by Maggie Marx on 18 Jun 2013
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.
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.
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by Maggie Marx on 18 Jun 2013
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)
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by Maggie Marx on 18 Jun 2013
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.
Boekbesonderhede
by Maggie Marx on 18 Jun 2013
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.
Boekbesonderhede
by Lindsay on 18 Jun 2013
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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by Carolyn on 18 Jun 2013
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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May
