by Luso on 23 May 2012
Verdict: carrot
Share the Stage is a book dealing with play production in Primary Schools by Patrick Coyne. It is based on recollections of true events and dedicated to “all those who have taken part, both onstage and backstage, in the production of so many plays”.
In his foreword, well-known actor and director Garth Anderson describes the book as “an excellent aid for any teacher attempting to produce a school play, either an inter-house play or a full production, It has very good guidelines for any producer, and would even be of great assistance to producers of amateur work.”
Book Details
by Carolyn on 23 May 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
Vir baie was Afrika se geheime onweerstaanbaar, ook vir skrywers soos Joseph Conrad, Lawrence Greene en Sangiro.
Onvermydelik is Afrika toe ook betreklik onlangs as eksotiese agtergrond ontdek deur ons skrywers van Afrikaanse spanningsverhale, onder wie Piet van Rooyen met sy belangstelling in die volkekunde en politiek.
Boekbesonderhede
by Lindsay on 23 May 2012
Verdict: carrot
Set in a very unstable Zimbabwe, The Unlikely Genuis of Dr Cuthbert Kambazuma follows the exploits of hospital bus driver Teddington Chiwafambira. Teddington copes with the borderline crazy Zimbabwean landscape by taking chances where he can.
After dumping a collection of mentally infirm patients and orphans on the side of the road for a larger fare of stranded passengers, he unwittingly drops the leadership of the MDC to Harare’s main psychiatric ward.
Book Details
by Luso on 22 May 2012
Verdict: carrot
A lyrical, boundlessly imaginative young adult fantasy novel that will have you falling in complete and utter hedonistic book love. There are so many misconceptions about Cat Hellisen’s When the Sea is Rising Red. It’s been labelled as being everything from historical fiction and romance, to paranormal and even, get this, dystopian fiction. All of which it is not.
What the book is, is a masterfully told and beautifully written fantasy novel that even fights against the strains of the very genre it is defined by. It’s a novel of magic and mayhem. It’s a book world that is filled with a wondrous kind of wind-swept beauty, starkly juxtaposed by the divisive lines between the rich and the poor.
In short? It’s a book that every fantasy lover should read and it’s also a novel that surprised me on so many different levels, in so many different ways.
Book Details
by Carolyn on 22 May 2012
Uitspraak: wortel
“Die mure het ore en soms het die ore ideologiese mure.”
Met dié handgeskrewe nota het prof. Willie Esterhuyse in ’n sitkamer in Londen laat weet die kans is goed dat hulle afgeluister word in hul verkennende gesprekke oor ’n onderhandelde skikking in Suid-Afrika.
Boekbesonderhede
by Sophy on 22 May 2012
By Zukiswa Wanner for The Times:
Yewande Omotoso, an architect by profession, told me she had taken a Masters in Creative Writing course at the University of Cape Town before writing Bom Boy.
I have often discouraged people taking creative writing courses as their works end up honing in on the technical craft of writing at the expense of the free flow of a story. I therefore approached this Sunday Times shortlisted novel with some trepidation.
The title Bom Boy comes from the central character Leke (pronounced Lay Kay), a young biracial man raised by adoptive white parents in Cape Town, South Africa.
Leke grows up a confused fellow as he navigates a world that he cannot make head or tail of – one that gets even more confusing when his adoptive mother dies and he moves into his own little world.
The adult Leke continues being a boy in a grown man’s body.
He is a thief, stealing from his company, and a stalker who follows women around until he is banned from the local mall.
Less a loner than lonely, Leke eventually befriends a colleague, Tsotso, a beautiful young woman, who finally reads to him letters that were sent to him by his biological father, explaining a family curse that he inherited from his forebears in Nigeria. The curse demands that Leke never gets close to anyone or falls in love. Will he listen or will he succumb to the charms of the beautiful Tsotso and break the curse?
Bom Boy spans the past and the present, represented by Leke’s cursed Nigerian family and his current South African circumstances, seamlessly.
The mysticism in the book is less Harry Potter and more the old tales of African witchdoctors and their curses that are wrought upon their poor victims if they fail to follow instructions.
The book’s Cape Town setting gives a contemporary feel to the action.
Omotoso’s intricate descriptions of the book’s complex characters are remarkable. Jane, Leke’s adoptive mother, is a botanist – a woman with an intimate knowledge of all things botanical, which she transmits to Leke as well as to the reader.
Her husband Marcus goes through the emotional wringer as he first loses a wife and then a son. Elaine, Leke’s biological mother, goes through a terrible time carrying her child before she vanishes from the book.
Perhaps most haunting is the description of Leke’s daily life and its mundane minutiae. His office mates ignore him and he is seen sitting in cars for hours on end, as he tries to get over the thing that ails him.
Events move at a healthy pace, but build to a climax that disappoints, for the book ends rather abruptly. Having woven anticipation of Leke’s dilemma into the narrative, the author’s solution could possibly have been less routine. (Unless that was her point – to leave the sense of anticipation intact, in which case it passed over the head of this reviewer.) That said, if I can write a book this good after a Masters in Creative Writing course at UCT, I am now a convert and plan to sign up as soon as I can afford it.
Omotoso’s shortlisting for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize among many very worthy novels on the long list was well-deserved. This is an author, east, west, north, south that the world would do well to pay attention to.
Book details
eBook options – Download now!
Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
Apr
