Book Review : Agent 407: A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence

The following book had special significance for me, growing up in Apartheid South Africa and being not much younger than the author.

Agent 407: A South African Spy Breaks Her Silence by Olivia Forsyth

This book is about a young South African girl who wanted adventure, trained as a spy and subsequently found herself on the wrong side of her ideologies.

Never able to completely convince the “other side” of her integrity and allegiance she languishes, imprisoned in nowhere land, of no real help to anyone : a wannabe double agent, committed to her captors and celebrated by those she sought to betray.

There are books that speak to your source, that put you in a place and you know it’s your place. Words are hardly necessary. This was the first 100 pages of this book for me, but there again I am a native. I am only a few years younger than the author, went to the same College (though later) and understand the South Africa that existed then – because it is long gone and unrecognizable since.

I enjoyed this book because I understand the author, where she went, why and the politics she infiltrated and protested. Not a lot of people will, which is probably why they should read it !

It is, at best, a brave ideologist’s adventure in the heart of Southern Africa’s tumultuous struggle against Apartheid.

–oOo–