Archive for the ‘Pan Macmillan’ Category
by Luso on Apr 4th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
It is telling that Nadine Gordimer’s new book has been launched with her presence in London and not in her South African homeland. It is apposite, actually, for the Nobel laureate is indeed a towering figure on the international literary scene. However, she’s seldom been read here with the same gusto her work has attracted in foreign lands.
A headline in one South African newspaper on the 1991 announcement of her Nobel Prize, proclaimed her being honoured abroad but forgotten at home. I wonder if the trend will continue with her 15th and latest novel, No Time Like the Present.
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by Chiara on Mar 27th, 2012
In an article on www.witspress.co.za, Susan Booysen, author of The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power, highlights the links between her book and Frank Chikane’s recently released Eight Days in September.
As Booysen reveals in her own book, those eight days were a result of the Presidency’s mistaken omnipotence; it was only on the eve of the 2007 Polokwane vote that Mbeki realised he was not in control of the Party.
Booysen also critiques several aspects of Chikane’s book, arguing that Mbeki is not entirely an “innocent” player, as Chikane would suggest, and that Chikane’s argument that the country would have descended into instability had it not been for Mbeki’s “statesmanlike handover” does not hold much water.
Frank Chikane’s Eight days in September … is the controlled-but-traumatised memoirs of a person who saw the pillars of his Union Buildings kingdom tumble down around him.[i] These are the personal – and in themselves faction-linked – observations of a key player in the events of September 2008, and in the decade preceding those events. Ironically, they come at a time when the most probable unintended consequences will be renewed empathy with the rise of Jacob Zuma.
This analysis focuses on three of Chikane’s arguments that have come to epitomise both the book and the African National Congress (ANC) response to it: the ‘coup d’état’ nature of Mbeki’s ousting, the Chikane argument that there was the ‘potential for destabilising the country’, and the ‘danger of what the ANC has become’ – and especially where the origins of organisational decay are situated.
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by Sophy on Mar 5th, 2012
In a bizarre and hyper-real twist to the Brett Kebble saga, InThaZone‘s Tony Miguel and Warren Batchelor have initiated production on a docu-drama that will star Kebble’s killers, Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizal “Kappie” Smith, as themselves. This, according to an article in the Weekend Argus.
Miguel and Batchelor appear unfazed by the ethics of their casting – the self-confessed murderers were recently re-issued with nine weapons licences and will earn R1 million for their efforts – and are keen on emphasising the project as “authentic”, “world-first” and “ground-breaking”.
While we are unsure that this is the kind of new ground that South Africa needs broken, the film’s particularly “meta” working title, 204: Getting Away With Murder, reveals a kind of sly irony behind the project. Then again, it could also indicate the total absence thereof. Either way, we hope that Getting Away With Murder‘s intrinsic glamorisation of violence doesn’t inspire further projects of its kind.
In what will surely go down in the record books as the most bizarre cast of actors, three of South Africa’s most notorious guns-for-hire are playing themselves – for a R1 million price tag – in a new docu-drama about the killing of mining magnate Brett Kebble.
Self-confessed killers Mikey Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Fiazal “Kappie” Smith re-enact the controversial 2005 killing in the 100-minute production, set for release at cinemas nationwide in June, and which will compete for an award at film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival.
Producers Tony Miguel and Warren Batchelor, from InThaZone in Joburg, hailed the re-enactment of the murder by the actual murderers as a world-first.
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by Chiara on Feb 23rd, 2012
Scott Smith from The New Age interviewed Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, who spoke about her forthcoming novel, No Time Like The Present, and the challenges of writing “in the sunset of a glittering career”. In the interview, Gordimer reveals that her favourite South African author is Mongane Wally Serote and describes his 2002 novel, Scatter the Ashes and Go as “brilliant work that no one has come close to”.
Gordimer says her latest novel is “not about race”. Instead, she explains, “It’s about what those who were in the struggle didn’t have the peace of mind to think about. It’s about the problems that came after freedom. We just didn’t think about what it would be like afterwards. Today, the past still needs to be dealt with.” On the topic of writing at the age of 88, she confesses that she will give up writing if her standards seem to be dropping, as has happened to other ageing writers.
Gordimer also mentions that that one lingering regret of hers is that she never learned an African language:
Nadine Gordimer turns 89 later this year but she’s as sharp as a tack. I still found myself fumbling my words and racing to keep up with her answers or spinning to find the next question to keep the interview going. She’s formidable, with a mountainous reputation, an intellect to boot and an activist’s stance that is respected far beyond the borders of this country, one she has fought so hard to liberate through the sharpness of her pen. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature 20 years ago in such recognition. She snapped at me more than once for inaccurately describing her most recent novel or questioning whether she still considers herself an activist, but she was always polite. Just like her writing; considered, deliberate and strong. That said, I think she took a liking to me.
A fan of Gordimer since I was a child, I knew of her since I first knew writing. She, among others, exposed me to what South Africa really was at that time. That was decades ago but her writing today still resonates with the truth as she knows it. She still writes with drive and conviction.
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Photo courtesy The Guardian
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by Carolyn on Jan 26th, 2012
Yesterday saw super sleuth Piet Byleveld become – in a rather dramatic turn of events – the target of murder convicted Donovan Moodley’s application for a retrial.
Moodley, convicted for the kidnapping and murder of Leigh Matthews in 2005, is now claiming that he was tortured by Detective Byleveld and forced to confess. He further claims that he told Byleveld the kidnapping was orchestrated by three drug dealers – Frank, Allie and Jemba – but that the detective forced him to say that he carried it out alone.
However, Byleveld has always maintained his belief that Moodley had help, at least, in moving the body (as he explains in this podcast) although, according to Byleveld, Moodley refused to reveal his accomplice(s).
The Leigh Matthews case features in Hanlie Retief’s best-selling biography, Byleveld: Dossier of a serial sleuth.
Convicted murderer Donovan Moodley argued in the High Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday to be retried for the 2004 kidnap and murder of university student Leigh Matthews.
He was applying for a retrial — something without precedent in South African law — because he wanted to tell “this version of the truth, which I maintain to be the truth”, he told the court.
He also elected to represent himself.
Mandy Wiener, author of the highly acclaimed book, Killing Kebble, tweeted from the retrial, which continued in the Johannesburg High Court today.
In one tweet, Wiener speculated whether Moodley had been reading Antony Altbeker’s Fruit of a Poisoned Tree, after Moodley repeatedly referred to the “Poisoned Tree” planted by Byleveld and Van Zyl.
Here are a selection of her tweets:
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Image courtesy IOL
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by Carolyn on Jan 10th, 2012
By Audrey Nyathi for The Times:
What are you reading?
I am currently reading A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Larry MacDonald.
In a nutshell?
Larry MacDonald was an insider at Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest Wall Street banks, during its spectacular collapse on the back of the sub-prime mortgage deals that went spectacularly bad in 2008.
Why read it?
The book is great for non-finance people who want to know why on earth we are all paying for the bankers’ insanity and lack of ethics. It will hopefully also be a wake-up call to people in the world of high finance.
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by Chiara on Oct 28th, 2011
Alexandra Fuller, author of the memoirs Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight has compiled a list of of top 10 memoirs written by Africans for the Guardian.
Fuller lists books that contain “performances of courage and honesty” by authors such as Albie Sachs (The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter), Binyavanga Wainaina (One Day I Will Write About this Place), JM Coetzee (Boyhood) and Zakes Mda (Sometimes There is a Void):
“The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty. Far from the tell-all confessionals more usual in western memoirs, the African memoir lays bare the bones of what it is to be a child, survivor, or perpetrator of oppression and conflict.
“What is often shocking, but very effective, is the humour evident in so many of these works, laughter being an essential survival technique for so many Africans (and of her writers). The act of writing is also a defiant way of asserting, “I was born. I am here. I will remain.” In places of chronic instability, the memoir is an anchor of words to an experience and place and a way to bear witness; to expose and perhaps even explain the atrocities of war, racism, tribalism and cronyism. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, my own memoirs of Africa, are written from a white African point of view, but explore the ways in which the land possesses all of us who love it – regardless of ethnicity – and the ways in which laughter can make palatable life’s unendurable losses.”
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by Chiara on Sep 1st, 2011
Darryl Accone says that this year’s Mail & Guardian Literary Festival, hosted in Johannesburg, will focus on questions about the city’s position as an ideological construct, as well as a physical entity. Many of the festival panels will be located around the question of Johannesburg’s history and identity – Karl von Holdt will deliver the keynote address on “The Johannesburg moment”, Ufrieda Ho and Chris van Wyk will discuss “Memories of the city” and Lauren Beukes, Sarah Lotz, Louis Greenberg and Tom Learmont will talk about “Science fiction and fantasy in the city”.
Accone asks, “Does the crude impress of Jo’burg’s mining-town origins condemn it to being what Charles van Onselen so evocatively dubbed a New Nineveh and New Babylon? Is it condemned forever to be a temple of Mammon? Or can the word, culture and the arts save the place?”. He describes how the Mail & Guardian Literary Festival is “mining a seam of talent” that will shed light on these questions:
Award-winning authors, poets, public intellectuals, academics and critics will be at the event. They include Cynthia Jele, author of Happiness Is a Four-Letter Word (Kwela), which won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book: Africa; former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, author of this year’s Alan Paton Award-winning memoir, The Unlikely Secret Agent (Jacana); Lauren Beukes, whose speculative fiction, Zoo City (Jacana), took science fiction’s premier award, the Arthur C Clarke; Caine Prize-winner Henrietta Rose-Innes; poets and scholars Antjie Krog, Denis Hirson, Leon de Kock and Ingrid de Kok; commentariat luminaries Moeletsi Mbeki, Achille Mbembe, Sandile Memela and Andile Mngxitama; memoirists Hugh Lewin, Chris van Wyk, Ufrieda Ho and Mbulelo Mzamane; political and labour experts Susan Booysen, Fiona Forde and Kally Forrest; literary critic Jane Rosenthal and City Press books editor and Radio 702 host Karabo Kgoleng; and Jo’burg mavens-cum-urban specialists Gerald Garner, Noor Nieftagodien, Leslie Bank and Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon.
Chairing the nine panels are specialists such as Jon Hyslop (on the discussion “Memories of the City”), Steven Sack (“Jo’burg: Renewing, Restoring, Reviewing”), Gwen Ansell (“Science Fiction and Fantasy in the City”), Craig MacKenzie (“Aspects of the South African Novel”) and Sunday Independent literary editor Maureen Isaacson (“New Writing from the City”).
The Market Theatre in Newtown will be the venue hosting this year’s M&G festival. Percy Zvomuya speaks to the theatre’s artistic director, Malcolm Purkey, about the renovations taking place there:
The Market Theatre complex is being given a makeover, a renovation, a renewal.
You could view it as “gentrification” and you might think that the Market’s artistic director, Malcolm Purkey, would be outraged. Far from it. Purkey is sanguine about the developments, excited even.
“I have no problem with animating Newtown in this way. We need restaurants, bars and music venues,” he says, as he ponders the proposed shopping mall at the back of Museum Africa. “The Market Theatre, one can only imagine, will benefit [as we are] the anchor tenant.”
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Photo courtesy Hilton T
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by Chiara on Jul 12th, 2011
It’s good to see that local is indeed lekker when it comes to book sales. The following list of Exclusive Books bestsellers, as based on last week’s sales, is dominated by SA lit titles. SA lit smoothly takes places 1-5 on the bestseller ladder and makes an appearance again at 8, which means that a whopping five of the top five and six of the top ten are South African books. Also notable is the strong presence of two publishing companies in particular, Pan Macmillan and Two Dogs.
And, without further ado, here’s the list:
Top 5:
1. Killing Kebble by Mandy Wiener
2. Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations by Nelson Mandela
3. Advocates for Change: How to Overcome Africa’s Challenges edited by Moeletsi Mbeki
4. 50 People Who Stuffed Up South Africa by Alexander Parker, illustrated by Zapiro
5. The Racist’s Guide to South Africa by Simon Kilpatrick
Next 5:
6. The Sixth Man by David Baldacci
7. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
8. The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence
9. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
10. Madeleine by Kate & Jerry McCann
Book details
- The Elephant Whisperer: Learning About Life, Loyalty and Freedom From a Remarkable Herd of Elephants by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence
EAN: 9780330506687
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Image courtesy Mall Guide
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by Chiara on Jun 14th, 2011
O Magazine South Africa interviewed Zoo City author Lauren Beukes and Killing Kebble author Mandy Wiener as part of their #OBookLovers interview segment on Twitter yesterday. Look out for a full interview with these two authors in the next edition of O Magazine South Africa.
Here are some highlights from the OMagazineSA #OBookLovers “twinterview”:
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