by Luso on Apr 24th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
First Line: Themba Msamaya didn’t suspect a thing on the morning he opened his door to death.
Private investigator Jade de Jong invites her lover, Police Superintendent David Patel, on a scuba diving holiday in hopes that it will solidify their troubled relationship. Instead, Jade discovers that she hates scuba diving, and David puts an end to their affair. However, the next morning, all differences are put aside when one of the resort’s diving instructors is found stabbed to death in her room.
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by wombatsamwilson on Jan 12th, 2012
Verisindaba, the website promoting Afrikaans poetry, has published a selection of English translations of the poetry of Antjie Krog.
The poems come from various sources and were translated by the author, along with Denis Hirson, author of The Dancer and the Death on Lemon Street and I Remember King Kong (The Boxer), Karen Press, author of Home and The Little Museum of Working Life, Richard Jürgens and Tony Ullyatt.
Christmas before the first democratic election
after the rains
the veld gives herself like a slut to the green
of bleak barren plains suddenly nothing
to be seen everything feasts everything
carouses green among thorn trees and braggart tussles
is the vapour of jitters and glue-lick
the hump of karee the foxtrot of wild olive
and for Christmas the cat-bush tiptoes red stipples
wait, see there: the ginger-green pools swell every afternoon
ample with boons of clouds reflecting lightning white
the excess is so unimpaired
so sudden
so cicada-singing
so well-disposedly generous
that it attests to a bloody insensitivity about us
us to whom these velds belong
lied and belied we feel we to whom these velds belong
eroded bewildered assaulted we feel we to whom these velds belong
we fold out hands around our share of chicken and trifle
perhaps the last Christmas together like this
this, on this farm
(From: Gedigte 1989 – 1995, Hond, (1995))
(Tr. by the author)
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- Die sterre sê tsau: /Xam-gedigte van Diä!kwain, Kweiten-ta-//ken, /A!kúnta, /Han#kass’o en //Kabbo edited by Antjie Krog
EAN: 9780795701740
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by Carolyn on Nov 30th, 2011
Uitspraak: wortel
“Die twee is honger. Hulle sny die vleis van die lyk se boude af en braai die stukke net daar: asof dit skaaptjops is. Maande later vra Piet Byleveld vir hulle hoe dit voel om ’n mens te eet na jy hom gesodomiseer het. Dis net vleis sê die kaalkop sonder emosie, sonder berou. Net vleis en hulle was honger.”
Hannelie Retief se Byleveld – Dossier van ’n Baasspeurder, oor die bekende Suid Afrikaanse reeksmoordspeurder Piet Byleveld, ruk jou rond, klap jou so paar keer met die realiteit deur die gesig, sluk jou in en spoeg jou dan moeg en geskok uit.
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by Chiara on Oct 19th, 2011
Verdict by Garth Johnstone: carrot
“Supercop” Piet Byleveld really became a household name with cases like the Leigh Matthews murder and the courtroom circus that was the Sheldean Human case. But long before that Byleveld was doggedly solving any number of crimes, before the young detective was recognised as the “go to” man in the case of serial murders in South Africa.
Verdict by Gwen Podbrey: stick
ANYONE WHO has ever sat glued to one of TV’s many crime or legal dramas – exploring the wide gap between the precinct cops, who actually do the dirty work involved in catching offenders, and the comparatively cushy, sheltered world of the advocates, who never have to see the blood and bodies – may have been tempted to dismiss it all as fiction: particularly if they then switch to a local news channel and are regaled with our own soaring crime statistics. Few could dispute the assertion that our police force – under-skilled, under-equipped, underpaid and plagued by corruption – is not equal to the task of dealing with the violent criminals among us.
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by Chiara on Sep 28th, 2011
In her Radio 702 podcast, Jenny Crwys-Williams asks what it takes to write an award-winning book. She features extracts from interviews with authors whom she believes have written prize-winning material – Moeletsi Mibeki’s Advocates for Change, Max du Preez’s Opinion Pieces by South African Thought Leaders and Hanlie Retief’s best-selling Byleveld, all of which featured at last week’s Open Book Festival.
Pulitzer prize-winner Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, also flew down for the Open Book Festival, along with Shehan Karunatilaka, author of Chinaman and winner of the Gratiaen prize. Both authors spoke to Crwys-Williams over the phone:
Interview with Paul Harding:
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Photos courtesy Guardian and Dawn
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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 Carolyn on Aug 3rd, 2011
Uitspraak: wortel
Dis 1974, Anneline Kriel het tweede gekom in die Mej. Wêreld-kompetisie en die Springbokke maak gereed vir ’n toets teen Frankryk.
Maar dis ook Prieska, waar die blou dood, ’n verwoestende longkwaal, die een slagoffer ná die ander eis.
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by Ben - Editor on Jun 20th, 2011
Alert! The winners of the 2011 M-Net Literary Awards were announced in Cape Town at a gala function on Saturday evening.
In their 20th year, the awards count as among South Africa’s most prestigious. Worth R50 000 to the winners, they were given in four language categories – English, Afrikaans, Nguni and Sotho – and a “film” category, for a novel showing the greatest promise for translation into a visual medium.
Books maven Jenny Crwys-Williams, M-Net CEO Patricia van Rooyen and M-Net communications director Koo Govender took guests through the three-course banquet, hosted by the Table Bay Hotel at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. The current Miss South Africa, Bokang Montjane, was also in attendance, and spoke about the importance of literacy, in connection with M-Net’s Naledi initiative, which took centrestage ahead of the announcements of the winners.
Without further ado, said winners were:
Click here for the 2011 M-Net Literary Awards shortlists.
Winterbach is a previous recipient of the award, having won it in 2007 for Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat. Vladislavic and Jele’s novels, meanwhile, have already been recognised this year, the former having won the UJ Prize for Creative Writing, and the latter the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – Best First Book – Africa region. Double Negative could go on to complete a rare triple: it’s also shortlisted for South Africa’s richest fiction award, the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, whose winner will be announced this coming Saturday.
Congratulations to all the winners – especially Books LIVE member Cynthia Jele!
Books LIVE attended the M-Net Awards and kept our virtual audience up to date via Twitter:
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Press release
M-Net Literary Awards – Winners Announced
The winners of the 2011 M-Net Literary Awards were announced at a glamorous event at the Table Bay Hotel in Cape Town on Saturday, 18 June.
In the 20th commemorative year of this prestigious South African book prize, veteran authors swept the boards in the main language categories, while a first-time novelist scooped top honours with a charming story in the competition’s fledgling film category.
The M-Net Literary Awards invites entries in all eleven official South African languages. This year, awards were presented in four different language categories: Afrikaans, English, Nguni and Sotho. The M-Net Literary Award in the film category is reserved for the novel, among all the entries in all the categories, that shows the most potential to be adapted into a commercially-viable feature film.
In the English category, one of the country’s most prominent writers, Ivan Vladislavič received the award for Double Negative. This multi-faceted novel, which was written as a counter-piece to a book of photographs depicting Johannesburg by renowned photographer DavidGoldblatt, was singled out by the judges as “a stylistic delight with which little can compare”.
Double Negative was commended for its special significance in the current age of overlapping virtual realities and deep hunger for real visual surfaces rather than imagined depth.
Afrikaans author Ingrid Winterbach completed a hat trick with her innovate latest novel Die Benederyk. She nabbed her first M-Net Literary Award, written under the pseudonym Lettie Viljoen, in 1994 for Karolina Ferreira and continued her winning streak with Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat in 2007.
Both the Sotho and Nguni category winners have been familiar faces at literary awards ceremonies over the past decade.
It was a first win at the M-Net Literary Awards for K.J. Sekele, however, who have been on previous shortlist. His arresting novel about adoption and family roles in African families, Lehutšho, was also a strong contender in the film category.
In the Nguni category, popular Xhosa novelist, Ncedile Saule added another M-Net Literary Award to his collection with Inkululeko Isentambeni. This reverting political narrative impressed with the way it explored human tragedy with inventive stylistic structures.
The much-contested film category was won by debutant Cynthia Jele, who told the audience in her acceptance speech how Happiness is a Four Letter Word had been written in response to Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. She decided to read every single novel recommended by the famous talk show host, but was so dampened by the ‘heaviness’ of so many of the stories, that she decided to write the book she, and many young women like her, would want to read.
Jele’s novel tells the story of sistas and fashionistas without shame who frequent the malls in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
According to the judges, Happiness is a Four Letter Word is a novel with an abundance of riches and dialogue that will set the screen alight.
The winners in each category received R50 000 as apposed to the R30 000 from previous years. All the winning novels are available on sale at Kalahari.net and at the gala event M-Net confirmed its commitment to the South African book by announcing that it would support sales of the winning books with an extensive marketing campaign on the M-Net television channels.
The broadcaster also plans to extend the M-Net Naledi initiave which encourages a culture of reading from a young age by facilitating fun-filled reading programmes at rural and less privileged schools.
-ends –
Issued by M-NetCorporate Communications.
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by Ben - Editor on Jun 17th, 2011
Verdict: carrot
This is a notebook of note. Use it to note your memoirs, use it to note daily thoughts and other things. Use it for your notable daily laugh for, as Evita says: “Laughter is the one proven way to look forward to another day.” Which, roughly, is what life is all about.
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