“The greatest Afrikaner poet of this generation. . . . No one elevated the Boer language to such pure beauty and wielded it so devastatingly against the apartheid regime.”—The New Yorker

“In this inspiring, insightful, and heart-warming meditation, Breyten Breytenbach has given us a masterpiece — a term I use with all due caution. . . . As unpretentious as a comfortable old shirt, this is a book to be read and reread, to be cherished by anyone who values the enlightenment found in great poetry of all kinds.”—Sam Hamill

This eclectic and generous work full of wisdom and wit is addressed to a young writer. Breyten Breytenbach’s candid and provocative reflections on reading and writing guide without guiding, open mental channels, surprise, and inspire. A stirring glimpse into the mind of an artist.

An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, novelist, playwright, memoirist, and painter. He received the Alan Paton Prize in 1994 and the prestigious Hertzog Prize for his collection of poetry Windcatcher in 2008.

“Yet this is not a prisoner’s book. It would be a crass injustice of underestimation and simplification if it is presented and received that way. It describes how the ordinary time-focus of a man’s perceptions can been extraordinarily rearranged by a definitive experience. . . . Prison irradiates this book with dreadful enlightenments; the dark and hidden places of the country from which the book arises are phosphorescent with it.”—Nadine Gordimer

“A complex, demanding, haunting book. . . . The blend between fantasy and reality, the lyric intensity of a narrative consciousness which refuses to be pinned down to one identity or a single mode of existence.”—John Wideman

“Breytenbach has the gift of being able to descend effortlessly into the Africa of the poetic unconscious and return with the rhythm and the words, the words in the rhythm, that give life.”—J.M. Coetzee

An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and visual artist. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world. Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Paris in the late ’60s and became deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. Breytenbach is the author of All One Horse, A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Dog Heart, and The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, among many others. He received the Alan Paton Award for Return to Paradise in 1994 and the prestigious Hertzog Prize for Poetry for Papierblom in 1999 and for Die Windvanger (Windcatcher) in 2008.

"It is impossible to stop our ears against the excruciating power of what Breytenbach has to say."Nadine Gordimer

"Obviously the greatest Afrikaner poet of this generation. . . . No one elevated the Boer language to such pure beauty and no one wielded it so devastatingly against the apartheid regime as its exiled poet Breyten Breytenbach."The New Yorker

"[Return to Paradise] is written with a wild heart and an unrelenting eye, and is fueled by the sort of rage that produces great literature."-The Washington Post

"No white South African writer has penetrated as deeply into his own country as Breytenbach-and none has been as successful in the flowering of his art in exile."-Donald Woods

All One Horse is a moving and haunting journey through Breyten Breytenbach's kaleidoscopic imagination. His surreal and psychically charged paintings converse with his philosophical and lyrical prose pieces. The title is a nod to Chuang Tzu, and the writings are infused with glimmers of Eastern thought (as well as glimmers of the other worlds Breytenbach has inhabited).

An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and painter (his paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world). After years of exile in France, in 1975 he was apprehended during a clandestine trip to South Africa, accused of terrorism for his anti-apartheid activities, and spent seven years in prison. He received the Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award for Return to Paradise in 1994 and the Hertzog Prize for poetry in 1999 and 2007.