Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown is a South African novelist influenced by William Boyd and Ian McEwan, police reservist in the South African Police Service (SAPS), and an advocate. He is the author of four novels: Inyenzi, which centres on the Rwandan genocide, and the crime novels of Coldsleep Lullaby, Refuge and Solace. Brown is also the author of one non-fiction work, Street Blues, in which he writes about his experiences as a police reservist. Brown was the recipient of the 2006 Sunday Times Fiction Prize for Coldsleep Lullaby, and his work has been shortlisted for both the Alan Paton Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa Region) Quotes The storyline is based loosely on the movie Heat, with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Pacino is the tough cop and De Niro the rather likeable heist-gang leader. In my favorite scene, Pacino and De Niro meet in a coffee shop and have a conversation. They talk without acknowledging expressly who they are, although of course they are entirely aware, having tracked one another for the better part of the film. De Niro says, “I do what I do,” and Pacino responds, “Well I gotta do what I do.” They part knowing that they cannot both survive the hunt. In my book, Eberard and Andile meet in a coffee shop and have a similar conversation, but the theme of their conversation is, in essence, that they need each other. The robber is defined by the cop, the cop’s existence presupposes the robber. That’s a long way of answering yes—from the beginning I wanted to portray both sides. Eberard isn’t a better person than Andile—they have made different choices, to be sure, but both have been motivated, and pressured, by their personal circumstances. I truly enjoyed the challenge of portraying both sides of the story. The demands of the job are crushing in many ways—in my two nonfiction accounts of being a police officer, I tried to give the reader some insight into the slow grinding traumas of police work. The demand of being courageous, strong, resilient, compassionate, sensitive, conscious all at the same time—and then witnessing on a daily basis the trauma that life happily dishes up to ordinary, innocent people—it is honestly a tall ask to expect anyone to maintain a normal, healthy lifestyle at the same time. External links Category: Living people