For the Fallen: Honouring the Unsung Heroes And Heroines of the Struggle
Mzwakhe Ndlela (KMM Review Publishing)
***
Book buff
A select number of stories are meant to introduce and recognize the role played by unsung heroes in the struggle for freedom, mainly from the former Ciskei and Transkei. Ndlela tracks his subjects – including himself – through school and exile to their return as soldiers facing imprisonment and torture, or death in ambush or combat. The style of writing is unconventional and the historiography is different: it’s a deliberately subjective book underwritten by moral fervor. The text would benefit from a proper introduction.
– Tinyiko Maluleke @ProfTinyiko
1913: The Year Before The Storm
Florian Illies (Profile Books)
****
Book buff
1913 focuses on the lives of the avant-garde, especially where it could be found around the Vienna-Berlin axis. It situates us firmly within the Zeitgeist and allows us to imagine the possibilities of Freud and Rilke meeting, Hitler and Stalin being in the same neighbourhood. Much of the lives that Illies turns his gaze on are artists and personages who were on the cusp of the iconic. At worst Illies is guilty of indulging in mystic coincidences – we all know how this ends, right? At best he has retouched the rich cultural life of the period underpinned with dread.
– Derek Abdinor @derekabdinor
419
Will Ferguson (Quercus)
***
Book thrill
Everybody knows somebody – or is somebody – who has received an email from the daughter of a Nigerian diplomat begging you to allow her to deposit her fortune into your bank account. And so it is for retired Canadian school teacher Henry Curtis, who gets duped by a 419 scam hatched in a Lagos internet cafe and kills himself after losing all his money. Will Ferguson’s 419 gives a fascinating insight into the world’s most notorious internet scam from all sides.The plot lags at times, and has moments of annoying preaching – but on the whole is a satisfying read.
– Edyth Bulbring @edythbulbring
Book details
- For the Fallen: Honouring the Unsung Heroes and Heroines of the Liberation Struggle by Mzwakhe Ndlela
EAN: 9780620562850
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- 1913: The Year Before The Storm by Florian Illies
EAN: 9781612193519
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- 419 by Will Ferguson
EAN: 9781781855065
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