Reviews
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Filling a large South African holeThe novel’s mundane story of a coming of age becomes a unique insight into both the mind of the young female narrator and of a period in the history of South Africa. It is an intelligent and highly accomplished work of imagination. |
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Of (White) heroes and mad EnglishmenThe quaint tale of a misguided adventurer in central Africa during the first world war hides the real brutality behind the facade of an all-embracing Empire. |
Uncommon realitiesThis 10 stories in Un/common Ground are South African poet Allan Kolski Horwitz's debut volume of fiction. While the plots are fairly wide-ranging and deal with scenarios as diverse as failed relationships, racial murders, futuristic utopian societies and zombies in contemporary Johannesburg, there is in Horwitz's work a fascination with the sadism, savagery and irrationality that lurks beneath humanity's somewhat flimsy pretences of civilisation. |
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Gastronomic rhapsodiesInSalutation to the Gut Nigeria's Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka brings his painstakingly choosy palate, sourced in cultural origin, to bear on his polemical composition on Yoruba food and drink – Salutation to the Gut. Originally published in 1962, it is now published as a small pocket size book. |
Trauma in the tellingIt is surprising that a short story anthology as innovative, and brave, as Post-Traumatic struggled to make it into print, until Botsotso published the 22 contributions by young South African writers. As the title implies, the anthology deals with life in this country after the death of apartheid, for a multitude of perspectives. |
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Dreams packaged as realityAngolan author José Eduardo Agualusa has created a magical tale the line between fact and fiction, between history and story, as a gecko narrates the tale of an albino businessman in Luanda who creates personal histories in O Vendedor de Passados (The Genealogy Salesman). |
Many languages, no barrierGova is a book of poetry written in one of South Africa's unofficial languages, Isicamtho – a polyglot of the 11 official languages and one which has its origins in the so-called tsotsi taal of the Black gehttoes. Ike Mboneni Muila is a master of this language and encourages readers to dive in. Book comes with audio CD. |
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Arse of a detectiveIn Jaime Bunda: Agente Secreto and Jaime Bunda e a Morte do Americano, Angolan author Pepetela introduces us to a uniquely African detective. His bungling, bureaucratic incompetence is makes this socially committed fiction a pleasure to read. Pepetela does for his country what American author Carl Hiaasen has done for the Florida Everglades. |
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A feast of morselsThe Men Do Not Eat Wings is a story of Kenya, one which takes giant leaps back through history and places the present in sharp focus through the lives of one family. SW Omamo tells a story of families living in the diaspora, of living in a country where the head of state is known as The Stork, of working one’s whole life for a patronising racist, of living in wealth with poverty knocking at your door, of confronting corruption as bureaucrat and as citizen. |
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Panning for gold on the Slave CoastTwo narratives compete for the reader’s attention in Anne Bailey’s new book, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame. The legacy of the slave trade and its implications for modern African and American cultures occupy much of the book with African voices and their stories, recorded as oral history, offering a tantalising perspective on contemporary Africa. |
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The struggle continuesIn We are the Poors: Community struggles in post-apartheid South Africa, Desai documents the real stories of those suffering and struggling in the South African townships, the ‘struggle electricians’ who reconnect their neighbours’ power; the grannies and aunties who blockade narrow flights of stairs in their tenement buildings to prevent the police from carrying out evictions; the entire communities that react to the arrival of new water meters by revolting, smashing the meters and chasing away the installers. |
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Praise the Lord!In The Convert, Francis Nyamnjoh’s unveils his experience of born again Christians: a hall packed with believers bleating to what the shepherd (Pastor) dictates. From what they should sing, to what they should say and even what they should think. It is a play whose pages seep with overly sharp criticism of the born-agains. |
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Songs of the earth: poetry in clayMagdalene Odundo is a poet who uses clay. Hers is a visual poetry of pure form that evokes the essential with minimal means. As with the literary form, where each word must be precise and perfect for its purpose, so for the visual form, where each curve, each stroke, each tone of clay is exact. As well as the joy and inspiration they offer, her works are testimony to the huge wealth of hidden potential in our continent. |
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Between memory and historyThe In-Between World of Vikram Lall maps out Kenya’s recent ‘geography of pain’, and the narrator actually offers a factual listing of the tragedy assailing Kenya from all quarters, from ethnic conflict to Aids, sporadic conflict with neighbouring nations to financial, political and moral corruption. Yet, this is not a pessimistic or despairing depiction of contemporary Africa; rather, it is a story of survival, of sheer love for life, of passion and commitment, of possibility. |
Beneath the surface of the Maputo CorridorRegionalism and Uneven Development in Southern Africa: The Case of the Maputo Development Corridor digs beneath the surface of what has been widely acclaimed as a success story to expose some of the Maputo Corridor’s shortcomings. In doing so, the book sheds valuable light on how the South African government struggles to unite private capital, local people and its neighbours in southern Africa to bring about development. |
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