'Indispensable reading if we wish to understand the forces forming and deforming literary production in South Africa during the apartheid years.'--JM Coetzee 'At last - a small Truth and Reconciliation Commission on South African literature! For the first time the secret documents of the censors and the roles black/white/English/Afrikaans writers and publishers played during apartheid censorship are brought together and scrutinized. An amazing book - a gift actually.'--Antjie Krog "In his penetrating investigation as much into the history of censorship in practice as into its philosophical and ideological foundations, McDonald brilliantly and sometimes startlingly fills in [a] disturbing blank.in our country's recent intellectual history."--Andre P. Brink, Die Burger "McDonald's book is a vigorous yet subtle and always compellingly readable contribution to the history of and debate about the borders of the literary and the place of words in the world."--Shaun de Waal, Mail and Guardian "McDonald's work suggests an important impulse to protect us from abuses of authority.

"--Sunday Times 'The Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid greater emphasis on reconciliation than on truth. It has now become the function of scholarship to reveal the unvarnished truth about apartheid machinations. Most of us have always wondered why our literary works were banned - what convoluted logic informed censorship. Peter McDonald's book lifts the veil of secrecy under which state censors operated in South Africa.'--Mbulelo Mzamane.