Alert! Chalk up three thumbs up for Thando Mgqolozana’s A Man Who is Not a Man from the Sunday Independent.
That august paper’s books page editor, Maureen Isaacson, has picked it along with five other titles as her must-have must-reads of 2009. The other writers who feature in Isaacson’s final word on the year in SA Lit are Imraan Coovadia, Zakes Mda, Petina Gappah, Albie Sachs and Alf Kumalo:
IMRAAN Coovadia’s High Low In-between (Umuzi) brings its intriguing dark whodunit plot to this year’s top books. A progressive Indian, professor and Aids research scientist, Arif, dies early in the novel – but surely not by his own hand.
Set in the Mbeki era of Aids denialism, this offbeat novel sees Arif and his wife, also a doctor, taking strain.
As the Aids virus spreads its tentacles, old comrades carry the whip and nobody listens when you tell them to get tested. The fact that the plot hinges on the historical axis of the stigma that accompanies denialism, works for the novel; history is vital too.
Coovadia said: “I took four years to write this novel. Was it Faulkner who said, ‘The past wasn’t forgotten; the past wasn’t even past’?”
Isaacson’s piece ran concurrently with a survey of several SA writers’ own picks for books of the year; here’s a recap:
From Albie Sachs and Thando Mgqolozana to Wells Tower and some lesser-known talents, the Sunday Independent’s reviewers and a handful of writers offer up the fruits of their readings
Michiel Heyns
Small Moving Parts by Sally-Ann Murray (Kwela). Her vast ragbag of 1960s recollections are a scintillating addition to the “childhood under apartheid” sub-genre.
Ways of Staying by Kevin Bloom (Picador Africa). Updates the picture soberingly, taking a long hard look at the present state of the rainbow nation, and refraining from despair only by a moving act of faith.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (Vintage). A new discovery for me this year, prompted by the movie. Originally published in 1961, this harrowing drama of suburban disaffection has lost nothing of its bleak power.
Book details
Please register or log in to comment
