BOOK SA

Warning: reading this post will leave you with the intense desire to purchase large amounts of books. It may also turn you into a bit of a know-it-all at dinner parties. It’s the list of all lists - a compilation of all the best books lists for 2009. ...

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All too often, the cult of personality dammed up what should have been a decade of invigoratingly free-flowing narratives about South Africa’s “big men”, writes the Mail & Guardian’s Darryl Accone - but SA Lit’s biography and memoir industry did produce a few gems over the last ten years. Accone, ...

Alert! BOOK SA member Premesh Lalu sends in this preview of Kronos: Southern African Histories no. 35.Kronos is the journal of the Centre for Humanities Research and the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape...

Margaret von Klemperer incorporates an interview with David Pike, author of My Part in the Downfall, into the following article about the writer, his life, and his memories of the Rhodesian War.My Part in the Downfall: Staying Civil in the Rhodesian War, is Pike’s somewhat irreverent memoir of h...

Equal Education has issued a response to a controversial statement by the Department of Education that goals to provide wider access to libraries are unattainable because of South Africa’s legacy of poverty and illiteracy. ...

Dennis Brutus, poet and political prisoner, passed away on December 26, aged 85. Brutus was active up until weeks before his death, particularly against climate change...

Prior to compiling this sensational list of best reads 2009 - including a strong mention for the Chilean Roberto Bolano - Percy Zvomuya received an email from a rather ill-natured individual:As I was I about to compile my best reads of 2009 I got a rather grumpy email from a Zimbabwean writer...

I’ve taken Dave Eggers’ mid-noughties novel, What is the What: The autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, on my mini-vacation in the Breede River Valley. It’s presented from the point of view of a Sudanese “Lost Boy” who ends up in the USA. Here’s a...

An amusing piece from the Mail & Guardian’s books editor on five covers that caught his eye this decade, for alternately the right and wrong reasons:The GoodThe BadThe UglyWhat could be more redolent and evocative of decades past than the old-fashioned glass milk bottle, with foil top being p...

The Guardian publishes a new short story by the winner of its First Book Award:When I saw her yesterday, Miss McConkey looked vital and frail at the same time, like a cross between Doris Lessing and poor, murdered Cora Lansquenet...

Naijablog alerts us to the following interview with up-and-coming Nigerian author Teju Cole (Every Day is for the Thief), which appeared in This Day.Chuck Woody? That’s Chukwudi! It’s actually pronounced Choo-Quoo-Dee. They sound alike, don’t they? Trus...