The Free Diary of Albie Sachs
by Albie Sachs, with occasional counterpoint by Vanessa September
(Random House)
Some authors have the knack of taking almost anything and making it sound exciting simply by virtue of their ability to write. Albie Sachs is one such writer.
In his earlier works, Sachs wrote of his experiences of detention, exile and survival of an assassination attempt. This new book deals with happier subject material — Sachs’s travels with his partner Vanessa September through Europe, literally from London to St Petersburg.
Sachs’s being a Constitutional Court judge, legal expert and spokesperson for the value of truth and reconciliation processes at meetings, academic conferences and even a World Bank seminar — this is closely linked to a desire on his part to reconnect with places and people who were significant to him in the struggle period.
A narrative device that he uses to express this is the flashback. Another is the introduction of commentary by his partner — partly another “perspective” on key events, partly her own attempts to understand Sachs in the light of her encounters with many of his friends.
The book takes us on a leisurely tour through some of the great cities of Europe and of the author’s own personality: his associations with certain places, and how his attitudes to politics, friends and self has changed.
Much of the book is an encounter with intriguing people, some famous or, at least, distinguished. Others are with Sachs’s friends — many of them South Africans who settled in Europe during the apartheid days.
Characterisation is one of Sachs’s strengths. He takes an ordinary event like a dinner between a group of Belgian friends and turns it into a delightful portrait of shared yet diverse eccentricity; of course, when the group includes an agnostic professor, a leading Freemason and a dissident Jesuit theologian, life offers a little help to art.
Sachs describes these situations in such a way that one feels like a fly on the wall — in the Belgian case, inhaling loads of cigar smoke until the Belgians realised their guest’s allergic discomfort.
In Helsinki Sachs and September meet a little European parliamentarian and long-time environmentalist who, though constantly chomping cigars, was party to drafting his nation’s anti-tobacco legislation. Such intriguing, larger-than-life characters seem to be par for the course on Sachs’s travels.
Matters of note also feature. At a meeting in Belfast Sachs discusses the future of reconciliation after the ceasefire with a group of former guerrillas from both sides, a group who now work together to help each other get jobs and rebuild their lives. One of the guests turns out to be an Irish Republican Army prisoner who once wrote to Sachs in reaction to his Jail Diary. Sachs, who was in exile in Britain and working as a legal academic, had been part of an inquiry into the “Bloody Sunday” incident in Derry and was trying to get a British passport. He had ignored the letter. In 2001 they met and were able to connect.
Another high note of Sachs’s travels is St Petersburg, where he attends a meeting of the World Bank. What is surprising is the picture one gets of the bank: by no means the monsters of the popular left imagination, but committed people who are genuinely trying to promote human development, economic growth and human rights.
In content or emotional intensity these “diaries” and reflections do not match Sachs’s earlier books. Yet the main narrative holds attention by its sheer wit and quality of description, as do most of Sachs’s recollections. The contributions by September are highly illuminating, particularly when she is observing her partner or presenting an alternative view of the scene he is describing. Occasionally her asides and his flashbacks don’t quite work.
All in all, this is a warm-hearted, well-written piece that confirms Sachs as an author who can tell a story well and describe characters whom one would really like to meet.