Litnet

"The seasons literally and figuratively turn the page from 2 to 3 September when the 8th Midlands Literary Festival, now something of an institution in Howick, takes place at Fern Hill Hotel, one of the jewels of the Midlands Meander."

The Baxter’s Zabalaza Theatre Festival is calling for applications from theatre-makers, directors, script writers, community groups and theatre companies to participate in the 2018 Zabalaza Theatre Festival. The deadline for applications is 18 September 2017.

"Our latest book, Road tripper Eastern Cape Karoo, is what you will not find on Google about the people, the lifestyles, the snippets of history and the best hang-outs for travellers in this magical region."

"I came from a walking and hiking family, so it’s a fairly natural activity for me. Walking gives you an interesting perspective into human time. I like its sense of scale and the activity’s meditativeness."

The 9th Jozi Book Fair takes place from 31 August to 3 September in Johannesburg. The theme is Women and literature.

"This prestigious annual event offers accomplished musicians the opportunity of playing with a symphony orchestra on a professional concert stage. The emphasis of the festival is that it is a celebration of young musical talent and not a competition."

"Kalim Rajab’s collection is a readable and even-handed account of Harry Oppenheimer as a reticent philosopher-capitalist, leading readers to view him within the limits and possibilities of his time, and to appreciate in hindsight the flawed nature of his legacy."

Schalk van der Merwe's On Record – Popular Afrikaans Music & Society, 1900–2017 was launched on Tuesday, 15 August in Stellenbosch.

"State plans still dressed in torn overalls of parliament
Bullet speaks louder than ballot"

"Annas has taken some pretty evident elements of the South African reality and mixed them into a breath-stopping brew: a wall, some 'intruders', a tinderbox socio-political milieu and a few overinflated egos that concern themselves almost exclusively with obsessively safeguarding the privilege contained within the wall."

"The story as a whole is set so far in the future, yet is so grounded in our connection to the primitive and natural world, that it conveys the same type of timeless appeal as Game of Thrones (although the latter’s genre is fantasy). For this reason, we can forgive the sometimes hackneyed feeling of the poems."

"The play lifted a veil on the unspoken truth of so many thousands of students, their hardships, their realities; and the pain suffered by so many."

"... De Kock, it seems to me, gets much right in Losing the plot. His preoccupations seem all the more relevant as we try to untangle the dense web of corruption in South Africa, decipher the shifty nonsense emerging from the White House, hope to differentiate news from fake news, and find ways of living in a murky world in which states have become indistinguishable from criminal enterprises and politicians from racketeers."

"In Atomic blonde, they managed to find the coolest, yet totally eighties, outfits for Charlize. The styling and lighting as a whole are perfect. The Atomic blonde delivers a love letter to a cold, blue and grimy Berlin, five days before the fall of the Berlin Wall."

"I came to this book interested in inter-/transgenerational trauma, as a South African, and read it as a case study of the Afrikaner as a particular case of such trauma. I left unconvinced, which is a pity." 

"A local neuroscientist from Pretoria, Karen Fitzgerald is one of the organisers of a conference that will be held in Gaborone, Botswana, which His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will attend. With this historic visit by the Dalai Lama, Botswana is his only planned destination in Africa."

"At its core, any great piece of theatre has an innate universality in it that people all over can relate to. That’s why certain pieces are being done in numerous languages, and all over the world, again and again. Gif is such a piece."

Following the enormous success of the collaboration between Poetica and #cocreateSA last year, #cocreatePOETICA will once again be part of the seventh Open Book Festival from 6 to 10 September 2017.

Comic Fest will take place on 9 September from 09:30 to 18:00 and on 10 September from 09:30 to 17:00 as part of the Open Book Festival 2017.

You are invited to the launch of The twinkling of an eye on 15 August in Cape Town. Author Sue Brown will be in conversation with Karina Szczurek.