We Are Not Such Things: The Murder of a Young American, a South African Township, and the Search for Truth and Reconciliation
Jun 2016 · Sold by Random House
4.0star
1 review
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544
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About this ebook
Justine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class—a gripping investigation in the vein of the podcast Serial
“Timely . . . gripping, explosive . . . the kind of obsessive forensic investigation—of the clues, and into the soul of society—that is the legacy of highbrow sleuths from Truman Capote to Janet Malcolm.”—The New York Times Book Review
The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa: The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents’ forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then van der Leun stumbled upon another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The true story of Amy Biehl’s death, it turned out, was not only a story of forgiveness but a reflection of the complicated history of a troubled country.
We Are Not Such Things is the result of van der Leun’s four-year investigation into this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, and compassion. The bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath—and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and in the decades that followed—come together in an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and paints a stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents. We come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation are universal in scope and powerful in resonance. We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history.
“A masterpiece of reported nonfiction . . . Justine van der Leun’s account of a South African murder is destined to be a classic.”—Newsday
“Timely . . . gripping, explosive . . . the kind of obsessive forensic investigation—of the clues, and into the soul of society—that is the legacy of highbrow sleuths from Truman Capote to Janet Malcolm.”—The New York Times Book Review
The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa: The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents’ forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then van der Leun stumbled upon another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The true story of Amy Biehl’s death, it turned out, was not only a story of forgiveness but a reflection of the complicated history of a troubled country.
We Are Not Such Things is the result of van der Leun’s four-year investigation into this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, and compassion. The bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath—and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and in the decades that followed—come together in an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and paints a stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents. We come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation are universal in scope and powerful in resonance. We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history.
“A masterpiece of reported nonfiction . . . Justine van der Leun’s account of a South African murder is destined to be a classic.”—Newsday
Ratings and reviews
4.0
1 review
Deborah Craytor
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July 8, 2016
4.5 stars I belong to the Newest Literary Fiction Goodreads group, and our monthly buddy reads are usually (you guessed it) new lit fic. For July, however, our moderator challenged us to read as many non-fiction books from our TBR lists as we could find room for. Although at last count I had 97 non-fiction books waiting to be read, I had been moving them to the bottom of my list; they sounded interesting, but, really, reading non-fiction is too much work. I don't want to have to learn anything during my pleasure reading time (said in that lovely teenage whine we parents all adore). Nevertheless, I decided to accept the challenge, at least to the extent of reading one book, and picked up Justine van der Leun's We Are Not Such Things. The title was taken from one of the defendants at the Amy Biehl murder trial in South Africa: "STATE LAWYER : You see what I am going to suggest to you, Mr. Nofemela, is that the attack and brutal murder of Amy Biehl could not have been done with a political objective. It was wanton brutality, like a pack of sharks smelling blood. Isn’t that the truth? EASY NOFEMELA : No, that’s not true, that’s not true. We are not such things." I had originally added this book to my TBR list for several reasons. As a lawyer, I was interested in the criminal justice process in South Africa in light of my recent research into personal freedoms in Africa and the Middle East. I remembered the Amy Biehl murder on the news. Given the current breakdown in race relations in the United States and the call for reparations for institutionalized racism, I wanted to see how South Africa, once the most openly racist nation in the world, handled that issue, and having handled a case involving a white South African years ago, I wondered whether the assumptions made about him were based in fact. While van der Leun addressed all of these questions, she did so not as a pedant, but by incorporating them within a well-written and very engaging story centered around real people: the black men convicted of murdering Amy and their relationships with each other, their communities, and (surprisingly) Amy's parents. The narrative flowed back and forth in time and among points of view, but its non-linearity was not confusing. Instead, it brought into stark relief a point too many of us forget in the heat of an apparent injustice: there is no single "true" account of any human drama. Witnesses focus on and remember different things; observations and memories may change over time as different interpretations arise or motives are exposed. Along the way, I did manage to learn a few facts about South African culture and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. My only complaint was van der Leun's decision to devote three of the final chapters to Daniel de Villiers, a white man attacked by a black mob on the same day as Amy's murder. In the book's opening chapter, van der Leun implied that de Villiers's experience radically altered the "truth" surrounding Amy's death: "After months of frenzied searching, I had finally found an old and ruined man who had also been in Gugulethu on that August 25, 1993, though few remembered him. Nobody had ever told his account of that day, nor made the chilling links between what had happened to him and what had happened to Amy Biehl five hours and a quarter mile away. The old man knew something about brutal mobs and racial violence, and he was the final piece in the jigsaw I had been painstakingly piecing together for two years." Even after three chapters, I failed to see any meaningful connection between de Villiers and Amy, so I ended the book resenting van der Leun's change in focus and momentum (not a good place for an author to leave a reviewer). Van de Leun lost half a star for this misstep, but overall, she successfully suppressed my bias against non-fiction (for now, at least). I received a free copy of We Are Not Such Things from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
About the author
Justine van der Leun is the author of the travel memoir Marcus of Umbria. She has written about South Africa for Harper’s and The Guardian. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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