Litnet

"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.

“I think effective fiction writing stems from some personal disturbance ​that the author extrapolates into another very different imaginative scenario. This means that the emotional experience of the writing feels authentic, and that the author can explore her dilemmas outside the confines of her own life.”

The Artscape Women’s Humanity Arts Festival is an annual event, now in its 11th year. Woman Zone is an organisation that has its home and Woman’s Library at Artscape. The festival takes place from the 2nd to the 12th of August 2017.

You are invited to the launch of Delilah now trending on 19 August in Stellenbosch. Author Pamela Power will be in conversation with Karin Brynard.

Bart van der Meer, wat in Suid-Afrika woon en hier ’n toergids is, skryf ’n brief vir sy neef in Nederland. | Bart van der Meer, who is a tour guide and lives in South Africa, writes a letter to his cousin in the Netherlands.

America’s Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un – not the two leaders to inspire confidence in a safe future for the earth. Their baring of teeth at each other in recent months reminds Hans Pienaar of the bombing of Hiroshima, the anniversary of which is on 6 August.

"All in all, Baby driver is an unexpectedly beautiful dance between love, music and kick-ass car chases."

"Something is birthing
a nameless malady ..."

"The whole story needs to be told: how the people were stolen from Africa, how inhumane the journey to the Americas was and how they deprived Africa of its human capital."

"Manufacturing in Africa has suffered: firstly, during colonial times, when raw materials were exported, as beneficiation took place abroad; and secondly, today, as China does the same."