Rage
The Courtney Series 6
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4.7 • 83 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A Courtney series adventure - Book 3 in The Burning Shore sequence
THE FUTURE OF A COUNTRY. THE END OF A FAMILY.
The year is 1952. Ruthlessly guided by Shasa Courtney and Centaine Malcomess, the Courtney family empire is central to the lives of both white and black South Africans alike. While Shasa, heir to the Courtney fortunes, dreams of uniting his divided, beloved country, Apartheid threatens to destroy everything he holds close. Out of options, his half-brother Manfred persuades him to join South Africa's right-wing National Party, hoping to moderate their dangerous policies from within.
But as the fires of revolution burn more intensely on the horizon, Manfred desperately tries to keep the secrets he cannot afford to be revealed – secrets he is willing to kill to hide – while, Shasa, in his bloody quest for power, will be tested in ways he could never imagine. When the terrible struggle for the future of South Africa is finally over, the Courtney family will never be the same – and many will pay a terrible price . . .
Rage is the powerful third novel in Wilbur Smith’s The Burning Shore sequence, which became an instant global bestseller
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this latest epic, popular novelist Smith (The Leopard Hunts in Darkness) takes on a difficult challenge, telling of post-World War II South Africa. What he has created is a hybrid. His narrative seriously addresses the conflicts of whites and blacks, the differences between British and Afrikaners, and the tribes and personalities vying for control of the African National Congress. But it's also a soap opera, one of those conventional generational sagas with a contrived forbidden love affair between a white and a black, adultery and the rivalry between two men who do not realize they are half-brothers. The combination is simultaneously thrilling and embarrassing. Shasa Courtney is a wealthy United Party minister to the South African Parliament. A moderate of English heritage, he is often opposed to the Nationalist Party's Manfred De La Rey, an Afrikaner. Their mother, the matriarchal Centaine Courtney-Malcomess, is able to mediate their conflicts but not to control Shasa's wife, Tara, who sympathizes with the black cause. It is Tara who falls in love with the black Moses Gama, an advocate of violent opposition to apartheid. All their stories intermingle with the history of South Africa in the '50s and '60s. Smith's account of some of the worst racial riots is terrifying and his storytelling powers are strong, but readers of Rage will likely come away wondering whether turgid sub-plots really enhance a novel about one of the world's most troubled countries.
