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A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's notebook from robben Island 2006-02-12 06:30:01
A Free Mind, a collection of quotations by Ahmed Kathrada culled from the secret notebooks he kept on Robben Island, is an imaginative and unusual collection of quotations. It is also a powerfully South African book that captures in miniature many different histories. [Full Story...]
Tropical Fish 2006-02-12 06:30:01
The eight interlinked stories that make up Tropical Fish have much to do with coming-of-age. Unlike many works of this kind, the focus is not on a single character, but on three sisters. There is a limited parallel here, then, with Tsitsi Damgarembga's celebrated Nervous Conditions and with a fine, though largely forgotten, novel by Yulissa Amadu Maddy, No Past, No Present, No Future. [Full Story...]
Fuentes: giving verbal reality to the unwritten part of the world writing about the unwritten 2006-02-12 06:30:01
Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, historian and politician, is in South Africa to deliver the annual Nadine Gordimer lecture. In an essay, How I Started to Write, published in Myself With Others: Selected Essays (1988), Fuentes sets out the complexity of his early years. [Full Story...]
Vilakazi's words still resound in African literature 2006-02-05 06:30:01
The heated dispute between the Zulu writer Benedict Wallet Vilakazi ("BW") and Herbert IE Dhlomo, the Zulu dramatist, remains instructive. On the 100th anniversary of Vilakazi's birth, South Africa continues to grapple with the role and place of indigenous language in the wide rainbow canvas called South African literature. [Full Story...]
Human Traces 2006-02-05 06:30:01
Readers of Faulks's bestselling novels Birdsong and Charlotte Gray will not be surprised to find that his latest novel is once again a meticulously researched re-creation of a distant time; indeed, once again the turn of the 20th century in England and France. [Full Story...]
Blackout, Blowout & Beyond: Satirical revue sketches by Wole Soyinka 2006-02-05 06:30:01
Dictatorship; the depredation of civil society by the military; corrupt government - these concerns have held centre stage in Wole Soyinka's theatre, from Kongi's Harvest through A Play
of Giants to King Baabu. [Full Story...]
Oprah propels Wiesel to the fore 2006-02-05 06:30:01
It is ironic that Elie Wiesel's memoir Night is now on Oprah Winfrey's "book club pick" and as a result has become Amazon.com's number one bestseller. [Full Story...]
Fuentes to deliver Gordimer lecture 2006-02-05 06:30:01
Carlos Fuentes, the great Mexican writer and intellectual, will deliver the annual Nadine Gordimer lecture under the auspices of the school of literature and language studies at Wits university and the Mexican embassy in South Africa. [Full Story...]
A year of two summers 2006-01-29 06:30:01
A South African who has lived in Israel and who is now based in London, Shaun Levin, prefaces his debut short-story collection with an epigraph from Robert Mapplethorpe: "It was a good place to come from, in that it was a good place to leave." [Full Story...]
Loving,Living, Party Going 2006-01-29 06:30:01
One day a number of years ago I opened the first page of a novel in the National Library of Wales and read: "Fog was so dense, a bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet." [Full Story...]
The City Of Falling Angels 2006-01-22 06:30:01
In his best-selling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt took the lid off the city of Savannah, Georgia. What he found was intriguing enough to put the book on the New York Times best-seller list for longer than any other book in history. If Berendt can do that with Savannah, what could he not do with Venice, that most fabled of cities? [Full Story...]
Saving Water 2006-01-22 06:30:01
Allan Kolski Horwitz is prolific, and this is a big collection, containing more than 150 poems. The quality's uneven, but there's enough strong material here - and an ample scattering of fine, razor-sharp pieces - to hold the attention through the full 200 pages. [Full Story...]
Darling Mutti 2006-01-22 06:30:01
Darling Mutti, Joan Marshall's moving book, was launched last year at the Seeking Refuge exhibition, which is currently on at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg. [Full Story...]
There's a disappointing dearth of dirt on,the barefoot billionaire 2006-01-22 06:30:01
Ebbe Dommisse, the ex-editor-in-chief of Die Burger, is in demand following the death of Anton Rupert at 89 this week. [Full Story...]
Flying To Disneyland 2006-01-15 06:30:01
Imagine a collection of escapees from a localised version of The Jerry Springer Show, but by way of one of Marlene van Niekerk or Ivan Vladislavic's novels, seasoned with the film Rain Man, or one of Paul Slabolepszy's early plays. If you can keep these influences in mind like an adroit juggler, you are on the right path to Flying to Disneyland. [Full Story...]
Father Michael's Lottery 2006-01-15 06:30:01
The subject of this fascinating, moving and often very funny novel, set in an unnamed southern African country, is the struggle between those who budget and administer the health services and those who care for patients. [Full Story...]
Trials Of Slavery 2006-01-15 06:30:01
Slavery - what resonances! The horrors of the middle passage, Uncle Tom in his cabin, "Massa's in de cold, cold ground" - none of these have anything to do with South Africa. Slaves were brought here from the East, not from Africa to the West. [Full Story...]
Random House offers a new home for local writing talent 2006-01-15 06:30:01
At last, another place for South African writers to send those unsolicited manuscripts. The launch of Umuzi, Random House South Africa's new imprint, is a welcome move for South African writers who complain that they have for too long been languishing in a publishing-poor environment. [Full Story...]
European Union literary competition announces shortlist 2006-01-08 06:30:01
The 2005/6 European Union Literary Award Competition shortlist has been announced. [Full Story...]
The Tyrannicide Brief 2006-01-08 06:30:01
Geoffrey Robertson is a distinguished British legal scholar and practitioner with an international reputation in human rights law and international law on crimes against humanity. His new volume, The Tyrannicide Brief, while ostensibly about the prosecutor in the 17th century trial of the English king, Charles I, is also a tightly argued essay on the international legal issues of trying contemporary despots for crimes against humanity. [Full Story...]
On Beauty 2006-01-08 06:30:01
In her acknowledgments Zadie Smith pays tribute to EM Forster "to whom all my fiction is indebted, one way or another". This is at first sight a surprising connection. [Full Story...]
We Walk Straight So You Better Get Out The Way 2006-01-08 06:30:01
In 1970 the American painter and writer Joe Brainard published an innovatory work that was to inspire successors across three continents. Titled I Remember, in its final form this comprises a thousand-plus short entries, each beginning with the phrase "I remember", memories from childhood and young adulthood. [Full Story...]
Gumede's book was the event of the year 2005-12-18 06:30:01
William Gumede's Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (Zebra) is undoubtedly the publishing event of the year. [Full Story...]
The Price of Water in Finistere 2005-12-18 06:30:01
The much-praised Swedish writer Bodil Malmsten has made her name as the author of children's stories, television plays, seven volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories and three highly acclaimed novels. [Full Story...]
The Typewriter's Tale 2005-12-18 06:30:01
In 1897 Henry James wrote to a friend that a typewriter had "crept through the crevice of a lame hand" and into the writing room of his home in Rye. [Full Story...]
Independent booksellers select 2005's notable books 2005-12-18 06:30:01
The books notable and noted in this article are not necessarily best-sellers, although most guarantee success. [Full Story...]
Memories of my Melancholy Whores 2005-12-11 06:30:01
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction in 10 years, is "a fairy tale for the aged - a story that celebrates the belated discovery of amorous passion in old age". [Full Story...]
Dancing In The Dark 2005-12-11 06:30:01
Caryl Phillips's new novel explores the life of Bert Williams, the most successful African-American stage performer in the first two decades of the 20th century. [Full Story...]
Gem Squash tokoloshe 2005-12-11 06:30:01
Gem Squash Tokoloshe is as fascinating and intriguing as its title promises it will be. It is much more than just another book about growing up with apartheid. The uniqueness of the personal dimension of the story takes it beyond cliché. [Full Story...]
Shade 2005-12-11 06:30:01
Neil Jordan is perhaps better known for the films he has directed, such as Mona Lisa, The Crying Game and The Company of Wolves, than for his novels. This is his fourth, and it is every bit as accomplished as his films. [Full Story...]
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