'A Just Defiance' has been a huge success in South Africa. While reading at times like a well-written thriller, its significance is to reveal apartheid to have been far more brutal, ruthless, and self-serving even than we had suspected.

Apartheid was in South Africa; now it has been transferred to Palestine.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

I thought that, post-apartheid, there would be absolutely no interest in South Africa. That has been both true and untrue. The major writers like Gordimer and Coetzee have produced major books. But some of the more minor writers have drifted away.

I have worshipped Berlin from the day I read 'Two Concepts of Liberty' in South Africa. It seemed to make it respectable to be a liberal.

If you think about it, the Mulroney position on South Africa and the opposition to apartheid was a far more principled position than had been true of (former prime minister) Pierre Trudeau,