RT @nbpublishers: Bekendstellings van Die staat teen Anna Bruwer in Kaapstad en Pretoria http://t.co/hYbP2bbU
Verdict: carrot
Change is a constant for 10-year-old Benedict, from the deaths of his biological parents to the addition of a surprise new sibling.
Now he and his patchwork Malawian family face a new adventure, finding their way as outsiders, makwerekwere, in a close-knit community in Swaziland.
Book Details
By Kate Sidley for the Sunday Times:
Gaile Parkin was born and raised in Zambia and studied in South Africa and England. She is a freelance consultant on educational and gender issues. Her new book, When Hoopoes go to Heaven, is out now.
I’ve just read Christie Watson’s Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which recently won the Costa book award for best first novel.
Set in Nigeria, it’s the story of 12-year-old Blessing and her struggle to adapt when her father’s infidelity results in her moving with her mother and older brother away from their wealthy life in Lagos to the poverty of her grandmother’s village in the Niger Delta.
Through Blessing’s narration, a wonderfully funny and moving portrait of the complexities of family relationships and tensions between traditional and Western values is painted, while also laying bare the atrocities perpetrated on the people and the environment by the rapacious oil industry.
It has inspired me to re-read the much-loved novel of a family’s uneasy translocation in Africa, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which is set in the pre-independence upheaval of the Congo.
Book details
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.
Book details
Verdict: carrot
Tracey Farren has shown in her first novel, Whiplash, about prostitutes and others in Muizenberg, that she has a true gift for getting into the hearts of very ordinary people while astutely setting the South African sociopolitical context. In Snake she does it again, even better. This astonishing novel is related by 12-year-old Stella, with some asides and comments from her parents and the journalist from Truth, who has pitched up at the farm to get the whole gory story in a pre-trial scoop.
Stella is a willing raconteur, because she knows it depends on her to convince the judge that the story she tells is true — and this account to the journalist is just a rehearsal. Although I am generally quite wary of child narrators, Farren’s Stella won me over completely. Truthful to a fault, exhaustingly so, and with a memory for every last little detail, she is nevertheless haunted by a lie she told as she recounts the arrival in their community and on the farm of Jerry, a white man with a car, blue eyes and great charm, who initially only begs a sleeping place at their outside fire.
Book Details
Verdict: carrot
Gillian Schutte’s After just now can best be described as a psychic, spiritual and historical travelogue, the non-linear account of a private and shared journey. The reader/ traveller is led through a tangle of personal and socio-historical episodes subsequent to the opening event, which happens “just now” –a calamity in the form of a car crash, followed by a labyrinthine retracing of ideas and experiences back to “just now”. The protagonist, Lila, is a female (and feminist) Odysseus and After just now an account of a lifelong series of distractions which has led her to the now moment of her self-realisation after, by her account, 32 years of blank-mindedness and 11 years of trying to see the wood for the trees. Schutte has woven a surrealistic magic carpet with which she transports us towards and beyond our own life wounds, and our own lived experience of the surrealism that is the history of the Southern African continent.
Book Details
In June, the Witness ran an obituary for June Drummond, “one of the most prolific writers of popular fiction”, who Mike Nicol once dubbed “SA’s Queen of Crime”, and is often considered as the woman who kick started SA’s crime-writing tradition.
Drummond passed away earlier this month in Durban, aged 87. She was best known for writing thrillers and Regency romances, publishing 29 novels in her lifetime with her 30th, Dead Shot, due out later this year.
The Witness obituary states that the research that went into her her novels was meticulous, despite their being considered “light entertainment”. This follows a 2003 interview with the Witness, Drummond said she wanted to write the sort of books she liked to read.
One of South Africa’s most prolific writers of popular fiction, June Drummond, died earlier this month in Durban. She was 87 years old.Drummond was born in Durban in November 1923, and was educated at Durban Girls’ College, where she was dux of the school, and at the University of Cape Town. She lived in London for six years, and was there when her first book, The Black Unicorn , was published in 1959 by Victor Gollancz. Later she became one of Robert Hale’s stable of authors, writing thrillers and Regency romances. Between 1959 and her death, she saw 29 novels published, with a 30th, Dead Shot , due out later this year. Although her books are available in South Africa, her main market is overseas.
ArtSMart ran an obituary of their own in which editor, Caroline Smart, recalls her encounters with the author and her Springbok Radio plays:
Author June Drummond died on June 3 at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke.During her lifetime she wrote 29 novels, mainly crime stories. Her first novel Black Unicorn was published in 1959 and her most recent, Dead Shot, is still to be published.
Read a more in-depth biography of June Drummond at KZN Literary Tourism, in which Drummond speaks about writing into her retirement, her “second childhood”.
It was back at the end of the fifties that June Drummond parcelled up the manuscript of her first novel – pages and chapters all unnumbered – secured the parcel with colourful, sticky Christmas tape and sent it off to the predominantly Jewish firm of Victor Gollancz.‘I made all the mistakes,’ she says. But it hardly mattered; Gollancz accepted the book. It was the start of a long partnership, with Gollancz publishing Drummond’s thrillers and romances until the firm was taken over as part of the huge changes that have swept across the publishing scene. Drummond has shown more staying power than her publisher: this year will see her 80th birthday and has already seen the publication by English publishing house Robert Hale of Loose Cannon, her 16th thriller.
Book details
Photo courtesy KZN Literary Tourism
The Via Afrika awards function marked a rather radical departure from years past, held in lightning-fast fashion at a swank do at the Cape Grace Hotel, Cape Town.
Danie Marais led a rebel charge across the stage, calling up and dispatching shortlists, winners and the authors themselves – all of whom were present, and all of whom won R35 000 (or shared it, in the case of the MER Prize for children’s illustrated literature) – in record time.
Click here to see the shortlists.
This being a live post from the awards, let’s cut to the chase. Here are the winners:
Jan Rabie Rapport Prize
WA Hofmeyr Prize
Recht Malan Prize
MER Prize for Youth Literature
MER Prize for Illustrated Children’s Literature
Herman Charles Bosman Award
Alert! The longlists for the R75 000 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and the R75 000 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for non-fiction – Africa’s largest literary prizes for single works – have been announced.
Here are Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith‘s notes on gongs:
Alan Paton Award
The 21st edition of the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction sees a list of entries that continues to reflect the national concerns of a burgeoning and eclectic group of authors. As always, the judges for this year’s awards faced the difficult task of ingesting the barrage of information provided in the 40 titles in contention for Africa’s premier literary award.
[...]
Ficiton Prize
Writers working with the present moment and its uniquely perplexing characters produced a fascinating body of work that examines everything from the cut-throat world of the boardroom in Carel van der Merwe’s Shark to the zany business of being a magistrate with a bodyguard in Zakes Mda’s Black Diamond, the sombre reality of circumcision in Thando Mgqolozana’s A Man Who is Not a Man, the cultural clashes of life as a curry Mafia princess in Zinaid Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates and the plight of post-apartheid refugees in Andrew Brown’s Refuge.
2009′s winners were Anne Landsman (fiction – The Rowing Lesson) and Peter Harris (Alan Paton – In a Different Time). This year, the BOOK SA members on the lists are happily too numerous to mention.
It would not be amiss to observe that Antjie Krog appears twice on the Alan Paton Longlist – for Begging to Be Black and There Was This Goat, the latter written with Nosisi Mpolweni, Kopano Ratele.
The shortlists for the 2010 awards will be announced on Thursday 3 June at a cocktail function in Johannesburg. Here are the longlists, with titles given in the order that they were sent to BOOK SA:
Sunday Times Fiction Prize Longlist
Book details
* * * * * * *
Sunday Times Alan Paton Award Longlist
Book details
Image courtesy the Sunday Times
*
Alert! The shortlists for this year’s Jan Rabie Rapport and Via Afrika prizes have been announced. To reprint exactly what we said about the prizes last year:
The Jan Rabie/Rapport Prize is the most prestigious award in Afrikaans literature for first or early fiction, and open to all books, while the five Via Afrika awards are open only to titles from the Via Afrika group: NB Publishers, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Lux Verbi-BM, NVA and Van Schaik Publishers.
The good news is that, this year, Via Afrika has increased the prize money to from R30 00 to R35 000 per category. The ceremony, held in June last year, has been pushed to July in 2010 – doubtless so that it avoids the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It’s the richest awards night in SA Lit, and BOOK SA will certainly be there to cover it.
Now, to the shortlists (books listed in alphabetical order):
Jan Rabie Rapport Prize
The shortlisted titles for the Jan Rabie Rapport Prize, awarded to a debut or early work characterised by fresh and innovative Afrikaans prose, are:
Plaasmoord by Karin Brynard (Human & Rousseau)
Swartskaap by Odette Schoeman (Kwela Books)
Troos vir die gebrokenes by Bettina Wyngaard (Umuzi)
WA Hofmery Prize
The WA Hofmeyr Prize – in its 48th year – goes to authors who could “potentially, through their outstanding writing, shift the boundaries of Afrikaans literature”:
Santa Gamka by Eben Venter (Tafelberg)
Verbeel jou dis somer by Abraham H. de Vries (Human & Rousseau)
Wederkoms by Louis Krüger (Human & Rousseau)
Recht Malan Prize
The Recht Malan Prize “acknowledges excellence in the field of non-fiction books”:
Load Shedding, edited by Liz McGregor and Sarah Nuttall (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
‘n Vurk in die pad by Andre P. Brink (Human & Rousseau)
Reisiger by Elsa Joubert (Tafelberg)
Through my Lens by Alf Kumalo and and Tanya Farber (Tafelberg)
MER Prizes
The shortlist for the MER Prize for illustrated children’s books comprises:
Die verdere avonture van Wilde Willemientjie by Riana Scheepers, illustrated by Vian Oelofsen (Tafelberg)
In a House in a House/In ‘n Huis in ‘n Huis by Wendy Hartmann, illustrated by Joan Rankin (Human & Rousseau)
In the Never-Ever Wood/In die Nimmer-Immer-bos by Linda Rode, illustrated by Fiona Moodie (Tafelberg)
The shortlist for the MER Prize for youth literature comprises:
Balaclava Boy by Jenny Robson (Tafelberg)
Kaptein Hamerkophaai by Fanie Viljoen (Tafelberg)
The Bird of Heaven by Peter Dunseith (Tafelberg)
Herman Charles Bosman Prize
The shortlisted titles for the Herman Charles Bosman Prize, which “encourages and recognises excellence in the field of English literary writing” are:
Imprendehora by Yvette Christiansë (Kwela Books/Snailpress)
Small Moving Parts by Sally-Ann Murray (Kwela Books)
The Elephant in the Room by Maya Fowler (Kwela Books)
Good luck to all the shortlistees – and especially to BOOK SA members Eben Venter, Andre P. Brink and Maya Fowler!
Book Details – Jan Rabie Rapport Prize shortlist
Scribd.com book preview:
*
Book details – Via Afrika Literary Awards shortlists
Scribd.com book preview:
Alert! SA PEN has issued its call for entries for the £10 000 2011 PEN/Studzinsky Literary Awards – which are judged by JM Coetzee – and has announced that Margie Orford is set to replace Shaun Johnson on the PEN executive.
The winner of the inaugural PEN/Studzinksy award was Karen Jayes, who received the £5 000 first prize at the 2009 Franschhoek Literary Festival. Andrew Salomon took the £3 000 second prize, while Ceridwen Dovey and Nadia Davids shared the £2 000 third prize.
In a not-altogether-welcome shift of policy, SA PEN has reverted to the geographical scope of its award that was in place before it secured sponsorship from current benefactor John Studzinski. That is, only residents of SADC‘s fifteen countries may enter, whereas the inaugural award was open to the whole of Africa. (See the press release below for the full list of eligible countries.) Happily, the lack of any age restriction on entrants appears to remain intact.
3 000 to 5 000 word short fiction entries in English are invited from 1 March 2010; submission details will be posted to the SA PEN website on that date; no final closing deadline appears to have yet been set.
Here’s the complete press release from SA PEN:
2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI LITERARY AWARDS
Entries invited from 1 March 2010
The South African Centre of International PEN (SA PEN) is pleased to announce the launch of the second in the series of PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards.
Entries for the award for original short stories in English are called for from 1 March 2010 and AFRICAN PENS, a compilation of the short-listed stories, will be published in mid-2011.
Prizes totalling £10 000 will once again be donated by American philanthropist and global investment banker, John Studzinski. The first, second and third prizes will be £5 000, £3 000 and £2 000, respectively.
Nobel Laureate and SA PEN Honorary Member, J.M. Coetzee, will once again select the winning entries.
The 2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award aims to encourage creative writing in southern Africa and will offer talented writers an exciting opportunity to launch or develop a literary career. Twelve contributors to our earlier HSBC/SA PEN series have now published their own books, including Ceridwen Dovey who won the 2008 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Petina Gappah, an early winner, went on to sign a three-book contract with Faber & Faber in the UK and Farrar Strauss & Giroux in the US. Three of the five short-listed stories for the Caine prize for African Writing first appeared in AFRICAN PENS 2007 – the model for AFRICAN PENS 2011. The story POISON, set in a threatened Cape Town, and written by author Henrietta Rose-Innes, was chosen by J.M, Coetzee as the winner of the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award and it went on to win the 2008 Caine Prize of £10 000.
Our 2009 project, led by author Shaun Johnson, received over 800 entries from writers throughout Africa, but this year we revert to appealing only to writers living in the fifteen countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC*). The genre is still the short-story, this time between 3 000 and 5 000 words.
SA PEN is pleased to announce that author Margie Orford has agreed to take Shaun’s place on the SA PEN executive and that the Editorial Board for the 2011 award will comprise:
Anthony Fleischer (Chairman), novelist and President of SA PEN
Dianne Case, popular children’s author
John Gardener, English teacher, retired Head of Kingswood College & Bishops, published numerous articles and Bishops’ 150 year history of the school
Jeremy Lawrence, writer who has worked in journalism and publishing in London and South Africa
Adré Marshall, retired academic, author of book on Henry James and sundry poems, translator (French/English)
Peter Merrington, novelist, professor extraordinaire at the University of the Western Cape, ceramicist and motorcyclist
Margie Orford, writer and sometime journalist
Anne Schuster, novelist, poet, creative writing facilitator and publisher
J.M. Coetzee – Nobel Laureate (Final judge)Writers who are citizens of SADC countries* are encouraged to prepare short stories for submission. Further information and detailed rules of entry will be posted on the SA PEN website, www.sapen.co.za, from the 1 March 2010.
Previous publications featuring the shortlisted and winning stories from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 HSBC/SA PEN, and 2009 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards are: AFRICAN COMPASS (2005, New Africa Books), AFRICAN ROAD (2006, New Africa Books), AFRICAN PENS (2007, New Africa Books), NEW WRITING FROM AFRICA 2009 (2009, Johnson & KingJames Books).* SADC countries: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
WRITE! AFRICA WRITE!
Here are the official rules of entry:
PEN/Studzinski Literary Award Rules of Entry 2011
Book details
Apr
