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From Brooklyn to Chicago – News from Masande Ntshanga’s US book tour

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The ReactiveThe ReactiveAward-winning novelist Masande Ntshanga is currently in the United States for the launch of the North American-edition of his explosive debut novel, The Reactive.

The tour, organised by Ntshanga’s US-publisher Columbus independent press Two Dollar Radio, started on Saturday, 17 September, in Brooklyn, New York, and ends in San Francisco on Wednesday, 12 October.

On Thursday, 29 September, the author will be in conversation with Toni Nealie, author of The Miles Between Me, at Curbside Books & Records in Chicago.

Last night, Ntshanga gave a reading from his book at the Village Theatre in Davenport and shared a few pictures of the event on Twitter:

 
Ntshanga has been a busy man. Earlier this week, he could be seen signing books at The Pygmalion Festival in Illinois and earlier this month he was spotted at the 2016 Brooklyn Book Festival where he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Okey Ndibe and other prominent authors from all over the world. At the festival, he participated in a panel discussion entitled “Body Language – Heart, Eyes, Blood” with French writer Maylis de Kerangal and Chilean Lina Meruane.

 

 

Between all the book launches, signings and readings, Ntshanga has also been an excellent interviewee.

On Friday, 23 September, he was a guest on WOSU Radio in Columbus, Ohio, where he discussed The Reactive with host Christopher Purdy, WOSU book critic Kassie Rose and author Lina Maria Ferreira Castenga-Valdenas.

Ntshanga speaks about the title of the book and the special relationship between the characters. Rose says she was “greatly taken in by the voice” in The Reactive. “That voice took me through all of the book.”

Listen to the podcast:

 
During his visit to Columbus, the author was a visiting scholar at the Columbus College of Art & Design and he also chatted to Justin McIntosh for Columbus Alive.

Read the interview:

Violence buzzes in the background, though it’s mostly unnoticed by the characters, in the same way that, over time, you can learn to ignore the train that passes behind your house. Seen from above, Ntshanga notes, South African fields look like honeycombs because they’re dotted with so many empty graves. Cecilia, for one, isn’t disturbed by the gunshots so much as the lack of sirens that follow. Nathi tries to justify the brutality around him.

“This isn’t so much killing as it is cleaning up a mess,” he says. “These kids, all of them, they’re already dead.”

Today, Ntshanga will attend the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City and tomorrow he’ll visit the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s creative writing students.

Next week, the author will do a reading at an event hosted by the University of Georgia Creative Writing Program and the Avid Poetry Series. He will also visit the Emory College Department of Arts and Sciences.

We have our Google alerts set and our ears on the ground, so watch this space for more exciting news on Ntshanga’s US book tour. You can also follow him on Twitter @mntshanga or see the complete tour schedule on Two Dollar Radio’s website.
 
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Slicing through the curtain: Bron Sibree talks to Madeliene Thien about her Man Booker-shortlisted novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing

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Madeleine Thien marries expression and experience in her new novel, writes Bron Sibree for the Sunday Times

Do Not Say We Have NothingDo Not Say We Have Nothing
Madeleine Thien (Granta Books)
*****

Madeleine Thien was barely 15 when she was gripped by the momentous 1989 Tiananmen Square protests as they unfolded on the TV screen of her family’s home in Canada. But it was the unresolved questions from her acclaimed 2011 novel about the aftermath of Cambodia’s revolution, Dogs at the Perimeter, that compelled her, some two and half decades later, to embark on the ambitious undertaking that is her new and third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing. “These two novels are deeply connected,” says Thien, who views both as an attempt, in part, to track what has happened to her generation.

Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is at one level a saga about a family of musical prodigies whose lives play out against the tumultuous ructions of China’s revolutionary history. At another, concedes Thien, “it is a profoundly political novel”. A work that, as she infers in her acknowledgements, can be read as alternate history. How history is recorded and erased is a potent theme in this beguiling novel, which begins in 1989 with its narrator, Marie, a Canadian mathematician who also answers to the name Li-ling or Girl, recalling that fateful year when she was 10. The year in which her father, Kai, a once famous pianist in China, killed himself, and she and her mother obsessively watched CNN’s coverage of the events in Tiananmen Square.

But it is the revelations gleaned from a door-shaped notebook found among Kai’s papers, The Book of Records, that is to lure Marie to China many years later, in an adult quest to understand her father’s suicide. A quest seeded that same year of Tiananmen, when her mother shelters a young Chinese dissident, Ai-ming, who recognises the writing in The Book of Records as belonging to her own father, Sparrow. For Marie, as for the reader, this tract serves as a portal onto both her father’s secrets and that of Ai-ming’s brilliant composer father, Sparrow. Cannily mirroring time-honoured forms of covert communication, The Book of Records is like a melodic underscore to this illumined novel, opening onto an entire landscape of stories within stories and packing a subversive punch all its own.

Born in Canada to Malaysian Chinese immigrants, Thien knew she wanted to write by the age of 10. She first won acclaim for a collection of short stories, Simple Recipes (2001), followed by her 2006 debut novel, Certainty, then Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), which won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 LiBeraturpreis. But not even that novel can prepare you for the power, intensity and emotional reach of Do Not Say We Have Nothing. In writing it, Thien charged herself with addressing “the gap between what language can express and the profound depths of what people experienced. Something that I feared I failed to do with Dogs at the Perimeter. Just the ways in which selfhood, family, identity and lives were torn apart wholesale, and feeling that a lot of that couldn’t be expressed in language, led me to think about the musicians in China, what it was that they felt they could express only through the language of music”.

Indeed, music is a palpable melodic force in this narrative, which is deftly anchored to the lesser-known details of that other great force, China’s revolutionary history. But for Thien, who has punctuated her narrative with fragments of text from other books, it is above all, “a book of books and this idea that on the one hand there’s the ideology which creates its own revolutionary language that everyone has to utilise. On the other, there’s this long history of literature and poetry which is also instilled in people, and in which they see shattered reflections of themselves in a cyclical pattern, returning again and again”.

Already at work on a new “very different” novel, this 42-year-old author admits that for her writing is a quest to find a moral way to live. “Asking what that moral life could be in the space of our regular day-to-day lives is difficult for, say, someone like me, who lives mostly in Canada. But there is a very thin curtain separating you from where you could be living another kind of life, because you look around society and you see that there’s no place for certain people, certain histories or even certain bodies,” she adds, softly. “And I just feel that literature can pull that curtain back.”

Follow Bron Sibree on Twitter @BronSibree

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Books for the higher-brow selfie, by Jennifer Platt

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Published in the Sunday Times

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It’s cool to be seen reading again. The trendy folks are putting down their smartphones and picking up a book. It’s hip to be square, to be seen having an identity outside the digital world, even if it is only to Instagram that you are reading in the real world.

The settings are important – gastro pub/coffee shop, yacht/rowing boat, beach/lake/pool, bus/train station, or just on your couch with your dog/cat.

And the cool authors have books out now – one can be a total lit geek and be trendy at the same time.

Here I AmJonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in 10 years has just been published, Here I Am. Set in a period of three weeks, it focuses on a family in Washington DC going through a moment of crisis (marriage, life, existential) and how they are connected to a massive earthquake that has devastated the Middle East. It is filled with hefty themes of identity and political crisis and is 571 pages long – so it ticks all the boxes for lit bragging rights. And there is also Foer’s mind-blowing exchange of emails with Natalie Portman that The New York Times has published. Some say it’s painful and pretentious. That’s just more ticks.

Heroes of the FrontierDave Eggers is loved for many of his literary endeavours. McSweeney’s has a page that is one of the most irreverent and funny sites to go to daily and have a laugh, but it is also his not-for profit publishing house. His latest novel, Heroes of the Frontier, is about Josie, a woman who takes her two children on a road trip into the Alaskan wilderness. It’s an examination of modern life with Eggers’s keen sense of observation and humour.
 
 
 
Known and Strange ThingsIf you want non-fiction, and still want the literary street cred, Teju Cole’s Known and Strange Things is a collection of about 50 pieces on his thoughts from politics to photography. His book is filled with references to Seamus Heaney, Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, James Baldwin and more. Plus the cover is totes beautiful for Instagramming.
 
 
 
 
Homo DeusYuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens (which was praised for cleverly explaining where we came from), has written his follow-up called Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. It asks the ultimate question: where do we go from here? Besides delving into our scary digital future, the cover is also simple and beautiful and worthy of being on your Instagram.
 
 
 
 
And if you really want to impress, there’s always the Man Booker shortlist to get through.

Follow Jennifer Platt on Twitter @Jenniferdplatt

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The literature inspiring South Africa’s student protests

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Memoirs of a Born FreeAmericanahDog Eat DogNervous Conditions
Where We StandUnimportanceThe Wretched of the EarthI Write What I Like

 

South Africa’s university student revolt has given new life to radical authors of previous generations as they draw on their ideas to fight fees and demand a “free‚ decolonised education”.

Among the works which are fueling the ideas behind the fees protests are the anti-colonialism writings of Frantz Fanon – originally from the Caribbean island of Martinique but who began writing scathing critiques from France in the 1950s – and Steve Biko‚ the celebrated Black Consciousness leader killed by the apartheid state in 1977.

But other writers include contemporary Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in whose 2013 novel Americanah‚ black women’s hair serves as a symbol to illustrate the central character’s struggle against racism.

South Africa’s students are also drawing on earlier works‚ like the early 20th century work of WEB du Bois‚ a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peopled in the United States and who produced influential writings railing against racism.

Tarryn de Kock‚ a researcher and postgraduate at the Centre for International Teacher Education as well as a former Politics and International Relations student at Rhodes University‚ said there was a wide range of both local and international thinkers “who have become part of the conversation around decoloniality and decolonised education”.

“There is a broad range of literature that South African students are using to inform their perspectives‚ both locally and from abroad‚ and spanning at least the last century or two‚” she said.

“Classic and contemporary authors on issues of racism and the psychosocial effects of race thinking include WEB du Bois‚ Aime Cesaire‚ Walter Rodney‚ Paul Gilroy‚ Marcus Garvey‚ Steve Biko‚ Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon.

“They wrote on the experiences of black people in places such as the USA‚ the Caribbean‚ Europe and Africa.

“Garvey‚ Biko‚ Rodney and Cabral also reflected on the economic effects of colonialism on black people‚ how underdevelopment and deprivation were secured as a generational default‚ and how structures of economic‚ political‚ cultural and educational power facilitated the suppression of colonial subjects.”

De Kock said Fanon has been especially popular because of “almost prophetic discussions” about the “postcolony” in his book The Wretched of the Earth‚ where he discusses what happens after liberation and how‚ based on the structures set up under colonialism‚ particular forms of power and power struggles come to characterise the newly liberated post-colonial state.

Ncedisa Mpemnyama‚ a University of the Western Cape student in sociology and psychology‚ who spoke to TMG Digital during protests at the University of Cape Town‚ said he had found inspiration in Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Biko’s I Write What I Like.

“What I have come to realise is that the cycle of poverty that is constantly perpetuated and structured on black people‚ gives us very little chance to succeed. It almost seems as though there is genocide on young blacks who have become so used to suffering.

“We need to change the conversation. We are often not taken seriously but we are indeed the future leaders of this country‚” he said.

Panashe Chigumadzi‚ activist‚ author of Sweet Medicine‚ and curator of the Abantu Book Festival‚ said that there was not always consensus about the relevance of literature in student protests.

Chigumadzi said there were often “contestations as to who has the right interpretation of what is being said‚ when you put literature into practice”.

“There’s a saying by Bob Marley, ‘He who feels it knows it’. Even as a writer I need to say that literature is great but I think you just need to walk outside and engage with what is currently happening‚” she said.

“If you just have a sense of empathy and you try to understand what black people go through‚ particularly poor black people‚ then you should understand.

“You need to be receptive to what people are saying. Students have tried to speak at nauseam and write pieces about this so a lot of it involves us looking into our hearts‚ beyond reaching for more books‚ speak to each other and I think we will get a whole lot more‚” Chigumadzi added.

Source: TMG Digital

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Love is in the details: Russell Clarke talks to Garth Greenwell about his book What Belongs to You

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Garth Greenwell wants you to know his book is gay and universal, writes Russell Clarke for the Sunday Times

What Belongs to YouWhat Belongs to You
Garth Greenwell (Picador)
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Garth Greenwell’s debut novel What Belongs To You catches one’s eye, not only for the striking jacket but for the shout on the cover, that quotes Hanya Yanagihara: “Language as beautiful and vivid as poetry.”

The shout proves prescient, as Greenwell is a poet by training. His opening salvo, with its taut writing and sheer scale of detail, conveys great depth of emotion.

What Belongs To You is the story of an unnamed American narrator, a teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria, and his relationship with Mitko, a rent boy with whom he becomes deeply involved. Divided into three parts, the novel first outlines with frankness how the narrator meets and strikes up a relationship with Mitko, by cruising a bathroom in Sofia’s National Palace of Culture.

The second part, and the heart of the piece, is a 60-page paragraph that follows the narrator as he walks around Sofia contemplating the imminent death of his father and his painful childhood in Kentucky. The last section of the book fast forwards a few years, as the narrator and Mitko are reunited.

Greenwell is unapologetically queer. My first question to him is around how to define the genre of his novel, and how he feels about it being labelled queer fiction, but with a universal set of themes.

He takes delicate umbrage at the question.

“I would say that my only quarrel with how you just characterised the book is the word ‘but’. You know, that it’s a queer novel but universal.

“I think that what that does, that word ‘but’, which is a word we all use … ‘This is a book about black lives, but it’s universal,’ or ‘This is about trans lives, but it’s universal,’ and you think, ‘Well, no.’

“There is some kind of human experience that is not marked and characterised by race, gender, class, but by particulars. You know, literature is made out of particulars, art is made out of particulars, and I think the weird thing about literature is how it is only through brooding very deeply, as deeply as possible, into particulars, that it arrives at experience that is communicable across all of those categories.

“And it’s a book that I hope is written for queer people, in the sense that I hope it is a book that does not try to take queer lives and package them in a way to make them intelligible, or to make their value intelligible, to people who are antagonistic to queer lives.”

Greenwell is trained in opera, and is a poet, high school teacher and now novelist. The first section of the novel began life as a novella entitled Mitko.

“Mitko was the first fiction I’d ever written, it was the first prose I’d ever written. I’d always read novels voraciously, but never with an eye to craft. I’d always been a poet. When I finished that first section, what would become Mitko, I thought the story was done, I didn’t have any intimation that the story was going to continue.”

A friend suggested he send the piece to the Miami University Press Novella competition, and it won. It also won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and a Lambda Award. Greenwell describes writing the second part of the book in a “white heat, a harsh, angry emotion”, on scraps of paper.

The last section was workshopped at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, of the TV show Girls fame.

Greenwell’s narrator is very attached to control. He appears to furnish the reader with everything we need to know, but it is in the contradictions that he embodies – desire tinged with fear, disclosure tinged with guardedness, the shifting roles of aggressor and complier (a specific relationship that the rent boy and narrator have) – that we discover that he isn’t really all he presents.

It’s tempting to try to figure out how much a novel reflects an author’s lived experience. “I wrote the book without thinking of myself as a fiction writer, without thinking of it as a novel I was going to publish. I wrote it while I was teaching high school, living in Bulgaria, feeling very isolated.”

It is this sense of isolation, of aloneness, of linguistic alienation that runs throughout the book as a theme – one many queer readers will recognise – a life of being outside, of othering, and this strikingly defines the narrator.

Greenwell is emphatic, though, that the book is a piece of crafted work that does not attempt to be a chronicle of his own life.

Follow Russell Clarke on Twitter @russrussy

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Book Bites: 2 October 2016

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Published in the Sunday Times

This Must Be The PlaceThis Must Be The Place
Maggie O’Farrell (Headline)
****
Book buff
Few authors write about relationships with such acuity as Maggie O’Farrell, and in this seventh novel she delivers another deeply satisfying story. American linguistics professor Daniel Sullivan lives in the remote countryside of Ireland with his reclusive wife. When the story opens she is brandishing a rifle, seeing off a stalker lurking on their property. She is a world-famous French-English actress – think Angelina Jolie-meets-Brigitte Bardot – who had scandalously vanished from the public eye several years before. They are both wounded souls but are quietly raising their children in a home-schooled idyll when Daniel happens to hear a familiar voice on the radio, that of his first great love. He is shocked to learn that she died soon after being interviewed and this revelation tips him over into a downward spiral of guilt and regret, a spiral that begins to pull everything he has built up into a vortex. With her hallmark style of multiple narrators and switching timelines, O’Farrell carefully examines the notion of love as redemption. – Michele Magwood @michelemagwood

The Last OneThe Last One
Alexandra Oliva (Penguin)
****
Book thrill
Give any reality show half a chance, and you will be hooked: In the Dark is the standard Survivor-style product in which 12 strangers compete for the million-dollar prize – except there is no time limit to this show. It ends when there is only one competitor left – and Zoo is determined it will be her. Things start to go badly wrong, but Zoo thinks the corpses are mere special effects, not realising a pandemic has struck the US, killing millions. Or is she right – could it be part of “the game”? Gripping, intriguing and suspenseful, it is a thrillingly impressive debut. – Aubrey Paton

CutCut
Marc Raabe (Bonnier)
***
Book thrill
Translated from German (Schnitt) and set in Berlin, this debut slasher novel is much better than the lurid cover suggests. Gabriel is an antisocial security guard who spent years in a mental institution after the death of his parents when he was 11. Now 40, he is beginning to unfurl emotionally with the help of Liz, his pregnant girlfriend. When Liz is kidnapped, Gabriel becomes a vengeful angel who must maintain his sanity even as an unspeakable horror from his childhood returns to his memory. The tight plot, clean writing and complex protagonist make up for a somewhat cartoonish villain and superfluous segues into the machinations of TV corporations. – Sue de Groot @deGrootS1

Ink and BoneInk and Bone
Lisa Unger (Simon & Schuster)
****
Book fling
Unger’s writing is the perfect mix of Stephen King’s creepy horror and Nora Roberts’s easy reads. It’s not just a mystery about a missing girl (Abbey is abducted in the woods), it’s also about how 20-year-old Finley has to find her psychic groove. Finley can see dead people. She also cannot stop hearing the “squeak-clink”, which is a clue to solving Abbey’s whereabouts. – Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt

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Ngugi wa Thiong’o the favourite to win 2016 Novel Prize in Literature

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o
In the House of the InterpreterA Grain of WheatThe River BetweenWeep Not, ChildPetals of BloodDreams in a Time of WarWizard of the Crow

 
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is the most-backed author to win the 2016 Novel Prize in Literature, according to Ladbrokes, with regular favourites Haruki Murakami, Adonis, Philip Roth and Jon Fosse close behind.

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The Kenyan author is a perennial favourite for the award, and was considered a front runner in 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
 

 
Ngũgĩ’s influence on African and international literature is immense. In the late 1960s he made the “groundbreaking and ridiculously brave” decision to write in Gikuyu and Swahili, in an effort to revitalise and empower indigenous languages. Last year he was awarded the Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature. His most recent book is In the House of the Interpreter.
 

 
The 18 members of the Swedish Academy decide the award, being an author they judge – in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will – to have “produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

The date for the announcement is yet to be announced, but could be any time from 11:45 AM today – slightly later than usual. The Academy’s Per Wästberg told Swedish press that the winner would be revealed on 13 October, amid rumours of disagreement among members.

The Academy never gives any indication of the authors under consideration, however the winner’s name has been leaked on occasion. The official shortlist is only revealed 50 years later – in this year’s case, 2066.

Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction author Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the prize last year.

You can watch the announcement live here:

 
Related stories:

Image courtesy of What’s Good Africa

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Ngugi wa Thiong’o the favourite to win 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o
In the House of the InterpreterA Grain of WheatThe River BetweenWeep Not, ChildPetals of BloodDreams in a Time of WarWizard of the Crow

 
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is the most-backed author to win the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, according to Ladbrokes, with regular favourites Haruki Murakami, Adonis, Philip Roth and Jon Fosse close behind.

null


 

The Kenyan author is a perennial favourite for the award, and was considered a front runner in 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
 

 
Ngũgĩ’s influence on African and international literature is immense. In the late 1960s he made the “groundbreaking and ridiculously brave” decision to write in Gikuyu and Swahili, in an effort to revitalise and empower indigenous languages. Last year he was awarded the Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature. His most recent book is In the House of the Interpreter.
 

 
The 18 members of the Swedish Academy decide the award, being an author they judge – in the words of Alfred Nobel’s will – to have “produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.

The date for the announcement is yet to be announced, but could be any time from 11:45 AM today – slightly later than usual. The Academy’s Per Wästberg told Swedish press that the winner would be revealed on 13 October, amid rumours of disagreement among members.

The Academy never gives any indication of the authors under consideration, however the winner’s name has been leaked on occasion. The official shortlist is only revealed 50 years later – in this year’s case, 2066.

Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction author Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the prize last year.

You can watch the announcement live here:

 
Related stories:

Image courtesy of What’s Good Africa

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2016 South African Literary Awards nominees revealed

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Dit kom van ver afKarnaval en lentShirley, Goodness & MercyEggs to Lay, Chickens to HatchVry-Bumper CarsBeyond TouchPruimtwak en skaduboksersUnSettled and Other StoriesFlame in the SnowHalfpad een ding’n Huis vir EsterEsther's HouseVlakwaterIt Might Get LoudBuys – ’n GrensromanThe Violent Gestures of LifeSweet MedicineKamphoerWhat If There Were No Whites In South Africa?Donker stroomAskari

 
Alert! The shortlists for the 2016 South African Literary Awards have been announced.

18 authors from a total of 132 submissions have been shortlisted and the winners will be announced on Monday, 7 November, at a prestigious function at Unisa.

On the same day, wRite Associates will host the fifth Africa Century International African Writers Conference, before the ceremony. This year, the SALAs have partnered with the Unisa Department of English Studies in delivering both the awards ceremony and the Conference.

The SALAs were founded in 2005 by wRite Associates and the Department of Arts and Culture.

This year, the awards will honour the memory of TT Cloete and Chris van Wyk with Posthumous Literary Awards, while Ingrid Winterbach and Professor Johan Lenake are nominated for Lifetime Achievement Literary Awards.

The SALA Adjudication Panel said:

We are excited that South African literature continues to flourish, with many young writers coming into the scene, sharing platforms with their more established and experienced counterparts, however, we are saddened and concerned that we still see less and less of works written in African languages.

Going forward, the SALA Adjudication Panel recommends literary workshops and symposia with stakeholders, especially writers, publishers and editors, to address concerns regarding the standard and quality of some of the work, especially in African languages, that SALA has been receiving over time. This would be in line with one of the objectives of SALA, ‘to promote and preserve all our languages’.

We congratulate the 2016 nominees for their sterling work and keeping South Africa’s literary heritage alive.

The SALAs aim to “pay tribute to South African writers who have distinguished themselves as groundbreaking producers and creators of literature”, as well as to “celebrate literary excellence in the depiction and sharing of South Africa’s histories, value systems and philosophies and art as inscribed and preserved in all the languages of South Africa, particularly the official languages”.

The 2016 South African Literary Awards nominees:

Posthumous Literary Award

TT Cloete – Body of work
Chris van Wyk – Body of work

Poetry Award

Gilbert Gibson, Vry-
Athol Williams, Bumper Cars
Arja Salafranca, Beyond Touch

Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award

Danie Marais, Pruimtwak en skaduboksers
Sandra Hill, UnSettled and Other Stories

Literary Translators Award

Leon de Kock and Karin Schimke, Flame in the Snow: The Love Letters of André Brink and Ingrid Jonker
Zirk van den Berg, Halfpad een ding
Kirby van der Merwe, ’n Huis vir Ester

Lifetime Achievement Literary Award

Ingrid Winterbach – Body of work
Prof Johan Lenake – Body of work

K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award

Willem Anker, Buys – ’n Grensroman
Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho, The Violent Gestures of Life
Panashe Chigumadzi, Sweet Medicine

First-time Published Author Award

Francois Smith, Kamphoer
Ferial Haffajee, What If There Were No Whites In South Africa?

Creative Non-Fiction Award

Carel van der Merwe, Donker stroom
Jacob Dlamini, Askari

Chairperson’s Award

Recipient to be announced at the Award Ceremony – Body of work

Ends

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Abubakar Adam Ibrahim wins $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature for Season of Crimson Blossoms

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Fiction Friday: Forbidden Love in Northern Nigeria - Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's Debut Novel Season of Crimson Blossoms
Season of Crimson BlossomsBorn on a TuesdayNight Dancer

 
Alert! Abubakar Adam Ibrahim has won The Nigeria Prize for Literature for his debut novel Season of Crimson Blossoms.

The shortlist for the award was Ibrahim, Elnathan John for Born on a Tuesday and Chika Unigwe for Night Dancer. Unigwe won the award in 2012 for On Black Sisters’ Street.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature rotates yearly among four literary genres: prose fiction, poetry, drama and children’s literature, and comes with a cash prize of $100,000 (about R1.4 million).

A total of 173 entries for the prize were received this year. Next year’s prize will be for poetry.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature was founded in 2004. The first prose winner was Kaine Agary (2008) for her novel Yellow Yellow.

This year’s prize was judged by Professor Dan Izevbaye (chair), Professor Asabe Usman Kabir and Professor Isidore Diala. The members of the advisory board are Professor Emeritus Ayo Banjo (chair), Professor Jerry Agada and Professor Emeritus Ben Elugbe.

 
Related stories:

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Book Bites: 9 October 2016

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Published in the Sunday Times

Three Moments of ExplosionThree Moments of An Explosion: Stories
China Miéville (Picador)
Book fiend
****
The short-story collection starts with a bang and maintains that level of excitement and terror throughout. Die-hard Miéville fans might struggle with the new format at first (can’t he just write more Bas-Lag books, already?) but after the titular story you’ll be hooked and thirsting for more. Stand-out stories are “Säcken” – a research trip to the German countryside unleashes untold horrors – and “After the Festival” – a macabre depiction of mass fandom and addiction. Miéville not only experiments with the short story form, he reinvents it. It’s disturbing and brilliant. – Annetjie van Wynegaard @Annetjievw

Hot MilkHot Milk
Deborah Levy (Penguin Random House)
Book buff
****
Sofia has abandoned her anthropology doctorate to tend to her mother, who suffers from mysterious pain and paralysis. The two women enact a filial dance of control and co-dependence, love and resentment. When her mother limps, so does Sofia. “Her legs are my legs.” In desperation, they travel to Spain to consult a doctor. While her mother undergoes the doctor’s (possibly quack) ministrations, Sofia begins to overcome her own existential malaise – she steals a fish, frees a dog, and takes lovers (male and female). Hot Milk is meticulously crafted and vivid with myth and landscape. Levy moves gracefully between pathos, poetry, humour and intriguing internal imaginings. – Kate Sidley @KateSidley

Lily and the OctopusLily & The Octopus
Steven Rowley (Simon & Schuster)
Book hug
****
Ted’s unbreakable bond with his dachshund Lily is what keeps him going, giving his existence shape and meaning. Together, they’re an unbeatable team, a mutual adoration society. It’s the relationship that Ted can count on every day without fail, his one true friend. But when an evil “octopus” suddenly affixes itself to his beloved Lily’s head, threatening everything, he’s thrown into terrible turmoil. Hilarious, sardonic, imaginative and also incredibly sad, this is a must-read for anybody who has ever loved a pet. – Nikki Temkin @NikkiTemkin

The Couple Next DoorThe Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena (Bantam Press)
Book thrill
****
Remember the McCanns who left their daughter Madeleine alone while they had supper nearby? Anne and Marco Conti do the same thing: when the babysitter cancels at the last minute, they leave six-month-old Cora alone and dine with the neighbours. Like Madeleine, Cora is stolen; the police suspect the parents and more and more revelations point to them. A ransom is demanded and paid, but the baby is not returned and police fear the worst. The Couple Next Door is excellent, especially for a debut, with good, tight writing and a thrilling twister of a plot. – Aubrey Paton

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Bob Dylan wins the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature

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TarantulaChronicles Volume One

 
The times they are a-changin’! Bob Dylan has been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The announcement was made today by the Swedish Academy.

Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Sara Danius said Dylan was awarded the Nobel for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

In an interview straight after the announcement, Danius was asked by an incredulous journalist: “Does Bob Dylan really deserve the Nobel Prize? Why?”

“Why?” she responded. “Well of course he does, he just got it.”

She continued: “He is a great poet in the English-speaking tradition. He is a wonderful sampler, a very original sampler. He embodies the tradition, and for 54 years now he’s been at it, reinventing himself constantly, creating a new identity.

“If you want to start listening or reading you may start with Blonde on Blonde, the album from 1966. You’ve got many classics, and it’s an extraordinary example of his brilliant way of rhyming and putting together refrains, and his pictorial thinking.”

When asked whether the Academy had widened the horizon of the prize, Danius said she didn’t believe so.

“It may look that way but really we haven’t. If you look back, far back, 2 500 years or so, you discover Homer and Sappho. They wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, that were meant to be performed, often together with instruments. It’s the same way with Bob Dylan. But we still read Homer and Sappho, and we enjoy it, and the same thing with Bob Dylan. He can be read and should be read, and is a great poet in the grand English poetic tradition.”

Danius was asked whether she thought there would be criticism in the wake of the announcement, and replied: “I hope not.”

Finally, she was asked whether she had listened to a lot of Dylan personally growing up.

“Not really, but he was always around so I know the music and I’ve started to appreciate him much more now than I did,” she said. “I was a David Bowie fan. Perhaps it’s a question of generation, I don’t know. Today I’m a lover of Bob Dylan.”

It appears the Academy had Dylan’s lyrics in mind when deciding the prize, but he has also written two books: Tarantula, a collection of prose and poetry published in 1971, and Chronicles: Volume One, the first part of a planned three-volume memoir, published in 2004.

Watch the announcement here:

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War, hate and sex: Bron Sibree interviews Anne Sebba on her book Les Parisiennes: How the Woman of Paris Loved, Lived and Died

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Anne Sebba gives us new insight into the ordeals of women in wartime, writes Bron Sibree for the Sunday Times

Les ParisiennesLes Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Loved, Lived and Died in the 1940s
Anne Sebba (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
*****

British historian and biographer Anne Sebba has been fascinated by the World War II defeat of France and the German occupation of Paris for as long as she can remember. But for as long as she can recall, too, she has also been troubled by one of the most abiding images of that war’s aftermath: Parisian women being publicly shaven, and often painted with the swastika, for the crime of collaboration horizontale.

“That is the abiding image, and it is so one dimensional. But what has happened historically is that that has become very cheap shorthand for what happened in France,” says Sebba, who has analysed the role of collaborators and resisters, and so much more, in her mesmerising (and richly detailed) social history of the period, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Loved, Lived and Died in the 1940s.

From the outset, Sebba knew she wanted to write a different kind of history. She ignored a renowned male historian’s advice to use the most oft-quoted male diarists of the period, and set out in search of lesser-known women’s voices. The author of eight celebrated works of non-fiction, including That Woman: The Duchess of Windsor and the Scandal That Brought Down a King (2012) and Jennie Churchill (2007), Sebba knows her way around an archive.

Yet even so, she says, “I needed to do a lot of digging.” She spent five years combing the archives for letters and diaries, and painstakingly tracking down women now in their 90s who had lived through the occupation.

“I wanted a multiplicity of points of view. That was key to what I was trying to do so that women couldn’t any longer be given this one-dimensional tag.”

In giving voice to the countless Parisian women who suffered, died or were imprisoned in places like Ravensbrück, or endured the occupation through various degrees of compromise or resistance – mostly a combination of both – Sebba drives home the fact that it was women who were left to contend with the almost all-male Nazi occupiers.

“Wartime Paris was a feminised city. That’s a sine qua non to my book. I hadn’t even realised that until I started writing it, because two million men were taken prisoner of war. Others were with De Gaulle in the Free French and yet others, if they were Jews, were in hiding, or were elderly, so there were very, very few men in Paris. So here you’ve got a city where the women didn’t have the vote, they didn’t have the right to work without their husband’s permission, they couldn’t have a bank account. And without any fuel they couldn’t drive cars so had to ride bicycles, but they weren’t allowed to wear trousers.”

For Sebba, writing Les Parisiennes was a quest to understand the difficult choices forced upon these women – so obviously disempowered yet not cowed – and not to pass judgement. She even finds the word “collaborator” distasteful. “Although it was [Philippe] Pétain who introduced this word collaborate, I think it’s ugly and judgemental. I prefer some degree of complicity. You could argue that everyone who went about their daily business was in some way complicit. I don’t want to pretend there wasn’t collaboration, there were by some estimates more than 100000 Franco-German babies born. Some of it was of necessity – to feed your children you might sleep with a German – some of it was romantic. But did the women deserve to be punished after the war in this very gendered way, without a trial, publicly humiliated?

“It was aimed at the women,” she emphasises, “and has deep roots in the fact that the men felt so humiliated and ashamed that they had lost the military defeat, the way they reacted was to take it out on the women.”

Even the role women played in the resistance remained largely unrecognised until many years later, says Sebba, whose efforts in recording stories of feminine heroism in Les Parisiennes go a long way to redressing historical omissions.

Yet in writing such an intricately detailed history about les années noires, the dark years that divided French citizens, says Sebba, “I found huge resonance in what’s going on in the world now with all this fear that we have of refugees and people who are different from us. It’s so important that we understand that this has happened once before, and that we’re all human beings.”

Follow Bron Sibree on Twitter @BronSibree

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Celebrating Joburg as the inspiration for great South African writing: The 2016 Bridge Book Festival

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Celebrating Joburg and South African writing: 2016 Bridge Book Festival programme revealed

 
On Saturday, 29 October, the Bridge Book Festival will celebrate Johannesburg as the inspiration for great South African writing, by bringing writers and readers together in the city’s historic core.

The daylong event brings a dozen writers, poets and illustrators to explore landmark sites in downtown Johannesburg.

Not to be missed!

Event Details

  • Date: Saturday, 29 October 2016
  • Time: 10 AM to 5 PM
  • Venues: Bridge Books, as well as The Rand Club, Oppenheimer Park and Corner House.
  • Tickets: Webtickets or Facebook

 
 
2016 Bridge Book Festival programme

null#ZuptasMustFall and Other Rants
1. Fred Khumalo
Time: 10am to 10.45am
Venue: Bridge Books
Fred Khumalo will be reading from his latest book #Zuptas Must Fall.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
poetree
2. Poetree
Time: 10am to 10.45am
Venue: Corner House
Different artists from Poetree will entertain with their poems.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Woman Next Door
3. Yewande Omotoso
Time: 11.15am to 12.30pm
Venue: Bridge Books
Yewande Omotoso will be reading from her latest novel The Woman Next Door.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullThe Relatively Public Life Of Jules Browde
4. Daniel Browde
Time: 11.15am to 12.30pm
Venue: The Rand Club
Daniel Browde will be reading from The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde.
Ticket cost: R50
 
 
 
 
 
nullEyes in the Night
5. Nomavenda Mathiane
Time: 11.15am to 12.30pm
Venue: Corner House
Nomavenda Mathiane will be reading from her book Eyes in the Night.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullThe God Who Made Mistakes
6. Ekow Duker
Time: 12.30pm to 1.45pm
Venue: Corner House
Ekow Duker will be reading from his latest novel The God Who Made Mistakes.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullBroke and Broken
7. Lucas Ledwaba and Leon Sadiki
Time: 1.45pm to 2.30pm
Venue: Bridge Books
Lucas Ledwaba and Leon Sadiki will be reading from their book Broke & Broken.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullAffluenza
8. Niq Mhlongo
Time: 1.45pm to 2.30pm
Venue: Corner House
Niq Mhlongo will be reading from his collection of short stories Affluenza.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullHappiness is a Four-Letter Word
9. Nozizwe Cynthia Jele
Time: 3pm to 3.45pm
Venue: Bridge Books
Nozizwe Cynthia Jele will be reading from her novel Happiness is a Four-Letter Word.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
nullFrom Whiskey to Water
10. Samantha Cowen
Time: 3pm to 3.45pm
Venue: Corner House
Samantha Cowen will be reading from her memoir From Whiskey to Water.
Ticket cost: R20
 
 
 
 
 
bridge books
11. Cocktail party at Bridge Books
Time: From 4pm
Venue: Bridge Books
Drinks with the authors at Bridge Books.
Ticket cost: R100
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Related stories:

 

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Bad things happen on beautiful days: Introducing Sunshine Noir – crime writing from hot countries

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Bad things happen on beautiful days: Introducing Sunshine Noir – crime writing from hot countries
nullA Carrion DeathDeath of the MantisA Deadly TradeDeadly HarvestA Death in the Family

 
This Fiction Friday, read a new short story by award-winning crime-writing duo Michael Stanley from the anthology Sunshine Noir.

Michael Stanley is the pen name of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Both Sears and Trollip were born in South Africa and have worked in academia and business. They are the authors of the famous Detective Kubu series, the most recent being A Death in the Family.

To find out more about the idea behind the anthology, read the editors’ note:

Why Sunshine Noir?

“Nordic Noir stories,” we hear their proponents say, “are a cut above ordinary crime fiction because the landscape and weather of the northern countries intensify the darkness of the crime and deepen the psychological complexity of the characters.”

We writers of crime in hot countries beg to differ. Knowing full well that shadows are darkest where the sun is brightest and understanding, as we do, how heat can be more psychologically debilitating than cold, we decided to throw down the gauntlet to the Nordic noirists. We are here to challenge the dominance of dark-climate fiction; to show that stories set in sunny climes can be just as grim, more varied in plot and characters, and richer in entertainment value than those of the dark, grey, bone-chilling north.

To make our case, we’ve recruited crime-fiction writers from around the world. The authors in this volume will convince you with complex, beautifully written stories that span the hot places of the planet. Read these stories. You will agree.

The writers bring a variety of writing styles, which we have maintained to highlight their wonderful diversity.

Finally, we thank all the authors in the anthology for their enthusiasm and support. For their kind words, we also extend our gratitude both to Peter James, best-selling author and winner of the 2015 WH Smith Best Crime Author of all Time Award, and to Tim Hallinan, award-winning author of the Poke Rafferty series, set in Bangkok, and the Los Angeles-based Junior Bender mysteries.

You can follow us on Facebook and at Twitter @Sunshine_Noir.

Annamaria Alfieri and Michael Stanley

International bestselling author Peter James said of the anthology:

“… a whole new movement, spearheaded by Sunshine Noir”

There is a very haunting line at the beginning of a Nicci French novel I read years ago that has always stayed with me: Bad things happen on beautiful days.

For some years many of the most successful books storming the international crime scene have been under a dark, gloomy, wintry, brooding cloud, and have become known by the soubriquet of Scandi Noir. The long dark winters, freezing, hostile climate and the dour, grimly philosophical nature of some of that region’s inhabitants have created a certain style of crime and thriller writing that has proved enormously successful, in part because of the freshness it brought to this genre we love so much.

Many years ago I met very warm and friendly Maxine Sanders, widow of Alexander who is often credited as being the founder of modern satanism in the UK. She told me, “The light can only shine in darkness.” But now I sense with the publication of this gem of an anthology – hand in hand with some of the best crime writing in the world today – that there could be a whole new movement, spearheaded by Sunshine Noir! Where the darkness can only shine in the searing heat of the midday sun …

 
 

The editors have kindly shared an excerpt from “Spirits” by Michael Stanley:
 

It had been another scorching day in New Xade, with the temperature passing 100 degrees and not a trace of moisture. Usually things cooled off at night in the Kalahari, as the sand threw the heat back at the sky, but for weeks it had been stifling at night as well. Constable Ixau lay naked on his bed, trying to catch the breeze from an old desk fan on the table opposite him. Being a Bushman, heat and dryness didn’t usually bother him, but the persistent drought was upsetting. It’s a bad time, he thought. People are worried; people get angry. There will be trouble.
        Just then there was a hammering on the door and a woman’s voice calling him.
        “I’m coming!” he yelled, turning on the light. He pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and jerked open the door.
        “Q’ema! What is it? What’s the matter?” He’d recognised her at once. How not? She was the most attractive girl in the village, and all the young men sought her attention. Ixau had a secret longing for her, but he was much too shy to do anything about it. But tonight she wasn’t pretty. She looked as though she’d been crying.
        “What’s the matter?” he repeated.
        “It’s my father! He’s … you have to help me. Please. I’m so worried and scared. Can you come at once?”
        Ixau wanted to tell her it was all right, that he’d take care of the issue. But he was flustered, and he just stood in the doorway and looked at her.
        “He’s … I don’t know. He’s on the ground. Writhing. Saying mad things.” She hesitated. “There’s blood running from his nose.”
        Ixau felt icy fingers touch his spine. Everyone knew this was a sign that a man had entered the spirit world, the sign of the shaman. Indeed, Q’ema’s father, Gebo, fancied himself as just that, but people laughed at him behind his back and gave him no respect—particularly after he’d promised to bring rain, with no result. Still, these were not matters to be taken lightly. If Gebo had gone to the spirit world, perhaps he couldn’t get back? These things were known. Ixau felt the icy fingers again.
        “I think a spirit has him! An evil spirit,” Q’ema said, as though reading his thoughts. “Will you come? You must come!”
        Ixau pulled himself together. “Have you been to the clinic?” When she shook her head, he added, “We must get the nurse. She won’t be at the clinic now, but you know where she lives. Go and fetch her. Maybe your father is sick. I’ll go to him right now. Don’t worry, it will be okay.”
        She gave him a grateful look and turned to go, but he called after her. “Perhaps you should call N’Kaka too. After you call the nurse.” She nodded and disappeared into the night. There was no real Bushman shaman in New Xade, but N’Kaka was old and respected and knew things. If there was indeed a spirit, he might know what to do.

***

 
Ixau walked quickly to the house where Gebo lived with his daughter. He found the man on the floor with his back propped against a table that had been knocked onto its side. He was breathing fast and, as Q’ema had said, there was blood on his face. When he turned to Ixau, the constable saw a glassiness in his eyes that reminded him of the trances he’d seen brought on by drugs. Maybe Gebo had been trying to communicate with the spirit world and had taken too much? Perhaps that was it.
        “Gebo, it’s me, Constable Ixau. Are you all right?”
        The older man stared at him blankly.
        “Where is Q’ema?” Gebo said at last. “I heard her calling in the other world, but she wasn’t there.”
        “She’s coming with the nurse. And N’Kaka.”
        “That old fool? What does he want?” He tried to stand, but couldn’t manage. He held out his hand to Ixau, who pulled him to his feet. He staggered, and Ixau had to steady him. Then he grabbed Ixau and shouted, “They’re coming for Yuseb! You have to stop them! Yuseb …” His eyes rolled back and he collapsed, and Ixau had to drag him to a chair, where he slumped, unconscious.
        Ixau felt panic. Was the man dying? Should he give CPR? He remembered the brief course he’d done in the police college, but hated the idea of putting his mouth to Gebo’s bloody face. He checked his wrist and could feel an erratic pulse. Relieved, he decided to do nothing and wait for the nurse.
        Suddenly the small room was full as Q’ema, N’Kaka, and the nurse burst in. The nurse pushed Ixau aside and started examining the unconscious man. N’Kaka tried to peer over her shoulder, but she pushed him away too. Q’ema started to cry.
        “I helped him up, and he seemed okay,” Ixau told Q’ema, “but then he started shouting something and passed out. I carried him to the chair.”
        “What?” N’Kaka growled.
        “He passed out and I—”
        “No!” N’Kaka interrupted. “What did he say?”
        What had Gebo said? Ixau wondered. A good policeman would remember. Something about Yuseb? Something about someone coming for him. He told N’Kaka as closely as he could recall.
        N’Kaka liked neither Gebo nor Yuseb, who didn’t show him the respect he felt he deserved. “It’s the spirits who speak through Gebo,” he said. “They’re angry with Yuseb because he doesn’t show them respect. He’s in grave danger.” He nodded with satisfaction.
        Q’ema had stopped crying. “What about my father? Is he all right?”
        N’Kaka shrugged. “They are finished with him now.”
        The nurse looked up from her patient. “Yes,” she said to Q’ema. “Once the drugs wear off. What did he take?”
        Q’ema looked at the floor. “What he takes to visit the spirit world. He was going to beg for rain, I think. He said they could help if they wanted to.”
        There was a groan, and Gebo eyes fluttered.
        N’Kaka snorted. “He’s a fool. They won’t listen to him. He has no power. They took him and chewed him and spat him back to us.” He turned away and left without another glance at Gebo.
        “Help me get him to his bed,” the nurse said. “I’ll bring him something. He’ll be fine in the morning.”
        “Yuseb,” Gebo muttered. “They are coming …” He groaned again.
        Ixau knew his duty. Although he was scared, he knew he must check on Yuseb. He would first fetch his knobkerrie even though it wouldn’t help him against powerful spirits.

***

 

 
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Are publishers afraid of new ideas? Margaret von Klemperer examines the trend of updating Jane Austen and Shakespeare

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By Margaret von Klemperer for The Witness

EligibleWhat is happening to creative imagination? Killed off by a push for profit? These questions are prompted by the arrival on my desk of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible for review. I’ve been looking forward to this – Sittenfeld’s American Wife was a terrific book – and with Eligible, she has been persuaded to join in Harper Collins’s Austen Project.

I thought she might rescue one of the silliest ideas to come from a publishing house in recent years – not as daft as adult colouring-in, but close. The plan was for bestselling writers to “update” Jane Austen’s novels into a contemporary setting, keeping the basic plot. First was Joanna Trollope’s Sense & Sensibility (the ampersand to distinguish it from Austen’s version, not that anyone was likely to confuse the two). She could have been a good choice, but she lacked Austen’s delicate sense of irony.

Then we had Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma. I was never going to be easy to convince as this is my favourite Austen, and it was a thumping dud. The plot, which worked in the early 19th Century is disastrously wrong for the 21st, and McCall Smith’s central character is irredeemably nasty in a way Austen’s never is. Val McDermid’s take on Northanger Abbey was harmless but unmemorable. Comedy of manners is tricky when manners have changed so much in a couple of hundred years, and this one fell flat.

They all flopped. Good writers being laced into cripplingly tight corsets. So on to Sittenfeld. She has moved Pride and Prejudice to Cincinnati, called it Eligible after the television dating show in which “Chip” Bingley has been a participant, and produced a lively, hefty (it clocks in at 514 pages compared to the 369 of my battered old P&P) romp. The Bennet girls are older than in the original. Jane teaches yoga; Lizzy is a magazine journalist; Mary a perpetual student and Kitty and Lydia do nothing except tone themselves in the gym and live off their parents. Mrs Bennet is a compulsive shopper and Mr Bennet has been too idle to keep control of his money, so times are about to get very hard. Darcy is an arrogant neurosurgeon, alarmed by the extreme tackiness of the Bennets. It is engaging, and Sittenfeld has found clever ways to deal with things like elopement that would hardly cause a flutter now. Fun, but for a writer of Sittenfeld’s ability, it seems rather pointless.

So, who are the readers for this wobbly collection? Austenites are unlikely to be blown away by a feeble attempt to update their favourite characters. We also know the stories, so narrative tension is long gone. Anyone who hasn’t read Austen is hardly likely to be sent to the originals. Trollope, McDermid, McCall Smith and Sittenfeld fans may be a bit bewildered.

Personally, I blame Colin Firth’s delectable wet shirt moment in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Suddenly, Austen was sexy. So greedy publishers’ eyes turned to pound and dollar signs at the thought of a contemporary bestseller hitched to sexy old Jane. I haven’t seen an announcement of new names attached to Persuasion or Mansfield Park, so I hope this is the end of it.

There has been life in Austen for authors happy to use their own imaginations rather than be dragooned into a publisher’s template. PD James had fun with Death Comes to Pemberley, taking the Pride and Prejudice story forward, and even better was Jo Baker’s dive below stairs in the Bennet household in Longbourn, which is a fine standalone novel. A homage to Austen that digs a little deeper.

Poor old Austen isn’t the only one getting the treatment. There is the Hogarth Shakespeare series where – wait for it – bestselling contemporary authors are reworking the plots of some of the plays into novels. This is actually more successful – a borrowed cloak rather than a straitjacket. Three have crossed my path up to this point, all using problematic Shakespeare texts. Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time is a new look at The Winter’s Tale. The novel is a winner, being clever, sparky, moving and managing to make a kind of sense of what, with apologies to Will, is a distinctly weird story.

Ann Tyler’s Vinegar Girl takes on the rampantly un-PC The Taming of the Shrew. The play is seldom staged these days, but here another writer at the top of her game has picked it up and shaken the pieces into a glorious jeu d’esprit with a fabulously silly twist. When it comes to Howard Jacobson’s Shylock is my Name, I admit to not being Jacobson’s greatest fan, but the novel has been well received and Jacobson has wisely not tried to update the plot but has tackled the underlying themes. Still to come, we have Margaret Atwood’s take on The Tempest, published this month as Hag Seed and set in a prison; Tracy Chevalier’s Othello; Gillian Flynn’s Hamlet; Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth and Edward St Aubyn’s King Lear.

But even if all of them, the Austens and the Shakespeares, worked well, I would still ask: what is it for? It is as if publishers, like movie makers who seem to rely on films based on comic book superheroes to win at the box office, are afraid of genuinely new ideas. Attach the names of Austen or Shakespeare to something and make money. But two or four hundred years from now, I doubt if any of the updates will still be around. Unlike the originals.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible is published by Harper Collins.

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Paul Beatty wins 2016 Man Booker Prize for The Sellout – the first American author to take the award

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Alert! Paul Beatty has won the 2016 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout.

The Sellout is published by small independent publisher Oneworld, who won their first Booker last year with Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings.

Beatty, 54, is the first American author to win the prize in its 48-year history, after US authors became eligible in 2014.

 

From the Man Booker:

The book is narrated by African-American ‘Bonbon’, a resident of the run-down town of Dickens in Los Angeles county, which has been removed from the map to save California from embarrassment. Bonbon is being tried in the Supreme Court for attempting to reinstitute slavery and segregation in the local high school as means of bringing about civic order. What follows is a retrospective of this whirlwind scheme, populated by cartoonish characters who serve to parody racial stereotypes. The framework of institutional racism and the unjust shooting of Bonbon’s father at the hands of police are particularly topical.

2016 Chair of judges Amanda Foreman said: “The Sellout is a novel for our times. A tirelessly inventive modern satire, its humour disguises a radical seriousness. Paul Beatty slays sacred cows with abandon and takes aim at racial and political taboos with wit, verve and a snarl.”

Foreman was joined on the 2016 panel of judges by Jon Day, Abdulrazak Gurnah, David Harsent and Olivia Williams. 155 books were considered for this year’s prize.

Beatty wins £50,000 and a trophy, as well as a designer bound edition of his book and a further £2,500 for being shortlisted.

He can also expect a spike in sales. Last year’s winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, went on to sell over 360,000 copies in the UK and Commonwealth, as well as 120,000 copies in the US.

The 2016 Man Booker Prize shortlist of six novels

The SelloutHot MilkHis Bloody ProjectEileenAll That Man IsDo Not Say We Have Nothing

 

 

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Book bites: 23 October 2016

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Published in the Sunday Times

I Shot the BuddhaI Shot The Buddha
Colin Cotterill (Soho Press)
Book Mystery
****
This is the 11th novel featuring Dr Siri Paiboun, now retired as the best (and often only) coroner in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. A Buddhist monk disappears. He was sheltered by Siri and his wife, Madame Daeng. He left a note asking them to smuggle a fellow monk back across the Mekong River to Thailand. The pair soon find themselves not only investigating the monk’s disappearance, but also a trio of murders that took place on a single night in 1979. A whodunit with a slight supernatural twist, I Shot The Buddha shines in its wit and its multifaceted characters, set against a backdrop of the conflict between communism and spirituality. – Andrew Salomon

The Bone SparrowThe Bone Sparrow
Zana Fraillion (Orion)
Book monster
*****
Madeleine L’Engle said: “If the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” This is what Zana Fraillion has done with her heart-shredding tale of Subhi, a Rohingya refugee who lives in an Australian immigration detention centre. This young storyteller and his sidekick, a Shakespearian rubber duck, take readers into the camp where hope is a scarcity and residents yearn to be visible to a society that would prefer to forget they exist. His only connection to the outside world is Jimmie, a motherless girl, who lives on the other side of the fence. Together, through their shared love of stories, a friendship is born. A must-read for all ages. – Tiah Beautement @ms_tiahmarie

How To Sound CulturedHow To Sound Cultured: Master the 250 Names that Intellectuals Love To Drop Into Conversation
Hubert van den Bergh & Thomas W Hodgkinson (Icon)
Book brain
*****
Hodgkinson recently wrote in a Telegraph piece that he and his co-author had only two rules when compiling the list of philosophers, scientists, poets and artists included in this book: the first was that each name had to be one that was bandied about by intellectual show-offs and the second was that it had to be one that made one feel personally insecure because we either knew nothing about the person or because we were aware that we ought to know a little bit more. These short, punchy bios are not only unusual bits of info but are also downright funny. – Jennifer Platt @Jenniferdplatt

The One ManThe One Man
Andrew Gross (Pan Macmillan)
Book thrill
***
The Nazis, the Holocaust, and the race to develop the atom bomb are subjects that never get tired: this well-researched action adventure combines all three. Despite co-authoring five books with James Patterson, Andrew Gross is a good writer, and this story is close to his religious and cultural roots. The US sends a spy to infiltrate Auschwitz and rescue a Jewish scientist, the one man with the knowledge the Manhattan Project desperately needs. Ranging from chess to electromagnetic physics and romance, with great escapes and a couple of exciting twists in between, The One Man is the perfect distraction, and not just for World War II buffs. – Aubrey Paton

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‘The best piece of writerly advice? Never give up.’– Q and A with David Gilman

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Published in the Sunday Times

The Last HorsemanThe Last Horseman
David Gilman (Head of Zeus)

What books are on your bedside table?
My House in Damascus by Diana Darke, Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz, A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare, A Hero of France by Alan Furst, and Woman of the Dead by Bernhard Aichner.

The last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?
The late, great Tom Sharpe was always guaranteed to make me laugh. So too, Joseph Heller and his Catch 22.

Which book changed your life?
No one book has done that. But George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman, in particular) has been a constant companion and cannot be bettered. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood made a strong impression, as did Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song.

What keeps you awake at night?
The current book I’m writing, and thinking about the one that I am not.

Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?
Dickens and Beethoven.

What is the best piece of writerly advice you have received?
Never give up – from my father when I was a boy, but it has served me well.

Do you keep a diary?
No, but there’s a visual record fairly well lodged in my mind.

What novel would you give a child to introduce them to literature?
I have never subscribed to the idea that books should be age-related. I would take them to a library and let them choose.

What phrases do you overuse?
I’ve no idea/Haven’t got a clue. (These being the phrases.)

What are you working on next?
Two or three things are bubbling along. More historical fiction, a crime/thriller novel and a novel set in World War II.

Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction? Why?
Nonfiction fascinates me. It plays a big part in my life because of my research, but to read a well-written work of fiction is a joy.

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Hedley Twidle interviews Rustum Kozain for Wasafiri 86 – Unsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry

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Hedley Twidle interviews Rustum Kozain for Wasafiri 86 – Unsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry
This Carting LifeGroundwork

 

The publishers of Wasafiri magazine have kindly shared an excerpt from issue 86: a conversation between Hedley Twidle and Rustum Kozain.

This special issue of WasafiriUnsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry – features poetry by Kozain, Harry Garuba, Ingrid de Kok, Antjie Krog, Mxolisi Nyezwa and Karen Press – among others – articles by Kelwyn Sole and Finuala Dowling, as well as reviews, interviews and art. Guest editor Ben Etherington calls it “a significant undertaking, with 24 contributors, new works from 13 poets, essays and interviews”.

Wasafiri 86 - Unsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry“It is the first issue of Wasafiri focused on either Australian or South African poetry,” he adds.
 
If you are interested in purchasing Wasafiri’s Special Issue Unsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry (no. 86 Summer 2016) please email wasafiri@open.ac.uk
 
Below is an excerpt from Twidle’s contribution: “An Interview with Rustum Kozain”, in which the two discuss the decline of literary criticism, the perils of nostalgia, and the exhaustion of imagination in the current South African moment, as well as the influences and aesthetics of Kozain’s poetry.

We would recommend you order the magazine so that you can enjoy the interview in its entirety.

Twidle is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Cape Town, who writes regularly for the New Statesman, Financial Times and Mail & Guardian.

Kozain is the author of two award-winning books of poetry, The Carting Life and Groundwork, and the only person to win the Olive Schreiner Prize twice in the same genre.

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An Interview with Rustum Kozain

By Hedley Twidle

Rustum Kozain was born in 1966 in Paarl, South Africa. He studied for several years at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and spent ten months (1994-1995) in the United States of America on a Fulbright Scholarship. He returned to South Africa and lectured in the Department of English at UCT from 1998 to 2004, teaching in the fields of literature, film and popular culture. Kozain has published his poetry in local and international journals; his debut volume, This Carting Life, was published in 2005 by Kwela/Snailpress.

Kozain’s numerous awards include: being joint winner of the 1989 Nelson Mandela Poetry Prize administered by the University of Cape Town; the 1997 Philip Stein Poetry Award for a poem published in 1996 in New Contrast; the 2003 Thomas Pringle Award from the English Academy of Southern Africa for individual poems published in journals in South Africa; the 2006 Ingrid Jonker Prize for This Carting Life (awarded for debut work); and the 2007 Olive Schreiner Prize for This Carting Life (awarded by the English Academy of Southern Africa for debut work).

The following conversation took place on 31 July 2015 at Rustum Kozain’s flat in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town. Prior to my arrival, Rustum had prepared a chicken balti with cabbage according to a recipe from Birmingham, and also a dry cauliflower and potato curry. During our discussion (lasting one and a half hours, condensed and lightly edited here) he occasionally got up to check on the dishes – which we ate afterwards with freshly prepared sambals.

Hedley Twidle  Rustum, you wrote an article for Wasafiri twenty-one years ago (issue 19, Summer 1994) in which you discuss the reception of Mzwakhe Mbuli’s poetry. There you were sceptical of South African critics who were lauding his work and its techniques of oral performance as if these things had never happened before. You suggested that if one looks at Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ), there is an equally established and perhaps more skilful tradition of this in another part of the world. My response after reading the article – because you take issue with several critics of poetry – my response was: ‘Well, at least people were discussing South African poetry.’ I can’t think of a similarly invested debate around the craft of poetry going on now. Or am I not seeing it?

Rustum Kozain  That’s an interesting question, especially as so many people now seem to consider poetry as this casual activity, which is dispiriting. There isn’t a discussion of, to use the basic terms, whether a poem is a good poem or whether it is a terrible poem. My sense is that we talk about poetry, and literature more generally, simply in terms of its content or its thematic concerns. Some of the controversy around the Franschhoek Literary Festival – or one of the points raised by younger black writers – was that they (the writers) are treated as anthropological informants. They link it specifically to a history of apartheid and racism in South Africa where the black author is there to answer questions about what life is like for a black person, to a mainly white audience. But I think it goes beyond race. In general, literary criticism has kind of regressed into simply summarising a content that is readily available. Part of the reason I think poetry disappeared off syllabuses in South Africa towards the late 1980s and early 1990s is that fewer and fewer teachers at university were prepared for or knew how to engage with teaching poetry beyond analysing its contents.

I had been listening to Linton Kwesi Johnson since I was a teenager, so when Mzwakhe Mbuli exploded onto the scene in South Africa and people were hailing him as someone who had revolutionised English poetics, I thought: ‘These people must be talking crap; have they not heard Linton Kwesi Johnson who was doing it ten years before and in a much better way?’ So my argument was partly about how people are evaluating literature and it was clear that Mzwakhe Mbuli was hailed also because his politics were seemingly progressive and he was on the side of the anti-apartheid struggle. That wasn’t enough for me to want to listen or read his poetry again and again – one wanted to talk about the aesthetics of his poetry.

HT  I suppose we’re getting closer now to the thematic of the issue which is about poetic craft at a time of cultural contestation. You’ve mentioned Linton Kwesi Johnson and you’re often referring to musicians in your poetry; obviously you are drawing a great deal from an auditory response or imagination, but your poetry is not like LKJ’s at all. In fact, I read it as quite a written form of poetry; I think Kelwyn Sole had a nice phrase for it. He said it has a ‘deliberative sonority’ – which I like because even that phrase sort of slows you down and I find that your poetry slows a reader down. I wonder if you could speak a bit about the fact that you’re in some senses devoted to the sonic, auditory, to sound, to jazz. I think Charles Mingus was playing when I arrived – you’ve written poems about him – and yet there’s quite a disciplined – I want to say almost modernist – restraint to a lot of your poetry.

RK  I think a large part, if not the largest part, of my influences would be modernist and what comes after modernism. I studied at university in the 1980s when modernism was still a significant part of the English literary syllabus at the University of Cape Town, so that is a part of me. But even before I enrolled for English, an older friend introduced me to ‘Prufrock’ [by TS Eliot]. And I thought this poem was remarkable because it was something completely different from what we were used to at school, which were typically a few Shakespeare sonnets, some Victorian poetry, I don’t think any of the Romantics.

The idea of sonority – I have to agree with you. I do have a thing for the sound of words. So the sound of a word often plays a large part in its choice in a line or a poem. Why don’t I sound like Linton Kwesi Johnson? That’s one of my greatest frustrations in life [laughs] – that I can’t write like Linton Kwesi Johnson in any believable way. Part of that is because I don’t have a Caribbean background. A large part of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s charm has got to do with the language he is using, which is tied so closely to drum rhythms in the Caribbean. He has a gift but he also has that legacy or that inheritance that he can work with. I’ve tried writing parodic poems in [my reggae-sourced] Jamaican Creole, but it’s rubbish. I’ve tried writing hip hop as well, but there is a particular skill in composing for oral performance that I don’t have.

HT  I was raising the question of slowness, but certainly not as a lack. Because, in a sense, what I find when reading poetry nowadays is the need to remind myself to slow down. I think we’re all programmed to read so fast now – online and on screens – to read instrumentally and for content. So I sense the kind of syntactical mechanisms you put in place to ensure a certain productive slowness.

RK  There are two things that definitely lie behind the slowness in much of my poetry. The one thing is that I feel myself to be a frustrated filmmaker, so my poems are often visual and it’s often as if a camera were panning across a scene. The other thing that lies behind this kind of slowness was something Kelwyn Sole said – or someone said in a blurb on one of his books – it has to do with his poetry looking at the quiet or the silent moments and trying to unpick what goes on in those moments; to think about what happens on the edges of normal events.

HT  At the end of your essay ‘Dagga’ you talk about the question of nostalgia, around which there have been a lot of debates recently, especially following from Jacob Dlamini’s Native Nostalgia in which he reminisces about growing up in Katlehong outside Johannesburg. He begins the work with quite a complex rhetorical position, he asks: ‘What does it mean to remember elements of a childhood under apartheid with fondness?’ It’s a question that was often taken up by reviewers (some of whom refused to read the book at all) as evidence that his book should be filed in the ‘apartheid wasn’t that bad’ genre, that he was pining for bad old days. I don’t think you’ve ever been accused of that in any way; but I wonder if you can talk a bit about the perils of nostalgia in our cultural moment, in which certain forms of subjectivity and expression are being policed in some ways?

RK  It is an interesting and, for me, a very central question. At times I get despondent about what I’m doing because I think that it could just be dismissed as exercises in nostalgia. I think we tend towards nostalgia as we grow older. Whether nostalgia in general is a pathology or whether it’s something positive, I don’t know. For me the moment we are living in in South Africa is a nightmare moment. So part of my looking back is also to try and deal with this weird and perverse relationship we have between the present – which is a nightmare – and the past – which was a nightmare, but during which we had this hope or this dream of an escape from a nightmare. The thing we looked forward to, that added something to our lives. But that added value is nowhere to be found in the present moment. When I write in ‘Dagga’ about growing up in Paarl, yes it is partly the nostalgia of a man turning fifty and it’s a nostalgia for a place partly because of biographical migrations away from that place and away from the social relations of that place as well. So those are two properly nostalgic impulses. Part of this – and I’ve come across this idea in many writers, most prominently in Mandelstam – is the desire to freeze time. For me that’s what I try almost every time I write a poem, to freeze time in the non-fiction, in the prose – to freeze time at that time when there was still hope, in a way, that’s part of it.

HT  So why is the present a nightmare?

RK  Do you have to ask? I never studied politics or sociology or political economy so I’m very reticent to talk politics as such. That’s probably why I write poetry, because in poetry you can get away with associative meanings. You don’t have to be completely rational, analytic, precise, so you can make political statements under the cover of the associative meanings that poetry allows you. I’m happy to expose myself in my poetry because, I think, there I can say things – maybe it’s a lack of courage, but there I can say things that people can’t challenge me with, with the whole locomotive and carriages of expert knowledge. So I’m reticent to talk about politics straight up, but South Africa is not the place that we imagined in the seventies and eighties that we were going to create. On the one hand conservatives and reactionaries can laugh at us and say ‘Well, what did you expect? What did you expect from a liberation movement that was communist inspired?’ and all that nonsense. But at the same time we had a dream and we lost a dream. What do we do now?

HT  A poem that really struck me when reading across your work was ‘February Moon’, Cape Town, 1993. I was quite taken aback when I saw the date because at the time it must have seemed pessimistic. But now this kind of discourse and this kind of dissatisfaction is gaining ground; in a sense it has become our daily bread. So my question then is about rhetorical exhaustion. Because how can you, on the one hand, ‘make it new’ in the Poundian sense; but, on the other hand, how do you (any ‘you’ that is politically aware) keep saying the same thing for years and years and years? There’s a line from Arundhati Roy that I often think of at the end of her essay ‘The End of Imagination’ – which is about India and its nuclear programme. She says

Let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play. But let’s not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. (Roy 122)

How does one deal with or ward off a kind of exhaustion about having to say the same things which, in a sense, is what politically astute people have had to do for over two decades now?

RK  If you find yourself repeating yourself, what do you do? For me there is an exhaustion, but not of the imagination. Much of my poetry is not written from the imagination – I don’t imagine scenarios and portray characters in a particular scenario or events. My poetry is directly about a certain reality, my reality or something I see out there, but I understand what Roy means by an exhaustion of imagination and I think our state, our government, our civil servants, the service industry, the way people interact with each other, the advertising industry, representations of South Africa in the media, by our own media, how we see ourselves and how we understand our relationship with each other – there’s no imagination, there’s no vision, there’s no forethought. So my surroundings, my context, my circumstances exhaust me. Especially if they cohere around certain ideas of the nation and what has happened politically in South Africa – that I would have touched on in previous poetry. So you just sit there and you go: ‘Why does no one read my poetry?’ [laughs] It is not just me. This has been one of Kelwyn’s hobby horses; that when you read South African poetry, there has been a constant and continuous fatigue since the early nineties about the new South Africa running through our poetry. But since no one reads poetry, no one’s hearing the poets and no one’s listening to the poets.

At the moment I’m in a kind of trough where it concerns my own writing because a lot of my poetry now has a wider focus; it’s not only about South Africa, it’s about other things as well. And they’re difficult subjects, it’s difficult to treat these subjects with the kind of gravitas that they require and to resolve that treatment in the poetry. And it is not only South Africa; the rest of the world seems to have lost that foresight, vision, imagination in the way global politics and economics are run. My exhaustion is globally inspired, though it may only have a local impact [laughs].

For the full interview, purchase Wasafiri’s Special Issue Unsettled Poetics: Contemporary Australian and South African Poetry (no. 86 Summer 2016) by emailing wasafiri@open.ac.uk

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