The Fifth Annual Pride Book Fair was surely a highlight on Cape Town Pride 2010’s event calendar. Emcee Odidiva sparkled as he introduced the authors and editors of the growing body of South African GLBTI literature.
He reflected that the Book Fair is one of those slightly more serious events. “It’s a little more toned down and we get to deal with our issues and talk about them. And how many issues there are indeed. I’ve never heard of homophobia being so prominent in the news as in the last three months. Everywhere you turn, there’s drama out there. Malawi – damn! Kenya – pshewwwww! It just hasn’t stopped.”
He said, “We’re lucky in this beautiful country to be protected, to be allowed to be who we are. But now, as the son of a preacher and it being a Sunday, I’m so glad we’re getting to discuss topics like self image and shame with the heavyweights of literature here tonight”.
Miriam Dancing is a moving collection of narratives by lesbian, bisexual and transgender women who tell their personal stories of love and hope. Elise van Wyk started by lighting a candle to commemorate the 31 South African lesbians who, despite legal protection, had been killed in hate crimes. “I do this every time I do a presentation,” she said, “and every time, there are more women to be remembered.” Referring to a chapter in the book, “We Weep for our Sisters”, she said, “We honour them; they are not here to tell their stories.”
A slide show presented exquisite images of women who love women, alone and together, at work and breaking bread, at play and in embrace. The candid photography was tender, sensual and intimate, inspiring a sense of the vibrant and sacred lives of its subjects.
Odidi paid tribute to Kalk Bay Books and all the other independents that historically provided an outlet for the kind of literature he wanted to read.
Zinaid Meeran, author of Saracen at the Gates, cycled to Kalk Bay as part of his training for the Argus cycle tour. After tucking his bicycle in between the book shelves, he read from his debut novel. won the 2009 EU Literary Award and raised appreciative chuckles at the detailed description of “glazed erotic trances” and uncles perving over expanses of naked young flesh.
He spoke of the oddness that was his youth, marooned between the deep green ocean of sugar cane on one side of a narrow strip of KwaZulu-Natal coast, and the deep blue sea on the other. His Afrikaans grandfather, Coloured mother and Indian father (who seldom emerged from peanut-popping on the Lazyboy) didn’t make things easier. “I was confused on a number of fronts. I had no idea why people expected me to be a man; I couldn’t figure out why they thought I was Indian. I just didn’t get it. I knew I was all those things – Afrikaner, Coloured and Indian.” He said his book was a battle cry for those without racial, sexual or gender identity. “It’s for those who know they are something made up of fragments of history – those who have first hand experience of roots anarchy.”
Next up was Charl Marais and Joy Wellbeloved, co-editors of TRANS, launched in the Whale Well at Iziko last year. Marais talked about how the 26 contributors to this book experienced doctors and social workers who were ill-informed and didn’t know what treatment or advice to offer; familial bewilderment and colleagues who didn’t know how to deal with them; as well as religious leaders who prescribed guilt and damnation. He concluded: “Although transgenderism is classified as a psychiatric disorder, there’s nothing that a hormone pill and a surgeon’s scalpel can’t fix!”
The final contribution was a short story “Sweet is the Night Air”, the latest publication from independent publisher Robin Malan, who relit the candle to honour the event. Junkets Publisher’s Yes, I Am! was compiled by Malan with Ashraf Johaardien, and includes luminaries like Damon Galgut, André Carl van der Merwe, Gerald Kraak, K Sello Duiker, Zackie Achmat, David Lan, Peter Krummeck, Shaun de Waal and Pieter-Dirk Uys.
As book lovers and gay lovers filed out in the night, the full moon rising over the Helderberg sent silvery rays over the sea. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that Artemis had lingered between the shelves with a glass of Leopard’s Leap, heartily approving of the festivities.
TRANS: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa edited by Ruth Morgan, Charl Marais, Joy Rosemary Wellbeloved EAN: 9781920196226 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Saam met die suidoosterwind waai daar jaarliks ‘n fees van kuns en kultuur die Kaap binne. Die Suidoosterfees, wat van 26 tot 31 Januarie by Artscape aangebied word, sluit ook ‘n hele aantal boekgeleenthede in. Lesers kan uitsien na die volgende:
Kom geniet ontbyt en ‘n bespreking van Anoescha von Meck se Annerkant die longdrop, Vaselinetjie, en die vertaling, My Name is Vaselinetjie. Die toneelstuk van hierdie boek is by die fees te sien en dit sal ook by die ontbyt bespreek word.
Saterdag 30 Januarie om 09:00
Koste: R90.00
Die toneelstuk word op hierdie dae opgevoer:
Vrydag 29 Januarie om 15:30
Saterdag 30 Januarie om 13:30
Sondag 31 Januarie om 10:00
Katvoet
Riana Scheepers sal haar nuwe bundel kortverhale, Katvoet, bespreek.
Saterdag 30 Januarie om 12:00
Koste: Gratis!
Moenie dat die grootmense hoor nie
Francois Bloemhof gesels met Rudi Venter oor sy nuwe jeugbundel, Moenie dat die grootmense hoor nie, en ook oor al die ander genres wat hy aanpak.
Saterdag 30 Januarie om15:30
Koste: Gratis!
Brandkuiken
Kom hoor hoe klink Brand Blixum se gedigte. Dehon Joubert doen ‘n gedramatiseerde voorlesing uit Blixum se debuutbundel, Brandkuiken.
Saterdag 30 Januarie om 19:00
Koste: Gratis!
Tango met Amanda Strydom en Jeanne Els
Jeanne Els gaan voorlees uit haar boek Tango en die koningin van kabaret, Amanda Strydom, sal die gehoor met sang vermaak.
Sondag 31 Januarie om 10:30
Koste: R90.00
Die verhaal van Elandskloof
Tobie Wiese se nuwe boek, Die Verhaal van Elandskloof, kom onder die loep in hierdie bespreking. Heindrich Wyngaard gesels met die skrywer.
Sondag 31 Januarie om 11:45
Koste: Gratis!
Prinsloo Versus
Adriaan Meyer praat oor sy debuutdrama, Prinsloo versus, wat by Protea Boekhuis uitgegee is en wat al verskeie suksesvolle opvoerings geniet het.
Archbishop emeritus and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu is a man with a lot on his plate. How does he manage to juggle it all, one wonders? Do he and other SA icons ever get time to rest and relax? Find out with Dominique Heerman’s The Perfect Weekend – in which Tutu and others describe their down-time ideals. Here’s an extract from Tutu’s chapter:
Saturday I get up late-ish and I go for my morning walk. I do a 30-minute walk that makes me think I’m relatively healthy. I hope it does me some good.
If it doesn’t, I still think so. All of my walks I’m really praying, actually. I think of the globe and I take continent by continent and I try to lift it to God and say, “Look after them there.”
I usually have people that I’m praying for and I use the walk to think of them. But sometimes my mind goes off and it sees a beautiful girl and you’re not concentrating. Then there’s a temporary halt to the prayer.
Alert! The London Book Fair may be several months away, but a veritable army of South African writers have already booked their tickets. In several cases, of course, we’re talking bus tickets, because many an SA scribe lives or works in the UK, and won’t have much to do to get to Earl’s Court, where the Fair takes place. But literally dozens of others will be packing for the long-haul flight from JNB to LHR come the tail end of April 2010.
BOOK SA understands that the following authors have given commitments (ranging from tentative to firm) to be part of the LBF’s South Africa Market Focus programme:
What a lineup – it’s going to be one heck of a party! (Plus, several other authors who’ve been invited are still deciding whether they can make the trip.) BOOK SA will be there, of course – and we can’t wait to bring all the action to our readers online.
For Londoners who want to get to know these authors better, a sampling of their works:
Alert!The Book Lounge has released its list of 2009’s must-have reads – a terrific, considered collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and cookbooks that features many works of SA Lit (all shown above).
There Was This Goat: Investigating the Truth Commission Testimony of Notrose Nobomvu Konile by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni, Kopano Ratele Book homepage EAN: 9781869141660 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Alert! And you thought they couldn’t do it. Top their previous record for “most book frenzy in a five day stretch”, that is – set around this time last year, I believe, when The Book Lounge team hosted six events in five days.
Well, never underestimate Mervyn Sloman and Co. This week is the Lounge’s biggest ever for book events. They’ve squeezed eight launches into five days. Someone call Guinness!
Apart from the Zapiro, Douglas Rogers and Xolela Mangcu events listed elsewhere on our network (click the names for the details), the Lounge has whipped up enough book mischief to sate us till, well, 2010 at least!
Here are the remaining events not yet mentioned on BOOK SA. Click here for the overview at BL home. Good luck to the Loungers during the week – take your vitamin B!
(The notes that follow are courtesy The Book Lounge newsletter.)
MONDAY
Outstanding and award winning photographer Gunther Komnick joins us for a slide show of images from his beautiful collection of photographs, Impressions. Colin Stevens will be introducing the slide show and talking about the book.
The launch of Perfect Weekend by Dominique Herman. Dominique interviewed a range of prominent South Africans and asked them about their “perfect weekends”. The result is this fascinating and gorgeous book featuring fantastic photography by Brett Florens.
We are launching Criminal (In)Justice in South Africa: A Civil Society Perspective edited by Chandre Gould of the Instititue for Security Studies. The launch will feature a panel discussion looking at our criminal justice system. The panelists are Chandre Gould and the following contributers to the book: Johan Burger, Andrew Faull, Iole Matthews and Lukas Muntingh.
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Time: 12:30 PM for 1:00 PM
Guest Speakers: Johan Burger, Andrew Faull, Iole Matthews and Lukas Muntingh
To cap off the day, at La Cuccina Restaurant in Hout Bay, we are launching South Africa Eats, the stunning new cookbook by Phillippa Cheifitz, involving a buffet of dishes from the book at R110 per person. Please note: this launch will be at La Cuccina Restaurant, which is situated in the Victoria Mall, cnr Victoria & Empire roads, Hout Bay.
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Time: 18:00 PM for 18:30 PM
Venue: La Cuccina, Shop 1, Victoria Mall, Cnr Empire Road and Victoria Road, Houtbay | Map
Join us at the launch of The Ordinary and the Extraordinary: Three Decades of Architecture, edited by Jennifer Sorrell. The laucn of the book will accompany architect Jo Noero’s exhibition, currently at the Iziko South African National Gallery.
With the hugely-anticipated United Nations Conference on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen in December this year – a conference that has become the subject of hopes and fears of literally millions – hot talk around global warming is increasingly bubbling up (to mix a metaphor or three).
This past Sunday, five big eco articles appeared in the SA papers – three in the Sunday Independent alone. When the media move in concert on an issue it’s always a sight to behold. BOOK SA certainly noticed, and, in case you missed it, we present the stories here. Go on, get inside the greenhouse and get to know the issues:
Here is the good news on the climate front: the Europeans have ratcheted down their emissions targets, the Chinese are getting serious about solar power and energy efficiency, and Washington is lumbering towards a carbon cap.
These are steps towards the long-held goal: cutting global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. Such cuts would stabilise the thickness of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide blanket surrounding the planet at 450 parts per million (ppm) and, we’ve been told, ensure that the global average temperature increase would not exceed 2186C from 1990 levels.
At last, the wreck of the rainforests is being tackled. One of the key parts of the Copenhagen climate agreement which the international community will try to construct in December is a comprehensive treaty aiming to reduce deforestation rates in the developing countries by at least 50 percent by 2020.
Not before time. It has been 20 years since we woke up to the reality of large-scale rainforest loss: in the late 1980s, the terrible scale of destruction in regions such as the Brazilian Amazon, and later, in Indonesia and other areas, dawned on the world, but in the time since then, all we have been able to do, in effect, has been to wring our hands.
We’re going to drown in information about climate change in the prelude and aftermath of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
In SA, most of the information we’ll likely receive will state as incontrovertible fact that our planet’s temperatures are on the rise and humans are responsible for this. Climate change scepticism doesn’t get much press here.
In what would be the largest habitat zone established in the US to protect a species from extinction, the federal government has proposed designating 519 398 square kilometres on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears.
Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change.
Illness will affect productivity and employment, which could slash the GDP.
Our country is reliant on our natural resources and wildlife to attract tourists, so loss of habitats and biodiversity will negatively affect the economy.
A study by the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with the Joint Centre for Political and Economic Studies and USAid, estimates that climate change will put about 3% of our GDP at risk.
Alert! Open the Xmas floodgates! Today, Exclusive Books announces its selections for “The List” 2009 – “68 of the best books to give or receive this festive season”.
Zapiro’s here, as is Chris Hani and John van de Ruit; Julius Malema, Jacob Dlamini and Moeletsi Mbeki make strange bedfellows; there’s Nelson Mandela in several guises; Wilbur Smith, Zakes Mda, Deon Meyer and Dana Snyman compare notes; Koos Kombuis hangs out with Alan Knott-Craig (who’d of thought?); Marlene van der Westhuizen swops recipes with Nataniël, Emilia le Roux and Justin Bonello; two big men of Africa (for different reasons), Kingsley Holgate and John Smit, share a pint; the kiddies get theirs with the Nuwe Kinderverseboek; and Sue Williamson and Alf Kumalo visit the galleries together.
Oh, and there’s a whole bunch of non-SA Lit, too, wink-wink. Here are all “The List” 2009 books, save for three titles for which we couldn’t find covers – Dr Seuss Favourites by Dr Seuss, Great White, Eminent Grey by Chris Fallow and the New Scientist Box Set by Mick O’Hare – plus the official Exclusive Books press release at the bottom of the post. Happy holiday gift-book hunting!
Warren Buffet’s Management Secrets: Proven Tools for Personal and Business Success by David Clark, Mary Buffet EAN: 9781847376923 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Superfrekonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D Levitt, Stephen J Dubner EAN: 9780713999907 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy and Commitment by Steve Harvey EAN: 9780061917431 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
The most riveting, langverwagte, visionary, superbly-penned, audacious, eye popping genius-infused List of books is about to hit our shelves, because the countdown has begun to the official announcement on 23 October, of the Exclusive Books bumper selection of 68 of the best books to give or get this festive season.
The List, offers the choice books of 2009 in one place. Lovingly compiled by the Exclusive Books managers, bibliophiles can look forward to an A-Z of fabulous reading from Afrikaans, biographies, collectable box sets and business books, to children’s titles, cookery, current affairs, fiction, humour, inspiration, lifestyle, nature, reference, sci-fi, and of course, books for sports lovers.
“The development of The List is a labour of love on the part of our staff and we believe that it reflects the very best books available,” says Jaco Nel, marketing manager of Exclusive Books.
“We cater for a broad spectrum of tastes with our Festive Season selection and look for special books that make memorable gifts. People often find it hard to find the right book and The List is the result of years of customers asking for help with gift books.”
“Exclusive Books is always right on top of trends in bookselling and The List reflects this insight.”
Afrikaans features real culture in a “Smullekker” cookbook from Emila le Roux and Francois Smuts, a range of “stoepstories” from Deon Meyer in Karoonag en Ander Verhale and Dana Snyman’s Op die Toneel: stories,reise,stemme, and the “skreeusnaaks” memoirs of Koos Kombuis in Die Tyd van die Kombi’s.
Larger than life heroes feature strongly in the biographies, from a poignant tribute to Chris Hani, to Barack Obama’s journey to power, to the wild adventures of intrepid explorers Kingsley Holgate and Ranulph Fiennes.
Business inspiration comes from investment guru Warren Buffet’s Management Secrets to Alan Knott-Craig’s Second is Nothing, the riveting account of his involvement in building Vodacom, to the suprising collaboration between 50 cent and Robert Greene in The 50th Law.
Current affairs cover a contentious kaleidoscope of politics and history from Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy by Francis Wilson to The World according to Julius Malema by Max du Preez and Mandy Roussouw, to the megapopular Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner.
Cookery reflects a strong return to home cooking and African influences in books such as A Farm in my Heart: From the Yard to the Table and Pantry by Emelia le Roux and Francois Smuts to Cooked in Africa by BBC presenter Justin Bonello, with a touch of decadence added by Marlene van der Westhuizen’s gorgeous book on French cooking, Sumptuous.
Nataniel’s Gatherings: A year of Invitations offers an opulent but informal peek into get-togethers in his home.
Fiction focuses on the hits of 2009, including the Twilight series by Stepheni Meyer, Stieg Larsen’s trilogy and bestsellers, such as Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, Wilbur Smith’s Assegai and Marian Keyes The Brightest Star in the Sky.
Inspiration focuses on the core issues of conquering fear and finding faith, hope and love.
Best seller The Shack by William P Young features as does the must-read Act like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey.
On a lighter note Zapiro returns with Don’t mess with the Presidents’ Head while John Farndon Offers the odd yet challenging read, Do you think you’re Clever?
The QI Book of the Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson continues the quirky theme with a biographical dictionary full of hilarious facts and details about famous and obscure people, now dead.
Two predators, lions and sharks feature in the nature genre, with Part of the Pride by Kevin Richardson and Great white and Eminent Grey by Chris Fallows, offering new understanding of these magnificent creatures.
Science takes on creationists and looks at the wonders in the everyday world, while legendary sci-fi writer Eoin Colfer offers his sixth novel in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series with And Another Thing….
Sport scores bit hits with Captain in the Cauldron – The John Smit Story and the Big Book of Top Gear 2010.
The Fifth Annual Pride Book Fair was surely a highlight on Cape Town Pride 2010’s event calendar. Emcee Odidiva sparkled as he introduced the authors and editors of the growing body of South African GLBTI literature.
Exclusive Books invite you to the launch of 
With the hugely-anticipated 
