Litnet

"I wanted to give my family dignity and closure and, above all, let them rest in peace. And to the future generations, this is what it was. You can go on and make your own lives."

"Narrative closure is ruthlessly sudden, but this was in many ways inevitable from the start. The tragic tale has also been a story of the liberation of deep feelings – perhaps more valuable than their terrible cost."

Twenty-six outstanding stories have been shortlisted by an international judging panel for the world’s most global literature prize. The writers come from 20 countries across the Commonwealth including, for the first time, Papua New Guinea, eSwatini, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Close to World Book Day on the 23rd of April 2022, Herman Lategan remembers Mary Renault: "Why, then, is she hardly known in the country from where she wrote hit after hit, best-sellers that have been translated into some 20 languages and that have sold millions of copies in English alone?"

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland.

"What I found so wonderful about Johan was his mixture of innocence and, to quote John Nankin, his Wikipedia brain. Working with him taught me not only to trust my instincts, but to work with precision and always remain open to chance. Playfulness."

"Putin fears NATO expansion and the loss of his throne. EU countries are scared that Russia will invade them again. Ukraine understandably fears dismemberment. America fears the end of its hegemony. And China is afraid that its rise to great power status will be thwarted. Fear underlies all the guns, bombs and sanctions. It is what lies behind the bellicose statements and absurd propaganda."

"I believe that literature, if done right, speaks about much more than just the present moment – it allows us to examine the past and imagine the future."

"How can our work not be relevant? All our work, and here not just artists, is part of the fabric of our society, so in fact our work is imperative at all times."

"Piqued by his anonymity, by how well his poetry survived the passage of years, and by an error – which I learned only later was an error – I started looking for whatever I could lay my hands on concerning Vincent Swart, perhaps South Africa’s best forgotten poet."

"In a field of recent South African novels that have been marked by a dire need for more judicious editing, the deftness of Davids’s plot is striking."

"Is breathing relevant? Until the last Homo sapiens disappears, and with it imagination and emotion, there will be art."

"Dianne Stewart’s stories are effective because they, too, are rooted in the modern everyday experience of ordinary people with whom we can identify. We cannot predict their ending in most cases, because they are often left open-ended, but it is our imaginations that supply the denouement, depending on which door we open – it puts the reader in the position of being an arbiter of fate."

"Why still make art? There’s a child who does not want to work in an office to earn a living. They have no idea what else they can be, because there’s no career advice for what others think is irrelevant. I want to make art to reach that child, to shift mindsets and provide healing."

Two of South Africa’s premier performing arts companies, Cape Town Opera and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, are joining forces to present an Easter performance of Handel’s Messiah in the iconic Toringkerk in Paarl on Saturday, 16 April 2022 at 16h00.

"Can a Russia without Ukraine be the Russia it thinks it should be?"

"I need the routine
Of the military the precision
I desire it after having sacrificed"

The award-winning festival, for the first time this year, is the product of hybrid mentorship programmes that included script writing mentorship for writers, as well as mentorship workshops for directors to produce the best in cutting-edge developmental theatre. 

"Within this country’s contemporary political discussion any mention of insurrection would likely refer to last July’s still unsatisfactorily understood KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng events. Besides historical enthusiasts, comparatively few South Africans will be aware that March marks the centenary of another local insurrection: the 1922 Rand Revolt/Revolution/Uprising or Miners’ Strike ..."

"About solitude I have this to say
I need the routine
Of the military the precision"