Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

Country of My Skull is narrative nonfiction, not documentary, and as such, Krog’s role in the text is somewhat ambiguous. The various “Antjies” Krog references in the text are fictionalized versions of herself, using varieties of her name—Antjie Krog, Antjie Somers, Antjie Samuel, and sometimes just Antjie. Krog frequently mentions that truth can be subjective, that she is telling her truth, not the truth, and occasionally even calls herself out for lying. She is the reader’s eyes into the TRC’s process but is also an unreliable narrator and makes sure that that is clear. Krog’s avatar sums up her place in the text in Part 4:

I am busy with the truth…my truth […] Seen from my perspective, shaped by my state of mind at the time and now also by the audience I’m telling the story to. In every story, there is hearsay, there is a grouping together of things that didn’t necessarily happen together, there are assumptions, there are exaggerations to bring home the enormities of situations, there is downplaying to confirm innocence. And all of this together makes up the whole country’s truth.