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A Man of Good Hope Jonny Steinberg Jonathan Ball Publishers REVIEW: Bongani Kona The xenophobic attacks which swept through South Africa in May 2008, leaving scores of foreign immigrants dead and thousands of others stranded in make-shift refugee camps, is
Every year, The Star asks me to select the top ten South African books of the year. Lists – just like literary prizes – are inherently problematic, exclusionary and faulty, yet I love them for their cranky assumption that they
Paige Nick has quite a following in South Africa, both as a columnist and a novelist. Which means, I hope – and I’m sure her publishers hope – that unlike other collections of columns, hers will sell well. I think
Memory Against Forgetting Ranjith Kally Quivertree REVIEW: KARIN SCHIMKE If you know your journalism history – or just any South African history – there are certain names that conjure (perhaps a little too romantically considering the social political circumstances) the
The Arrogance of Power: The South Africa’s Leadership Meltdown Xolela Mangcu Tafelberg REVIEW: Mvelase Peppetta For me, politics is more than just mere politics. It can be as much a piece of entertainment as good a movie. At various points
Esther’s House Carol Campbell Umuzi ISBN: 9781415207406 REVIEW: Sue Townsend Carol Campbell in this, her second novel, has tried to bring to life the depressing, dire situation in which many, if not most, of the ordinary people of South Africa
Every time I meet someone who’s just attended their first lit fest, I’m surprised that they’re all ooh and ah about how funny the authors are, how entertaining the events were and how all round amazed they are that literary
Can a literary recounting of war stop the wholesale murder? By Karin Schimke War, for anyone who hasn’t been in it I would argue, is an idea so foreign as to belong to the realm of fantasy. Its lived travesties,
All I know about comics is why I’ve never liked them. They’re so full of visual information they make my eyes judder in their sockets. Complete overload. Until recently, I felt so overwhelmed by them that I couldn’t muster the
A Memory This Size and Other Stories Jacana REVIEW: Maya Fowler “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” said WB Yeats in his poem The Second Coming, his words famously echoed in the title of Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking 1958 novel. But