are more susceptible to the aforementioned racist hit pieces with less room to develop context.
His prose style is engaging - he does make heavy use of an informal style cribbed directly from HST & Tom Wolfe, but shows more comfort with more classic journalistic and essay styles, and is fairly adept at shifting when necessary (often given the amount of exposition added for non-RSA audiences.) And the subject matter is far ranging and never boring, if only because of my own lack of familiarity with the events and people discussed. It's all new to me, even if the South African broadsheets have beaten the stories to death.
The problem with Malan's work is the persistent racism that pops up in his discussion of black South Africans. He caveats, heavily rationalizes, does guilty white guy confessions, and plays up his "Traitor's Heart" conceit to mitigate it; but you cannot ignore that he is consumed with shooting down black leaders and political organizations (based on the inordinate energy he spends doing so), and carelessly perpetuates tropes of the savage native when discussing everything from musical history to basic slice-of-life personal interactions. He really seems to have it in for the Zulus.
I would recommend reading _My Traitor's Heart_ before or in lieu of this one - I wish I had done the same to get a better background & handle on his long-form work before experiencing his more condensed / opinion-oriented pieces, which are more susceptible to the aforementioned racist hit pieces with less room to develop context.
December 31, 2013
Malan's 1990 memoir, My Traitor's Heart, was one of many books I read about apartheid South Africa when I was young and discovering the atrocities taking place there. And it was the book that haunted me the most. For some reason I didn't really follow up with Malan over the years, and just realized this book was released recently, aggregating journalism pieces from various publications over the years. Interesting collection, and I liked how he did postscripts on them as some of his articles created quite a stir (especially his AIDS reporting).
In his earlier memoir Malan came across quite compassionate, impressionable, and despondent over his family's history and role in apartheid. His older, wizened self comes across more harder of heart, typical of life and especially of what's happened in South Africa over the years. He doesn't pull any punches, and he alludes to being less left-wing and more right. So while I didn't identify as much with the older Malan, I have also not been on the frontline of the ills of South Africa either. I'm glad I got to know this Rian Malan via this compilation of articles.
In his earlier memoir Malan came across quite compassionate, impressionable, and despondent over his family's history and role in apartheid. His older, wizened self comes across more harder of heart, typical of life and especially of what's happened in South Africa over the years. He doesn't pull any punches, and he alludes to being less left-wing and more right. So while I didn't identify as much with the older Malan, I have also not been on the frontline of the ills of South Africa either. I'm glad I got to know this Rian Malan via this compilation of articles.
September 2, 2012
This book is a series of Malan's essays/articles. One of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was because of the piece, "In the Jungle" which was originally published in 2000 in Rolling Stone magazine. It is the amazing story of a song that we all recognize because it has become legend all over the world. It was called "Mbube" or "The Lion." It was composed by a Solomon Linda in Johannesburg in 1939. "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight." This is an amazing story. Find this book and read it.
November 18, 2011
A worthwhile read from a talented storyteller. Malan writes with a mixture of cynicism and hope and humour. His reluctant love for South Africa shines through his observation about the state of our nation. I would have given this four stars but the book is poorly produced. The font is too small and the paper feels cheap. It's horrible to hold. The cover also does not do the book justice.
July 21, 2012
Though he has been compared with Hunter Thompson, I think he combines curmudgeonliness with compassion, obstreperousness with empathy and bias with honesty. And, regardless whether he is ranting, complaining, whining or bitching, his deep love for South Africa (and Africa) shines through. Besides, his prose is immaculate.
December 6, 2012
This book was given to me by a South African friend just before she left for the UK. It has been sitting on my book shelf for a few months and I decided to pick it up yesterday. If you are interested in South African Politics and the wide spread corruption that has emanated since the fall of apartheid then it is a book I suggest you read.
March 27, 2014
Hard hitting, provocative, series of essays written in the 90s through 2009.I read the work on my way home (back to US) from a six-month stay in South Africa and thoroughly enjoyed the work. His work remains relevant as his assessments still reflect the current situation on a number of issues. Enjoyed his thought-provoking prose and investigative journalistic style.
September 12, 2022
Wonderful essays about life in South Africa written since Malan's classic A Traitor's Life. A wrong turn on AIDS in South Africa, though.
Republished in the US in 2012 under the name ‘The lion sleeps tonight’.
Republished in the US in 2012 under the name ‘The lion sleeps tonight’.
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