Litnet

Siv Ngesi will be in conversation with Zelda la Grange for the launch of her book, What Nelson Mandela taught me, on Tuesday, 15 October 2024 at 17:30 for 18:00 at Exclusive Books Cavendish (Claremont) in Cape Town.

The Otto Foundation is excited to reveal the shortlists for its inaugural Children’s Book Award. The award was conceived with the aim to support local publishers, promote new authors and illustrators, and to recognise quality South African storytelling.

"When desperate needs outpace scarce resources, a young doctor gets caught up in a deadly trinity of medicine, corruption and superstition. Murphy Meyer, the fictional doctor in the novel, has her own reasons for coming to work at Eden, and she will soon figure out whether Eden is a safe haven or hell. Will she be alive long enough to learn the truth and unravel the mystery she has tasked herself with?"

The AVBOB Poetry Project embarks on an inspiring journey with the addition of a brand-new competition theme, "New beginnings". At least one poem entered under this theme in each of South Africa’s 11 official written languages will be selected for publication in the eighth annual AVBOB poetry anthology, which will be published in 2025. Additionally, one commissioned poem per language will be written on this theme.

"The book tells the story of a strong man going through hell, from Johannesburg to San Antonio, Texas, with one operation after the other. Boxes of pills from OxyNorm to Suboxone, each one worse than the others."

Dit is die tweede keer in die geskiedenis van die Helgaard Steyn-prys vir skryfkuns dat die wenwerk ’n digbundel is. | This is only the second time in the history of the Helgaard Steyn Award for Literature that the winning work is a volume of poetry. 

"Ian’s transition from stage to screen was made through his humility in taking on any work on a film set, from set-building to painting, and putting his hand to anything he was asked to do. This willingness to learn led to the incongruity of a man with the most English heritage one could ask for playing a role as an Afrikaner with a brei in Dokter Con se Overberg. The rest, as they say, is history."

Eva Mazza will be in conversation with Costa Ayiotis for the book launch of Matriarchs, meze and the evil eye: a memoir on Thursday, 26 September at 18:00 for 18:30 at Exclusive Books, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town.

"Mythscape – the desire for interpreting reality through native mythology – as a narrative form is becoming common in books of our era. This is understandable in the case of African literature, since our continent’s sense of self and development of organic narrative structure was interrupted – almost truncated – by the occidental colonial project."

Hoe om jou pad uit troebel water te vind is een van die temas wat Martin Steyn in sy eerste roman sedert 2018 ondersoek. Donker water is oudergewoonte uitmuntende misdaadfiksie en ’n boek waarvoor Steyn se aanhangers lank reeds wag. Sluit aan by Martin Steyn en Jonathan Amid by Oude Leeskamer in Stellenbosch op Woensdag 18 September om 15:30.

The Caine Prize for African Writing is delighted to announce this year’s winner.

Charl-Pierre Naudé delivers a talk titled "The dual roles of precision and re-imagination in literary translation" relating to The equality of shadows, his English translation of his debut novel Die ongelooflike onskuld van Dirkie Verwey. The seminar will be in English and will take place in the Yellow Molteno room (5th floor, Arts and Social Sciences building) at Stellenbosch University on 19 September at 13:10.

"The weekend of the Open Book Festival forced me to think a lot about life and death. And about heaven. This year, the brilliant scholar, writer and feminist Pumla Dineo Gqola officially opened the festival on Thursday evening at The Book Lounge, and called it her 'slice of heaven'. For many of us regulars, that is precisely what the Open Book weekend is: a slice of literary heaven."

You are invited to the book launch of The equality of shadows by Charl-Pierre Naudé at Oude Leeskamer in Stellenbosch on 18 September from 11:00 to 12:30.

The themes in this flash anthology range from grief to hope; from love to unrequired love, divorce and murder (in a few different forms); from personal sacrifice to personal reflection. The stories vary from a fable to science fiction, and include a flashback to 1994 and South Africa’s first democratic election, fires, swimming in the sea, supernatural beings, the horrors of institutionalised elderly care and much more.

Mphuthumi Ntabeni read Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde and interviewed them about the novel while attending the Open Book Festival in Cape Town. The two authors discuss the spirit of Lagos and other cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town, the invisibility of working classes, the tension between African and Western belief systems, and the lives of fictional characters.

"Unute lyk, soos in die grafiese verhale, fisies soos Reeves. Maar die filosofiese beskouing oor moraliteit en verganklikheid, dit is Miéville op sy manjifieke beste. Saam sorg hulle vir ’n kragtoer en ’n leeservaring wat my lank gaan bybly."

Jonathan Amid will be in conversation with Siphiwe Gloria Ndluvu on her African gothic novel The creation of half-broken people at Oude Leeskamer on 12 September at 18:00 as part of the Skrywersaand series of book discussions.

"Reading about this aspect of Cape history formed part of the inspiration for a recent short story of mine, a work of flash fiction, which is about a young woman and her grandmother, and their different approaches to doing laundry, particularly their underwear. While ostensibly about panties (as the story is titled), it is also about our country’s long and difficult history, about ourselves and about memory."

Actor and musician Ian Roberts is something of a South African icon, renowned for his roles as the rugged Boer fighter Sloet Steenkamp in the TV series Arende and as Boet in the immortal and immensely popular Castrol advertisements. In this book he looks back on his long and illustrious career in which he became known for having a flair for languages and acting from the gut.