Archive for May, 2012
by Lindsay on May 31st, 2012
It has come to our attention that there is a new book on the way from Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, with the provocative working title The Childhood of Jesus. We spotted Random House Struik publisher Stephen Johnson with Coetzee’s latest manuscript at the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival.
For those who missed the tweet:
Meanwhile, Coetzee’s previous work continues to make an impact – most recently on the theatre scene in Europe. No doubt due to the Dutch nation’s fondness for Coetzee, there have been two recent adaptations of his Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace – one from the Toneelgroep, resident theatre company of the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam, and the other from Hungarian director and producer Kornél Mundruczó, which will be performed at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.
Watch the trailer and read a review of the Toneelgroep production:
In Ongenade, the play adaption of Coetzee’s Disgrace by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, is a captivating psychological drama. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it is the story of a Cape Town university professor falling from grace. Forced to leave his university because of an affair with a student, we follow professor Lurie to the Eastern Cape, where he seeks refuge on his daughter’s farm. His daughter Lucy, an emancipated lesbian, is the opposite of her old-fashioned, chauvinistic father. When disaster strikes and the farm is attacked by two young black men, Lurie is locked up while his daughter is raped. Whereas Lurie seeks justice and vengeance and tries to convince his daughter to leave the unsafety of her farm, Lucy’s attitude is one of acceptance and reconciliation.
Read a description of Mundruczó’s Disgrace play:
Disgrace describes the decline of David Lurie, a white professor at Cape Town University. Sacked for sexual harassment, he joins his daughter Lucy on a farm in the South African hinterland. But his new haven of peace turns to hell when both of them are badly beaten up by black neighbours. Lucy is raped, falls pregnant, and the former professor sees his points of reference disappear… Hungarian director and producer Kornél Mundruczó is now transposing this post-apartheid novel by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee to his merciless reality theatre.
In other Coetzee news, he has declined to attend the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem until “the peace process goes forward”. Other authors that have accepted invitations to attend the festival have accused the pro-Palestinian boycott movement of bullying and intimidation:
Irish writer Gerard Donovan has attacked the pro-Palestinian boycott movement for trying to “bully” him to abstain from visiting Israel and take part in the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem this week. Donovan, a prominent novelist and poet, accused the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) of “outright intimidation.”
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by Luso on May 31st, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Through the quiet of a garden, a surprising bond forms between a former prisoner of war and a mysterious gardener.
As a lawyer in the country then known as Malaya, Teoh Yun Ling helps to prosecute Japanese war criminals after the Second World War.
Book Details
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by Carolyn on May 31st, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Grensoorlogstories bestaan uit 31 verskillende verhale oor en rondom die Grens deur sowel gevestigde as ongevestigde skrywers.
Daar is ook ’n kort voorwoord deur die skrywer, waarin sy daarop wys dat hoewel daar sedert die Grensoorlog enkele kragtige fiksietekste was, dit die nie-fiksietekste is wat die botoon gevoer het. Met dié bundel wil sy dan met fiksie ’n bydrae tot die Grensliteratuur maak.
Boekbesonderhede
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by Lindsay on May 31st, 2012
Rob Spillman interviewed Binyavanga Wainaina about his memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, that was published last year. Referring to his satirical essay “How To Write About Africa”, which earned him international attention, Wainaina said, “I feel like the original Granta piece now belongs to somebody else. I have enjoyed desecrating it”. The interview also touches on writing in local languages and the importance of the internet:
Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina is inexhaustible, a public intellectual very much engaged with the literary and political worlds. His memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, published this July by Graywolf Press, chronicles the multiplicity of his middle-class African childhood: home squared, we call it, your clan, your home, the nation of your origin. It is an impressionistic memoir of the mutability of place and language, told in the first-person present so that, as readers, we are taken through his post-colonial childhood by a hyperobservant, sensitive guide. It moves from his discovery of the power of fiction to college in South Africa, where he started writing in earnest. “Discovering Home,” a personal essay about a family gathering in Uganda, won the 2002 Caine Prize, commonly referred to as the African Booker.
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Image courtesy the Guardian
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by Luso on May 31st, 2012
Renowned Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o recently delivered the Africa Day lecture at the University of the Free State, titled “The Blackness of Black: Africa in the World Today”. An edited version of the lecture appeared in the Sunday Independent.
Wa Thiong’o recounts numerous incidents where he, and others, were discriminated against and subjected to prejudice because of the colour of their skin. “We have to rediscover and reclaim the sense of the sacred in the black body,” he says. One way to achieve this, according to wa Thiong’o, is for the African middle class to uplift the ordinary working people on the continent and to “reconnect with Kwame Nkrumah’s dreams of a politically and economically united Africa, rooted in the working people of Africa”.
Wa Thiong’o will be headlining the 2012 Cape Town Book Fair, which takes place from 15 to 17 June.
The colour black has had different symbolic significance for different cultures; the revered Hindu god Krishna is black and the Black Madonna is equally revered in Catholic worship. Black may symbolise academic success and scholarship for black-gowned students and clergy; potency for some sports groups; evil for others and darkness for the explorers and missionaries of the European Enlightenment.
I want to talk about blackness from my perspective and experience as a writer. I was very proud of the release of my novel Wizard of the Crow. On November 10, 2006 the book tour took me to San Francisco, a penthouse guest at the Vitale Hotel, courtesy of Random House.
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Image courtesy the Sunday Independent
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by Luso on May 31st, 2012
Love Books and Modjaji Books take great pleasure in inviting you to the Joburg launch of Eloquent Body by Dawn Garisch.
Arja Salafranca will be in conversation with Garisch at Love Books on 6 June at 6PM.
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Wednesday, 06 June 2012
- Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
- Venue: Love Books,
Bamboo Centre
53 Rustenburg Road
Melville | Map
- Guest Speaker: Arja Salafranca
- RSVP: info@lovebooks.co.za, 011 726 7406
Book Details
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by Lindsay on May 31st, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Ivan Vladislavić is a towering presence of the South African literary landscape; his books are freighted with awards, including both the Alan Paton award for non-fiction and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. No other author assays Johannesburg with such quiet power, such lethal delicacy as Vladislavić.
In books such as The Exploded View and Portrait With Keys, he carefully lances the membrane of the city, coaxing out unforgettable characters and examining their milieus, the wealth, the squalor, the cockeyed architecture and miasma of the pulsing metropolis.
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by Lindsay on May 30th, 2012
The online anthology 3Bute, in collaboration with the Caine Prize for African Writing, is illustrating the five short stories nominated for this prestigious award. The illustrations allow for readers to add links to articles, videos, tweets, ect, to provide context to the stories. 3Bute also uses this format to illustrate reports on Africa, adding context otherwise missing in mainstream media.
The first of these stories is Stanley Kenani’s “Love on Trial”, from his book For Honour and Other Stories:
In ‘Love on Trial,’ a village in Malawi becomes the epicenter of a media storm as a young man defends himself against the country’s anti-gay laws. Stanley Kenani’s ‘Love on Trial’ is one of five stories shortlisted for this year’s Caine Prize, Africa’s leading literary award, now in its thirteenth year.
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by Carolyn on May 30th, 2012
(For our English readers: Zakes Mda says in the interview below that he supports Brett Murray’s right to exhibit his art and that satire has legitimacy. Mda also believes that the whole debacle surrounding “The Spear” has been good for our democracy, since the ANC took their grievances to court and did not simply close the gallery or throw the artist in jail.)
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Zakes Mda, wie se boek We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and Other Plays in die apartheidsjare verbied is, het met Charl Blignaut gesels oor die omstrede skildery van president Jacob Zuma met sy geslagsdeel ontbloot, getiteld “The Spear”. Mda sê in die volgende onderhoud dat hy Brett Murray se reg steun om sy kuns uit te stal, al val dit nie in sy smaak nie. “Ek dink satire en parodie is legitiem, of jy met die inhoud saamstem of nie.”
Mda meen egter dat die hele debakel ‘n positiewe gevolg vir die Suid-Afrikaanse demokrasie gehad het, aangesien die regerende party die wet gevolg het en met hul griewe hof toe gegaan het. “In baie samelewings sou die regering sy mag gebruik het om die skildery te onderdruk deur summier die galery toe te maak en die kunstenaar te arresteer.”
Jou werk is al in die verlede verbied. Hoe beïnvloed dit jou steun vir die Goodman-galery en Murray?
My boek We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and Other Plays is in Mei 1981 verbied.
Dit was ’n verskriklike ervaring omdat jy skryf om jou werk met die publiek te deel. Ek het myself toe voorgeneem dat ek die res van my lewe vir vryheid van spraak in die algemeen sal veg en vir die reg om jou as kunstenaar te kan uitdruk.
Boekbesonderhede
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by Carolyn on May 30th, 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Die Stellenbosse filosoof prof. Willie Esterhuyse was die tussenganger tussen die NP-regering en die destyds verbanne ANC in die aanloop tot demokrasie wat ons geskiedenis verander het.
As jy al ooit wou weet wat in verkennende onderhandelings van 1987 tot 1990 gebeur het, is dit jou boek dié – en dis ’n riller!
Boekbesonderhede
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Apr
