Alert! The University of the Western Cape is putting on a literary show at The Fugard Theatre on 20 September, which will feature readings and performances by Antjie Krog, André Brink, Neo Muyanga and a host of artists from India, for an evening called “The Other Side of Silence”.
The event takes its name from a book by participant Urvashi Butalia, whose The Other Side of Silence comprises “interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents” related to the 1947 partition of India. In South Africa, context is supplied by the fact that 2010 marks the 150th year of Indian settlement here.
Entrance to the event is free, but seating is limited so RSVPing is essential:
Date: Monday 20 September 2010
Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
Venue: The Fugard Theatre Harrington Street Cape Town | Map
Hennie Aucamp se gunsteling Afrikaanse kinderverhaal is Die Tweeling trek saam van MER. Patrys-hulle van E.B. Grossfopf en Jannie Sprinkaanbeentjies van JJ Scheepers sal André Brink altyd bybly, maar beslis nie Saartjie of Keurboslaan nie. Vir Dana Snyman was Chris Barnard se Danda-boeke sy “Harry Potter”.
Willem de Vries het ‘n aantal skrywers gevra om hul gunsteling Afrikaanse en internasionale kinderboeke te noem en gekyk hoe die twee met mekaar vergelyk.
Vanjaar is ’n stewige klompie jeugverhale heruitgereik. Watter verdien die aandag van meer as een generasie en hoe sien die Afrikaanse aanbod daaruit?Willem de Vries het skrywers daarna gevra.
Op die kortverhaalskrywer Hennie Aucamp se lys van jeugklassieke is tien boeke: Boaan die lys is Die Tweeling trek Saam van MER, gevolg deur Fanie se Veldskooldae van P.J. Schoeman en dan W.A. de Klerk se Die Vallei van die Rooi Gode. Op die lys is verder Frans Venter se Wit Oemfaan, Dolf van Niekerk se Skrik kom Huis toe, Salmaklak van Ben Venter, Chris Barnard se Boela van die Blouwater, Pieter Pieterse se Silwer, Jakkals van die Namib, P.H. Nortje se Die Wildedruif Val en Jan Rabie se Swart Ster oor die Karoo.
Kyk hy terug op sy lys, sê Aucamp, val dit hom op dat al die titels van ’n bodem-ingesteldheid getuig: “Land, see, geskiedenis, al dié dinge figureer in die boeke wat ek gekies het. En nóg ’n ding: al dié boeke het ’n sterk literêre inslag. Al die skrywers is vertellers, met respek vir die woord, en bowenal die Boere-idioom.”
Alert! The latest news from the one and only book town of the Northern Cape, Richmond, has landed on BOOK SA’s stoep. Here’s Darryl David’s Boekbedonnerd update, which includes an updated version of the festival’s programme, whose subtitle this year is “The Coolie Odyssey: Celebrating 150 years of Indian settlement in South Africa”, and whose featured guest is Ahmed Kathrada:
Your Correspondent was able to sneak a few words on Damon Galgut’s Booker-shortlisted novel, In a Strange Room, into the Guardian’s online books page this afternoon. I wrote the piece in response to Guardian books editor Claire Armitstead’s tweet:
It happens like this: when you come to the end of the first page of Damon Galgut’s superlative novel, In a Strange Room, you read its final sentence twice.
Applying his brush ever so deftly – a stroke of intent in a painterly work whose canvas stretches over three continents – the author writes: “What the first man is wearing I don’t know, I forget.”
The conundrum posed by this seemingly simple construction led Guardian literary editor Claire Armitstead to tweet, after In a Strange Room was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker prize, wondering if the book could be classified as a novel at all. The reason: the man in the sentence and the person narrating it are the same. (Hence the reader’s double-take.) This person is called “Damon”, and we encounter him, like a god of ancient Egypt, in different forms. He is the Damon in the distance, the foreshortened “he” whom we crane our necks for a better glimpse of. He is the Damon in the room, the “I” who is reading the book alongside us, offering explanations and excuses. And he is the Damon in the mirror, the “you” to whom questions, accusations and truths about himself are put. Call it narrative syncretism.
In an article that might come across as having been penned in questionable taste, Don Makatile pours over the sales figures for Lewis Nkosi’s last novel, Mandela’s Ego. The author died on Sunday; according to Makatile, who quotes Nkosi’s wife Astrid Starck, total royalties from Ego – a Sunday Times Fiction Prize shortlistee – amounted to a paltry R140. Makatlie contacted Nkosi’s publishers, Random House Struik, for comment; not getting an answer to his satisfaction, he proceeded to insinuate that Nkosi was somehow gypped by them.
But Makatile gets it right in the end: Nkosi wasn’t gypped by his publishers, he was gypped by a reading public that disfavours fiction from within its own ranks. The culture that hinders mass consumption of local writing is changing, slowly, slowly, but too late for Nkosi.
Here’s Makatile stirring the proverbial in the Sowetan:
But why could a man who has written all his life suddenly not afford hospice fees?
From September 2008 to February 2009, Mandela’s Ego sold 60 copies; from March 2009 to August 2009 another 77 were sold; then 49 from September 2009 to February 2010, and in the last accounting – March to August this year – a further 14 copies were sold.
Hiding behind confidentiality gobbledygook, the publishers have wriggled their way out of culpability.
I am angry and in no mood to exonerate everyone. Out of a nation of 48million, how do we buy only 200 books of someone like Nkosi’s work?
The memorial and funeral service arrangements for Lewis Nkosi, who died on Sunday, have been made. BOOK SA received the information below from wRite Associates.
Memorial Service:
Date: Wednesday, 8th Sep 2010
Time: 17H30
Venue: The Auditorium, Museum Africa, Newtown Cultural Precinct, Bree Street, Newtown, Johannesburg, | Map
At KZN Literary Tourism, Lindy Stiebel has published an obituary of Nkosi:
Lewis Nkosi’s influence as both writer and critic has been profound as numerous reviews, references to his work and interchanges with his contemporaries confirm. However, given his at times harsh criticism of South African writing during the apartheid era, together with his exile from South Africa, his reputation within the country was for some time less secure than it was in America and Europe. His significance stems from the fact that he was, until his death, one of the very few surviving members of the Drum generation of writers of the 50s, one who continued to write throughout the apartheid and post-apartheid decades. Even into his seventies, he recorded and commented upon an extraordinary period of South African history. Nkosi was also remarkable for using a wide variety of genres to express his forthright views: critical essays, short stories, plays, novels, poetry, even a libretto.
Born in Chesterville, a Durban black township, Nkosi came from a working class, female-headed family. He was educated in various local schools, most notably an English medium mission school in Eshowe. After his first job as a manual labourer, Nkosi became a junior reporter on Ilange lase Natal newspaper under the influential Dhlomo brothers. He soon moved to Johannesburg to work on Drum magazine in 1956 which, though his time there was short, provided an intensely formative experience working in the company of Can Themba, Nat Nakasa and Bloke Modisane. Nkosi was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard in 1961, but was only granted a one-way exit permit to take this up; in effect, his life as an exile began here as his re-entry to South Africa was forbidden.
Die sanger Jurie Els, wat onlangs vrygespreek is op die aanklag dat hy die jong sanger Robbie Klay as kind seksueel gemolesteer het, het ‘n outobiografie uitgegee om “sy naam in ere te herstel”. Só het mnr Johnny le Roux van Naledi-uitgewers aan Die Burger gesê. Die derde deel van die boek, getiteld “Niks” staan Els af aan wat hy “Robbie se liegstories” noem. Hy verwys ook na ‘n aborsie wat Sonja Harold gehad het en ‘n vermeende seksvideo van Patricia Lewis. Harold, Lewis en Klay is glad nie gelukkig oor Els se boek, Ver van vrede – my volle verhaal, nie.
Die sangeres Sonja Herholdt is “stomgeslaan” dat Jurie Els na haar aborsie in sy boek Ver van Vrede – My Volle Verhaal verwys het wat vandag op die rakke is.
“Dit is ou nuus,” sê Herholdt. “Jurie mors net ’n mens se tyd.” Sy het ook gesê die dinge wat hy in sy boek kwytraak, raak haar nie en sy weet nie wat hy daarmee wil bereik nie.
Poet, novelist essayist, short story writer, anthologist, teacher and activist Alice Walker has arrived in South Africa for the first time, at the behest of the Steve Biko Foundation, for whom she’ll deliver the annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture later this week. Previous speakers include Chinua Achebe, Nelson Mandela, Mamphela Ramphela and Desmond Tutu.
According to Nkosinathi Biko (CEO of the foundation), who spoke, with Walker, to the media yesterday evening, the annual memorial lecture was established “as a way to explore the inextricable link between the individual and society; to explore triumphs over inequality; and to speak to contemporary challenges and opportunities facing people of African descent”.
Walker seems to feel a profound connection to Steve Biko and his legacy, expressing a sense of kinship with his work and what he stands for. Describing him as a “fearless writer and speaker”, Walker has not only taken inspiration from Biko, but says that he and she are “brother and sister in the ways we view the world”. As Biko did, Walker expresses her love for people – a love undiminished by humanity’s flaws and faults – and her desire to see all people, of all kinds, prosper.
In response to the observation that she is the first non-African to deliver a Steve Biko Memorial Lecture, Walker takes a wider view: that, people having originally come from this continent, there are in fact no non-Africans. It was clear that she was deeply honoured by the foundation’s invitation, and by the chance to be connected to the legacy of Steve Biko. “Steve Biko had a vision of a world very different from the one he inherited”, she said, “very much like Martin Luther King Jnr. In many ways our struggles are connected, your country’s and that of my own. Just as are the roads and paths that lie before us.”
Walker will be delivering the Steve Biko Memorial Lecture in Cape Town on September 9th. She will also be hosting a public event at the State Theatre in Pretoria this evening (Tuesday, September 7th).
Alert! The shortlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize was announced today in London by the Booker Prize Foundation – and South Africa’s Damon Galgut has made the cut! What fantastic news!
The winner of the £50 000 purse will be announced on 12 October. Andrew Motion leads the panel of five judges that whittled the shortlist of thirteen titles down to six. Galgut’s competition includes the likes of Peter Carey – who’s won the prize twice, and could become the first author to bag a hat trick – and Emma Donaghue. Here’s the complete shortlist:
Peter Carey, Emma Donoghue, Damon Galgut, Howard Jacobson, Andrea Levy and Tom McCarthy are today, Tuesday 7 September, announced as the six shortlisted authors for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. For over four decades the prize – the leading literary award in the English speaking world – has brought recognition, reward and readership to the outstanding new novels of the year. The shortlist was announced by Chair of judges, Sir Andrew Motion, at a press conference held at Man’s London headquarters.
The six books, selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13, are:
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue Room (Picador – Pan Macmillan)
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books – Grove Atlantic)
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review – Headline Publishing Group)
Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape – Random House)
Chair of judges Andrew Motion, comments:
“It’s been a great privilege and an exciting challenge for us to reduce our longlist of thirteen to this shortlist of six outstandingly good novels. In doing so, we feel sure we’ve chosen books which demonstrate a rich variety of styles and themes – while in every case providing deep individual pleasures.”
Australian author Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. Should he win this year, he would become the only author to have won three times. He was also shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker. South African author Damon Galgut has previously been shortlisted for his book The Good Doctor in 2003 and Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice before for his novels Kalooki Nights in 2006 and Who’s Sorry Now? in 2002. Irish author Emma Donoghue is, at 40, the youngest author on the shortlist.
The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall. The announcement will be broadcast on BBC News across television, radio and online.
The winner will receive a cheque for £50,000 and worldwide recognition. Last year’s winning novel, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, has now sold over half a million copies in the UK alone. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.
Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.
On Sunday 10 October, two days before the winner is announced, the shortlisted authors will appear at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. It is the only public opportunity to join the 2010 shortlisted authors for readings from their books, discussion and an audience Q&A.
In addition, the Man Booker Prize has teamed up with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the London based private members’ club The Groucho Club, who will both host events with some of the shortlisted authors for their members.
Last month the prize announced exciting new digital plans for 2010. The Man Booker Prize App is now free to download from the App Store to an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch and is the UK’s first app for a literary prize. The prize has also partnered with T-Mobile via the digital book retailer GoSpoken. T-Mobile users can access content on their mobile phones and GoSpoken has provided free audio extracts from all the 13 longlisted titles which can be downloaded to subscribers’ mobiles.
Alert! The main programme for South Africa’s National Book Week, organised under the auspices of the South African Book Development Council, has taken shape.
The NBW programme is divided into two sections: “events for Industry, SMMEs, Libraries, CSI Programmes, Reading Promotion and other interested parties… and events/ activities for Children, Youth and Adults, School & Community Groups, Adult learners, Teachers, Librarians”.
Here’s the latest programme information, including an hour-by-hour breakdown (in which, if you look carefully, you’ll find Your Correspondent’s name; I’ve the privilege to be on a panel on reading in the digital age with Yoza’s Steve Vosloo and Van Schaik’s Melvin Kaabwe):
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Alert! The main programme for South Africa’s National Book Week, organised under the auspices of the 