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RIP Aziz Hassim (1935 – 2013)

Durban-born writer Aziz Hassim sadly passed away last Friday. The Daily Maverick’s Khadija Patel writes that although Hassim “began writing late in his life, he became one of the most important voices to emerge from South Africa in the last 20 years”.

Hassim’s first novel, The Lotus People, won the 2001 Sanlam Literary Award for an unpublished novel. Patel refers to a quote by Hassim, who had said, “Writing is my own personal [Truth and Reconciliation Commission]…It’s the only way that I can record the untold history of the Casbah”.

Talking about his second novel, Revenge of Kali, Hassim had said, “While The Lotus People is a novel about what the Apartheid regime did to the Indian community, Revenge of Kali is about what the Indians did to themselves”.

Read Patel’s obituary:

The Grey Street Literary Trail has lost another of its great writers. Aziz Hassim passed away on Friday 14 June 2013 after battling pneumonia in hospital for ten days.

“Writing is my own personal [Truth and Reconciliation Commission],” he had earlier said. “It’s the only way that I can record the untold history of the Casbah.”

• Complete article: Daily Maverick

KZN Literary Tourism has a profile on Hassim, which includes an excerpt from The Lotus People:

Durban-born Aziz Hassim, spent most of his early years fraternising on the streets in Durban’s Casbah area. The Casbah, a predominantly Indian – but also multicultural – area had a kind of romance and bittersweet lifestyle during the fifties and sixties, which lives on only in the minds of those that inhabited it at the time. Hassim’s debut novel, The Lotus People, which won the 2001 Sanlam Literary Award for an unpublished novel, spans the events and moods of this era and served as a form of catharsis for Hassim.

• Complete article: KZN Literary Tourism

In 2011, Zoë Molver and David Basckin from Basckin Molver Productions made a documentary on Hasssim for KZN Literary Tourism:

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Book details

• The Lotus People by Aziz Hassim
  EAN: 9781919855073
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• Revenge of Kali by Aziz Hassim
  EAN: 9781920222376
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Image courtesy Niall Mcnulty

Jane Rosenthal Reviews Strange Pilgrimages by Achmat Dangor

Verdict: carrot

In Achmat Dangor’s stories the protagonists are, for the most part, diverse South African people of colour, some of mixed race, some not. Some of them lived in exile during the struggle, others are overseas in the post-1994 period of transition (which we are still in).

He looks at how people manage their relationships with wives, mothers, in-laws and lovers in these conditions, and, in all the stories, his protagonists investigate their past.

• Complete review: Mail & Guardian

• Strange Pilgrimages homepage

Book Details

• Strange Pilgrimages by Achmat Dangor
  EAN: 9781770103009
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Kirsty Carden and Rob Hofmeyer Review My Children Have Faces by Carol Campbell

Verdict: carrots!

I have always loved the Karoo and have a particular fascination for the karretjiemense who spend their lives travelling through this barren landscape with their donkey carts.

• Complete review: O, The Oprah Magazine

THE Karretjiemense of the Karoo live precariously on the fringes of society; wandering the roads and the veld, finding occasional employment, often surviving off roadkill and roots.

• Complete review: The Citizen

• My Children Have Faces homepage

Book Details

• My Children Have Faces by Carol Campbell
  EAN: 9781415201831
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Andrew Donaldson: Icelander and Stuffness

By Andrew Donaldson for The Times

IF YOU READ ONE BOOK THIS WEEK

Someone to Watch Over Me, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (Hodder & Stoughton)

In the fifth in Sigurdardóttir’s Thora Gudmundsdóttir series the lawyer comes to the aid of a young man with Down’s syndrome who has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five residents. Ignore the rubbish about “Iceland’s answer to Stieg Larsson”; this is way better – terrifying and compelling.

THE ISSUE

The great forgotten American novel has been in the news again, particularly Stoner, by John Williams (1965).

What of forgotten South African novels begging rediscovery? One that comes to mind is Sylvester Stein’s bitterly funny 1958 masterpiece, Second Class Taxi. Its protagonist, Staffnurse Phofolo, is “idle and undesirable”, and courts immediate arrest for having no pass. Not that he’s bothered; he has a warm greatcoat and a drain pipe he calls home. But real life comes calling in the form of various do-gooders – liberals, church people and, of course, the ANC (thinly disguised as the African Congress of Equality). Readers are urged to hunt down “Stuffness” (as he’s often called). He’s unforgettable.

CRASH COURSE

Self-proclaimed grandmaster of Hindi crime fiction Surender Mohan Pathak’s 300 or so novels have sold some 25 million copies. Which is not bad for an author only sold at platform stalls at India’s railway stations. Bookstores won’t stock his work – despite a near-fanatical following among third-class travellers.

“Educated people in India don’t want to read Hindi and they certainly won’t be seen dead with one of my books,” Pathak told The Times of London recently. With the recent English translations of three Pathak titles, The Last Goal, Daylight Robbery and The 65 Lakh Heist, he is, however, now attracting the attention of literati with a penchant for slumming.

For an idea of the style of Pathak and others, The Times published this pithy extract from Sudhandira Sangu’s 1933 guide, The Secret of Commercial Novel Writing: “(1) The title of the book should carry a woman’s name – and it should be a sexy one like Miss Leela Mohini. (2) Your story must absolutely include a minimum half-dozen lovers and prostitutes [and] preferably 10 or a dozen murders. (3) If you try to bring any social messages, forget it. Beware! You are not going to lure your women readers.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

“Despite all the powers of contemporary science, the seemingly straightforward anatomical question, is there a G spot? remains unanswered.” – What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, by Daniel Bergner (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Book details

• Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
  EAN: 9781444734423
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Q&A with Nal’ibali Publisher Benoit Knox

The Times

What made you go into publishing?

I studied for a publishing degree at the University of Pretoria. It was at a time when educational publishers were trying to recover from the post-apartheid turmoil, and large traditional publishers were struggling to make their old-fashioned models relevant to a new South African audience.

What made you see things differently?

There was a misconception out there that black people don’t read. In our final year we worked on a project towards our degrees. I went into townships to do research. I found that access to books in township schools was limited to libraries and classrooms. I also saw how well children responded to books. I decided to create a book I believed could sell.

How did you do this?

My team and I got writers to contribute stories and then had the book illustrated and printed. We then went to schools to talk about the book, Metz and Bop and the Big Library Theft, and advised them we’d be back in two weeks to sell copies at R20 each. We sold 5000 books that way.

You still run this project. Is it difficult?

The project has not been without its problems. We have had to concentrate on other aspects of our business, such as Supernova and helping authors to self-publish. It is not forgotten, however, and I still believe that, if children buy books, they are guaranteed to read them.

Describe Supernova.

It is an educational magazine for children between the ages of nine and 14. It is published every second month and aims to make children aware of issues that affect them, their community and environment. We want to equip them with the tools and inspiration to become active and responsible world citizens.

Book details

• Metz and Bop and the Big Library Theft by Richard Street, Marilyn Perry, Jane van Velsen;, Carolyn Visser, Elma van den Berg, Karen Jeynes, Ofentse Ribane, Nerine Dorman, Francois Verster, Lydia Gittens, illustrated by Gerhard Cruywagen, Rhys Ap Gwyn
  EAN: 9780981433509
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Gerrie van Eeden resenseer Voetspore: Agulhas tot Alexandrië deur Johan Badenhorst

Uitspraak: wortel

Johan Badenhorst, aanbieder en vervaardiger van die gewilde Voetspore-reeks, se dagboek van hulle reis gedurende 2012 op die Afrika-vasteland is ’n luilekker rusbank-reisgeleentheid vir ieder en elk. Van die voorwoord af, waar ’n kykie agter die skerms van die beplanning van ’n Voetspore-reis gegee word, tot die naskrif, waar Johan bespiegel oor moontlike toekomstige reise, sal die leser voel dat hy saam met die ses Voetspore-manne in die Volkswagen Amaroks deur Afrika reis.

• Volledige resensie: LitNet

Boekbesonderhede

• Voetspore: Agulhas tot Alexandrië deur Johan Badenhorst
  EAN: 9781869198978
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Johan Myburg resenseer Incredible Tretchikoff deur Boris Gorelik

Uitspraak: wortel

In die titel van sy biografie oor Vladimir Tretchikoff, Incredible Tretchikoff, gee Boris Gorelik reeds ’n aanduiding van verwondering, maar eweneens oorbluftheid.
Wat Gorelik beplan het om te doen, en genadiglik nie daarvan afwyk nie, is om ’n verkenning te gee van die lewe en werk van dié skilder wat in 1913 in Kazachstan gebore en in 2006 in Kaapstad dood is.

• Volledige resensie: Die Burger

• Incredible Tretchikoff se tuisblad

Boekbesonderhede

• Incredible Tretchikoff deur Boris Gorelik
  EAN: 9780624056775
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Quick Review: What Hidden Lies by Michéle Rowe

By Phillip Altbeker for The Times

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a definite correlation between the level of crime in this country and the remarkable number of local authors and the high quality of their thrillers.

Racial tensions, resentments and corruption provide a dream, or nightmarish, background to these mysteries, but it still needs talent if these advantages are to be exploited to the full. The latest writer to succeed in reflecting the specific problems besetting policing while also offering a compelling narrative is Michéle Rowe in What Hidden Lies.

Persy Jonas, a detective, investigates a murder that has its roots in her own history; she reluctantly accepts help from Marge Labuschagne, a retired profiler, who also has cause to regret her past.

Jonas is posted to the Fish Hoek station, a microcosm of a police force still battling with prejudices and politics, factors that limit its ability to contend with a minor crime wave that can be traced to a gangster whose reputation makes him the prime suspect.

The dense plot includes a divisive environmental issue but the focus is on Jonas, her suppressed memories of a childhood that has a bearing on the case she is determined to solve despite obstacles, her own problems, and what she regards, initially, as Marge’s unwanted interference.

Both women are troubled and vulnerable but they are not the only characters given depth in this promising debut from a writer whose future works are worth waiting for, especially if Persy and Marge are retained because each has expertise, perseverance and an understanding of their community.

• What Hidden Lies is published by Penguin

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Book details

• What Hidden Lies by Michele Rowe
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780143530893
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Orlando Ordeal: Antony Altbeker Talks to Redi Tlhabi About Endings and Beginnings

By Antony Altbeker for the Sunday Times Lifestyle Magazine

Antony Altbeker speaks to Redi Tlhabi, a finalist in the Alan Paton Awards, about her memoir of growing up in Soweto

Redi Tlhabi is a journalist who hosts a talkshow on Radio 702 and a programme on Al Jazeera English. Endings and Beginnings: A Story of Healing is her first book.

South Africa’s appalling levels of gender violence and the vulnerability of young girls are at the heart of your story. But it is also incredibly intimate and personal. Why did you write it?

Really, I had no idea that I was writing a book. When I began the project, all I intended was to revisit a chapter in my life that I really wanted to understand. I needed to find a way to come to terms with what had happened because I was haunted by it. In fact, the publishers had to persuade me that this was worth publishing. But the fact that the world is still so hostile to women, to young girls and to the poor persuaded me that I should share my story.

You make the streets of Orlando East seem terrifying, especially for girls.

They were scary. But the most troubling thing is that at the time I didn’t think of them as dangerous. The constant harassment, the threats of rape and jackrolling: all of it seemed so normal. I was uncomfortable a lot of the time, but on some level I didn’t think of what was going on as wrong. And that is the real tragedy. Girls were expected to just accept their fate, that they would be attacked and that they would get no sympathy. I could only see how kids were robbed of their childhoods after I left Orlando.

Why was Orlando like that?

I don’t know. If you were involved in a physical fight with another child or throwing stones, adults would intervene. But when young men would torment girls on the streets or grab them for jackrolling, then everyone was paralysed. Of course, the context matters. There was so much unemployment and political violence. So some people may have thought that there were bigger problems to deal with. I think if someone had started to scream their lungs out, lots of people would have joined in. But that never happened.

Mabegzo was one of the most notorious jackrollers, yet he treated you like an angel. Why?

That’s what I was trying to make sense of in writing the book. I’ve always assumed that part of it was that he sensed my brokenness over my father’s death. But it may also have something to do with how I treated him. Everyone was terrified of him and would run away from him. And I think he generally enjoyed that. But I was the one person who reacted differently, though that was mostly because I didn’t know who he was when I met him. I had heard of Mabegzo, but he didn’t look anything like I thought he would look. He was clean and handsome. He didn’t walk the way the bullies in the street walked. He wore proper shoes, not All Stars. So when I met him, I didn’t know who he was and I was unafraid. I was curious and maybe a little attracted: I looked him in the eye and talked normally, like to any other person.

There was a big age gap between you. Wasn’t that a little strange?

My attraction to older men started with Mabegzo and it persists to this day with my husband. I probably needed a father figure. After my father’s murder, I had become extremely serious about life. The giggles of other children, really, they just got on my nerves. For me, life was serious, almost suffocating. I tended to avoid people of my own age.

While writing the book, you discovered Mabegzo had murdered Siphiwe to stop him from raping you. How did that make you feel?

Even at the time I suspected Mabegzo had something to do with it. So my story is also about Siphiwe and what happened to him, and about how I feel responsible for his death. But it was years later that I confirmed that Mabegzo had killed Siphiwe. When I heard that, it made me physically sick and threw me into a deep depression. After all those years I suddenly understood that I had caused a lot of sh*t for him and his family. I was filled with self-loathing.

But you knew it was not your fault.

Yes, but I was revolted by Mabegzo. Any consideration he had shown me paled into insignificance compared to what he had done to Siphiwe. Whatever Siphiwe was saying and doing, Mabegzo would have known that I would think killing was vile. If he really cared for me, he should have treated that part of me with respect. So I felt betrayed. But I also felt guilty, not just because of the death, but because of the relief I felt when Siphiwe died. The fact that I felt this was good riddance. My feelings were very complex.

Mabegzo’s mother, Imelda, is at the heart of the book. Her message is that sometimes it’s better not to reconcile and forgive.

Beautiful Imelda. She is my hero. She has had more of an impact on me than Mabegzo. Her victory is the life she manages to lead even after all the pain she suffered.

At some point during our conversations, I had to stop trying to make her forgive her mother; to stop forcing her story to be one of reconciliation and happy endings. I was desperate that she give up her bitterness towards her mother. I thought this was tainting her. But actually the right way to say it is that she had the strength to allow herself never to forgive. So this is not a perfect ending with everyone kissing and making up. Her choice was to live or die and she chose to live.

Do you judge Imelda’s mother as harshly as Imelda does?

In their feedback, my readers have been really hard on Nkgono. But what she did was common – when girls got pregnant, their mothers would send them to the rural areas to be raised by their grandmothers. Even when the pregnancy was not the result of a rape. And Nkgono’s initial reaction was not to send Imelda away; she did so only after the community began to gossip about Imelda and her pregnancy. But Imelda hates it when I talk in a way that suggests that Nkgono did what she did to protect her. She won’t accept that.

Nkgono’s big mistake – the one that Imelda cannot forgive and maybe we should not forgive – is that, having sent Imelda away, she decided to raise Mabegzo herself and to separate Imelda and Mabegzo forever. Only Nkgono can really explain that, but she never did: she just did what she believed was God’s will.

• Endings and Beginnings is published by Jacana

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Book details

• Endings and Beginnings: A Story of Healing by Redi Tlhabi
  EAN: 9781431404612
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Swimming Upstream: Andrea Nagel Reviews 21 Yaks and a Speedo by Lewis Pugh

By Andrea Nagel for The Times

Polar bears swim the icy waters of the North and South poles all the time, but they have 10cm of blubber and thick fur to keep them insulated. Lewis Pugh has only a swimming cap, a Speedo and his superhuman determination. He has based his career on setting himself extraordinarily high-risk goals with a high pain factor for which you need a bionic body.

Luckily, despite some people believing that many of his swimming expeditions, including the most northerly and southerly long-distance swims in the world, were impossible, Pugh has never lost so much as a digit.

In his latest book, 21 Yaks and a Speedo: How to achieve your impossible, Pugh distils his experiences into bite-sized chapters, each with its own motivational message.

Vasbyt is the message of one of these chapters.

“Whenever I thought of quitting, I would just ask myself a simple question: ‘Lewis, can you take just one more step?’ If the answer was ‘yes’, then I’d take it,” he writes.

“In writing this book, I wanted to tell short, pithy stories that can be read in five minutes,” he says. “The idea was to take my experiences in some of the most remote parts of the world and to relate them to everyday situations which all of us face to illustrate the everyday concepts of team work, courage, hope and, of course, vasbyt.”

One chapter tells the story of Pugh’s mission to swim across the Maldives archipelago to highlight the effect of global warming on the country.

Halfway through the 13-day swim, the team boat breaks down and they are forced to make a plan or turn back. The thing that comes across clearly when reading the book, and talking with the man, is that Pugh is not a quitter.

In the distance his team manager, Major General Tim Toyne Sewell, sees a yacht he believes belongs to Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich. After a call by “The General” to the club’s former manager, Jose Mourinho, and much to the consternation of Pugh, the team find themselves on the yacht. Pugh is disappointed that he hadn’t believed that all it would take was asking for help to get it.

The message of the chapter? “When we limit our beliefs about what is possible, we don’t ask for help. We’re not even out of the stable and we’ve already given up the race.”

This kind of humility is uncharacteristic of Pugh, but then he is a man who has achieved remarkable things, and he consequently has plenty to teach us ordinary folk.

When he’s not planning an expedition or not undertaking world-saving ecological projects, his time is taken up by motivational speaking.

The book is all pretty rah rah, blow your trumpet stuff, but it’s impossible not to get drawn in to the magnitude of Pugh’s achievements. He manages to achieve the telling of his stories and the morals that go with them with impressive aplomb, pretty much like everything he does.

• 21 Yaks and a Speedo is published by Jonathan Ball

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Book details

• 21 Yaks and a Speedo: How to achieve your impossible by Lewis Pugh
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  EAN: 9781868425730
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