Litnet

"I admit my heart once again fluttered when I sat down and ogled the fans, lights and race car-type seats. Would going to the movies become an experience again? Would I anxiously anticipate the release of intriguing titles?"

"Local film Krotoa will only be released in South Africa in August, yet it has already managed to conquer the hearts of international film lovers and critics."

You are invited to the launch of Get up! Stand up! in Cape Town, where author Mark Heywood will be in conversation with Redi Thabi.

"And we must give guidance to our young people, who have many questions and feel that our culture – and, indeed, our people – are marginalised and maybe even oppressed by the majorities."

Your are invited to the launch of A handful of earth by Simon Bruinders on the 10th of May, where he will be in conversation with Hamilton Wende.

"'Now' is all that any of us certainly have, and to waste a moment of it, either enslaving someone else or being held in bondage for someone else’s benefit, is a crime against humanity."

"Helize van Vuuren describes her essays in the field of Bushman studies as a monograph. Perhaps. It is, however, the wide-ranging and delicately intelligent work of a polymath."

"We sense the word 'consciousness' describes levels of human being, but we can’t quite put our finger on what exactly these levels are. The whole concept is like a mirage – there, but untouchable; real, but somehow unknowable."

"It is our responsibility as amaXhosa, as academics, to ensure that Xhosa gets the recognition that it deserves. For it to develop it needs to be used; we can borrow words and phonologise them into Xhosa."

"Booking has opened for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s seven-time Tony Award-winning musical EVITA, coming to the Artscape Opera House from 1 December 2017."

You are invited to the launch of Bending the rules by Rafique Gangat in Johannesburg, where he will be in conversation with Tim Cohen, editor of Business Day.

"The Afrikaans language, Joubert’s instrument of literary creation, is under siege and in the process of being dispensed with as a university language of instruction, signalling the eventual loss of its higher functions. It may be that this translation will one day be the only way to access the autobiography of a courageous writer who, in 2002, was considered one of the best writers on the African continent."

"So, in the cemetery in Philippolis, I pretended I was the Queen, and all the people, the little children lying beneath the slabs and angels, the doves and little lambs, were all my loyal subjects. They loved me and obeyed me. I loved them and ordered them about. I was the Queen of the Free State."

"Brief as it is, and with some of the naïveties of a first novel, Mukasonga’s narrative packs a powerful punch without exploiting the Rwandan tragedy for merely melodramatic effects."

You are invited to the launch of The shallows by Ingrid Winterbach in Cape Town, where she will be in conversation with Karin Schimke.

You are invited to the launch of Queen of the Free State by Jennifer Friedman on 23 May (Cape Town) and 25 May (Johannesburg).

“The value of decolonial thought lies in that it seeks to demolish narrow Eurocentric universalism of epistemologies; it elects to install pluriversality that recognises other knowledges in their loci of enunciation.”

You are invited to the Cape Town launch of Cult Sister by Lesley Smailes on 18 April 2017, where she will be in conversation with Shado Twala.

"Cult sister is my memoir of the ten years I spent travelling around America with a nomadic, very fundamental Christian group. I try to paint an honest word picture about life in the strange group from my point of view."

"Poetry slam sessions, says d’Abdon, are places where young people can 'voice their dissatisfaction, channel their anger and heal'."