The Time Of Our Lives

THE TIME OF OUR LIVES is the historically important anthology whose poems played such a pivotal role in the struggle against the height of oppression in South Africa. This completely revised edition includes several poems that were not in the original collection, and the organisation of the poems into a more coherent order. The Time Of Our Lives accurately portrays what it was like to live and fight, love and die under the discrimination and tyranny of apartheid. "It bears testimony to the resilience and courage of the oppressed in South Africa ... His poetry is devastatingly forthright and hard-hitting."Tyrone August, The Star"Asvat's imagery is stark ... his poems taut encapsulations of the injustices wreaked on Black people."Asha Rambally, The Graphic"Asvat's poem ('Possibilities for a Man Hunted by SBs') is a clear and simple statement of the true state of affairs ... reducible to mathematical terms."Mbulelo Mzamane, Perspectives On South African English Literature"Asvat's poems ... with many depths, clever twists and juxtapositions, are exciting, true, and thought-provoking."Wendy Vogt & Alan James, Upstream"... an almost palpable tenderness for a country whom the poet alludes to as if she were a lover."Neela Alvarez-Pereyre, Commonwealth Essays & Studies "The Time of Our Lives reveals a writer who enjoys words: he has a sense of rhythm close to TS Eliot and an eye for the modern image."Brian Rose, Rand Daily Mail"Like hesitating snowflakes ... his words are fascinating in their capricious wilfulness ... like unexpected strokes of a whip."Susanne Baackmann, University Of Albuquerque, USA"Farouk Asvat ... writes about love and suffering, about individualism, snobbishness, pretence and pride, about human and environmental beauty and about opposing oppression, and who deploys metaphysical, lyrical and colloquial language, slang and standard diction, all with equal strength and ease."Cosmo Pieterse, Culture In Another South Africa"Since he has been in the line of fire as both a victim of Apartheid and as a political voice in the struggle for liberation, his evocation of the contemporary South African battlefield and his testimony of the humiliation, isolation, deprivation, degradation and murder, the collective weapons of Apartheid, are chillingly authentic."Herbert Steyn, English Olympiad, King Edward VII School."Asvat uses witty, humorous, sarcastic and satiric language to expose the contradictions, emotional terrains and tensions in both Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa. He uses the lingo, voice and logic of the man and woman in the street to expose the absurdity of political repression and social control and the mediocrity and hypocrisy of political and religious dogmatism. The tenacity and resilience of people in the face of repression and suppression is exhibited by their ability to see the humorous side of every situation, laughing at the short-sightedness of their oppressors as well as having a good laugh at themselves. This playfulness and wittiness of slang language comes in handy, especially where Asvat uses narrative, monologue, dialogue/dramatic techniques ..." Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, Bluesology And Bofelosophy "His love poetry soars with an intense sensitivity, it celebrates lyrically the joys of a most exquisite sensuousness."Marcia Leveson, University of the Witwatersrand, The Indicator"... you almost catch your breath at some of the stanzas ... you can re-read it several times and be struck by new ideas, metaphors, elegiac surprises, and the heartfelt poignancy ..."Aggrey Klaaste, editor Sowetan" ... carries conviction and conveys a mounting tension which can be glancingly lyrical and simultaneously politically authoritative."Peter Wilhelm, Financial Mail"Asvat's distrust of rhetorical formulas produces a language that is capable of interrogating the dreams and slogans of the revolution."Julia Martin, Upstream