Litnet

The winners of this year’s South African Literary Awards have been announced.

"[Y]es, just about anyone can write, often must write – it’s an urge, a need. Anyone can put words on paper to give expression to something."

"The title of the novel refers to something that Gabashe is told by Madiba himself: 'There’s no time to spare. The time for suffering in the hands of an illegitimate government is now over. Our uniting slogan says there’s always tomorrow.'”

On Saturday, 24 September 2016 Palesa was crowned the winner of ATKV-Muziqanto 2016. “I love the stage,” she told me. “I love an audience.”

"The shadow of things to come is a brief text that packs a mighty punch: it is a finely written and vividly imagined narrative, many of whose details I have not even mentioned in this profile: a grim, brilliant, spell-binding work."

"Brits has brought the persona of a remarkable person fully to life in the text. South African Hobhousian historiography has become unspeakably enriched from her writing."

"Going back to say goodbye tells the story of a boy saying goodbye to his childhood as it flits past. It is also the story of a boy saying goodbye to his father and, movingly, to a South Africa that both no longer exists and lingers on in surprising ways."

"That's it if you follow the world according to Dylan, a wandering minstrel with his guitar, harmonica and nasal voice – whose commentaries on the 'human condition', for that's what his songs are, have won him a Nobel Prize."

"It will therefore be of relevance as a South African civil society in particular to emphasise our international law obligations to the government, to work more strenuously towards the domestication of international instruments and to integrate it in our litigation as well as judicial decision-making."

"Irrespective of whether fees have fallen or disappeared altogether, or even the merits of such a campaign, a university education is just not possible without universities – or university structures, like libraries."

Is diabetes a lifelong death sentence? "It isn’t. My book is a message of hope that this disease can be managed and even healed."

"At the heart of the matter are two interlinked concepts and realities which manifest themselves in all aspects of the South African “way of life”: the pervasiveness of structural inequality and white supremacy in our daily lives."

You are invited by Wits University Press and The Book Lounge, Cape Town, to the launch of Losing the Plot on Thursday 6 October 2016 at 17:30 for 18:00.

"The drama we are seeing is that we are asking the university to do things it was never meant to do. I mean welfare is the domain of the state, it is not the domain of the university. We can’t be asking the university to do things it was not designed to do."

"The South African movements of 2015–2016 show some of the dangers and difficulties of negotiating in the new media world and of moving from representative student government to a post-truth social media environment where there are no formal gatekeepers."

"I am pleased that the country I grew up in no longer exists."

"Authors like Neville Alexander, Vincent Maphai, Allister Sparks and Sampie Terreblanche have produced important publications in which the 'miracle' of our transition is analysed from various perspectives."

"the cloud-mark of your plane
leaves its path of entrails
across our continent ..."

"Self-publishing is rising in popularity with South African writers who have previously released novels through traditional publishers. To get an idea of what the self-publishing landscape in South Africa is like, four local fiction writers – Paige Nick, Joanne Hichens, Janita Thiele Lawrence and Gareth Crocker – were asked to share their experiences."

"'Manifesto!' shouts the cover of the 173rd issue of South Africa’s oldest literary magazine, New Contrast. The effect is compelling: the reader is enjoined to listen and engage."