Books that see us
There is a particular kind of reading experience that is difficult to explain without sounding as though something improbable has occurred. You are reading as you always do, moving through sentences, following an argument, inhabiting a voice, and then something shifts. A line stops you. Not because it is especially beautiful, or clever, or even…
The silence around power
What must we think when a president, during a press conference, can hone in on a journalist doing her job and say, “she’s a horror show”, and the moment simply passes? Not merely passes politically, but morally. No visible discomfort from those around him. No meaningful defence of the journalist’s dignity. No national conversation about…
This elevator pitch gets a thumbs up
If suspense is your thing, then Linwood Barclay’s Elevator Pitch might be just what you’re looking for. It starts with an actual elevator pitch by a scriptwriter, which ends way worse than the expected “no” from the executive he’s been stalking. By the end of Monday, five people are dead – four in what seems…
Celebrating Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka
In celebrating a July literary birthday, we reflect on the life and work of Nobel prize winner, Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, better known as Wole Soyinka, born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, on 13 July 1934. Long before #BlackLivesMatter, there was Wole Soyinka. The playwright, essayist, novelist, poet and political activist has, for more than a half…
Shortlists for Sunday Times/CNA awards
South Africa can claim to have some of the best writers around. From books on motherhood to shattering exposes of the country’s colonial and racist past, from stories on the history of the Kruger National Park to the social movement creating a “pink line” around the planet, there is much to celebrate, even in the…
Can Themba, doomed story teller of Kofifi
Kofifi was a thriving place of light and dark, of hopes and dreams, and ultimately of thwarted lives and loss. And writer, journalist and philosopher Can Themba, fitted right in. Daniel Canodoise Themba, who was born in Pretoria’s Marabastad on 21 June 1924, was a charismatic writer bursting with talent in a country that went…
‘Literature has no borders’
David Diop has won the prestigious International Booker Prize for translated fiction with his novel At Night All Blood Is Black about a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in World War I. The Paris-born writer is the first French winner of the prize, given for a book translated into English, and shares the award with…
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Jenn Writes 