The Special Collections Book of the Week this week is:

Reading Revolution – Shakespeare on Robben Island by Ashwin Desai

The prison authorities on Robben Island displayed a remarkable obsession with censoring the news that prisoners could receive of the outside world. Yet, as the pages of this book reveal, political prisoners managed to escape these constraints through literature, travelling to the sites of contemporary revolutionary struggles and to the frontlines of the French and Bolshevik revolutions. As the prisoners brought their experiences to bear on the text, the works of Shakespeare were mined for their anti-colonial and anti-apartheid inspirations as much as for the power and beauty of their words. Through the memories and biographical accounts written by former political inmates, this book evocatively brings to life the voices of prisoners who furtively copied books at night before they were snatched back by the warders. This book is about those books, about how words can inspire the human spirit, light up the intellect and free the reader to travel the world.

Access: https://univofpretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/779464883

This book is available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and is part of our Africana (ZA) Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.