SOURCE: "The Argument for Terrible Deeds," in San Francisco Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 1992, p. 5.

The following review by Randolph Vigne, a South African activist of the 1960s, praises An Act of Terror for its depiction of South Africa on the threshold of social change.

This is a story told against three very different backgrounds: first, the political and social turmoil of South Africa and the imperatives that bring a young man like Brink's Thomas to act as he does; secondly, the specific place of his people, the white Afrikaners, whose rule has led to the conflict that claims him; and thirdly, the nature of the morality that both forbids and condones the taking of life.

Brink is a brilliant storyteller and his moments of pity and terror more than recompense the reader for occasional longueurs containing more background than story, little humor or irony, and—particularly...