Fiona Snyckers: Lacuna
The latest addition to my website is Fiona Snyckers' Lacuna. J M Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace was controversial, particularly for the scene where Lucy Lurie is raped by three…
Damon Galgut: The Promise
The latest addition to my website is Damon Galgut's The Promise, the second in my reading of 2021 African prize winners. This book won the Booker Prize. It tells the…
Sindiwe Magona: Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle
The latest addition to my website is Sindiwe Magona's Chasing the Tails of My Father’s Cattle. This is a feminist novel, set in a traditional South African village and follows…
J M Coetzee: The Schooldays of Jesus
The latest addition to my website is J M Coetzee's The Schooldays of Jesus, a follow on from his previous novel The Childhood of Jesus. As with this previous novel,…
Ivan Vladislavic: Double Negative
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Vladislavic's Double Negative. This is Vladislavic's most recent novel and, while a fine work, not quite of the same standard of his…
Ivan Vladislavic: The Restless Supermarket
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Vladislavic's The Restless Supermarket. This is a very funny story about a retired proofreader, Aubrey Tearle, who is fighting a losing battle…
Ivan Vladislavic: The Folly
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Vladislavic's The Folly. This novel, set in Vladislavic's native South Africa, tells of a strange man, Nieuwenhuizen, who arrives to claim an…
South Africa-Zimbabwe
I have just returned from a distinctly unliterary holiday in South Africa and Zimbabwe, with little literary to report. The South Africans I talked to were fairly ignorant of their…
André Brink and Assia Djebar died yesterday
Sadly, two writers whom I have not read but should have done, died yesterday. Assia Djebar was an Algerian writer and wrote novels with a feminist viewpoint. She was also…
Marlene van Niekerk: Triomf (Triomf)
The latest addition to my website is Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (Triomf). This is a very funny novel about a poor white South African family, that is totally dysfunctional. They…