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Mark Behr. The Smell of Apples. London. Abacus. 1995. 200 pages. L8.99. ISBN 0-349-10626-6.
Mark Behr's first novel in English, The Smell of Apples, is a version of the Afrikaans Die reuk van appels, which he published in 1993 (see WLT 67:4, p. 879). Whereas the Afrikaans edition was largely ignored, the new English version has drawn wide comment from critics and readers alike. This is a little surprising, since it is the Afrikaner establishment into which the book sinks its fangs.
The story has two loci. The first, which gets the fuller treatment, is the Cape Peninsula of 1973. This childhood narrative is intercut by the Angolan bush war of 1982. The narrator in both, Marnus Erasmus, is about ten years old in the early scenes.
The novel unfolds life in the heart of Afrikaner power at its height. The perspective is intimate and domestic. Marnus and Frikkie are friends at the school of the Afrikaner elite. Marnus's "Dad" is an army general; Frikkie's is a "big nob in SANLAM," the cornerstone of Afrikaner capital. The Erasmus family moved south from Tanganyika as that nation went black, and in 1973 they live on the False Bay coast. For the boys the terms of life are an idyll: fishing, swimming, cycling, teasing girls, and petty stealing--the stuff of untroubled youth.
In the home the patriarchy holds its power easily and generously. Family discipline, molded in faith and tradition, is deeply set and barely needs expression. Marnus, Dad's "little bull," knows and likes his place in it. He will be a general too...