to publish subsequently in English (Novitz 1995, 199). By doing so, Brink made his subsequent novels assertions. As Novitz writes "He wanted each of his English novels to stand as a rebuke to a Government that, despite its pretensions, was effectively destroying Afrikaans culture" (Novitz 1995, 199). But although some Afrikaners may have learnt from Brink's English novels that the Government was effectively destroying Afrikaans culture, it is clear that they were not learning from fiction in the relevant sense – Brink could have communicated the same, for example, if he had switched from writing history in Afrikaans to writing history in English, rather than fiction. The statement made by Brink by switching to English for his later novels is not something learned from fiction, because it is not to do with its fictional characteristics (Novitz 1995, 200). The case of the roman à clef based on true events, but in which names and other particulars have been changed is similar – the author intends the reader to imagine what is true in the fiction, but also intends the reader to form beliefs about the events upon which the novel is based. But by forming beliefs about the events upon which the novel is based, the reader is not learning from fiction in the relevant sense, since the reader could have learnt the same even if the work was not fiction – if the names were merely omitted rather than changed, for example. The case of a roman à clef in which the readers are not intended by the author to figure out how the novel is based on real events, but in which the reader nevertheless does figure it out, is even more clearly not learning from fiction in the relevant sense. In this case, the existence of the roman à clef is merely evidence about the real events, in the same way that the shortness of children's novels, for example, 6 is evidence of the short attention span of children. Even if it were not fiction, because the events on which it's based were obscured in another way, it would be evidence of the same ki