Reviews
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Great minds detect alikeThat famous Motswana detective Mma Ramotswe has been compared with other detectives made famous in English literature, but as the latest instalment in the series set in Botswana, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies shows, Winnie-the-Pooh is a far more accurate comparison. |
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Tell the truth, laughingNiq Mhlongo’s character Dingz in Dog Eat Dog is semi (very) autobiographical, and you can imagine him doing exactly what Niq did to get his book published. He took his diaries and transformed them into a novel and then just took a train down to Cape Town to go and get it published. |
Putting policy solutions in contextAgenda Setting and Public Policy in Africa provides an integrated account of the theoretical and practical aspects of public policy challenges in developing societies. It points toward the need to infuse novelty into public policy-making processes to reflect indigenous societal interests. Contributors to the book tackle critical policy issues that have emasculated the growth of policy objectives that are sensitive to African needs. |
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After-taste of liberationAgainst the background of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Achmat Dangor (in Booker prize shortlisted Bitter Fruit) focuses on the life of one family whose past was defined by the individual evils of a grandiose system, and whose cohesion is unravelling as history clambers beyond the confines of neatly constructed judicial processes. |
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Getting to know youFunso Afolayan’s book, Culture and Customs of South Africa, is an important contribution to what one could call ‘knowing Africa’. As part of the series ‘Culture and Customs of Africa’ that seeks to provide a quick reference to the cultures and customs of countries in Africa, this book is an invaluable shortened contemporary biography of South Africa. |
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Laughing out loudThe 17 stories that make up João Melo’s The Serial Killer offer a particularly well drawn view of Luanda, a rich blend of old and new practices, of the cloying nostalgia for days gone by and of the permissive, often corrupt ways of the present. Melo's writing has a lightness of touch that at once provokes and seduces us into laughing with him while simultaneously being teased into thinking beyond the more superficial level of the work. |
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Catching a rideLaunched in 2000 in South Africa, the Taxi Art Series is working towards the twin goals of extending the profile of contemporary South African artists and, at the same time, establishing a teaching resource archive and educational materials. The series covers artists who have produced a substantial body of art but who have had no monograph published on their work. |
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Moving mountainsStrike a Woman Strike a Rock is a powerful collection of narratives by South African women: life stories, love stories and death stories, of the women who, often quietly and behind the scenes, actively made a stand against the apartheid state. |
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Soyinka's life and work in picturesOn the event of his 70th birthday a group of Nigerians has produced a fitting and personal tribute to Wole Soyinka, the man who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1986. But this coffee-table book is much more than a tribute to a writer. It presents all facets of the creative genius, from traffic warden to pyrate. |
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A sensitive linguistic journeyIn Lindsey Collen's Boy we follow young Krish as he leaves home for the first time, on the verge of manhood, on his accidental road trip across Mauritius. It pitches the reader into the middle of a linguistic exchange, a dialogue that interfaces languages in order to both showcase the linguistic mosaic of Mauritian identity. |
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History in motionIn African Film, Josef Gugler recovers/re-imagines and re-represents the historical experiences of Africans before, during and after colonialism through a perspective that celebrates the peculiarities and diversity of the continent. |
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Hijacking the limelightPeople Who Have Stolen From Me is a litany of the crimes conducted against one shop in Johannesburg, but it is not so much an analysis of the inventiveness or violence of crime as much as it is a trip through South Africa’s development from bastion of white supremacy and privilege to black-ruled and economically successful African state. |
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Bad critics, good drink and young womenThe ever prolific Aryan Kaganof’s latest publications, Citizen Kohen, The Freedom Fighters and Stones Again (as apart from an array of new films) are, as ever, self-reflective diaries; narratives formulated from ceaseless notetaking, filtered through carnal nets of young girls, alcohol and cinema and guided through the maelstrom by the philosophers Hegel, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. |
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Grasping a virusThe Aids Handbook gives a broad overview of the physiological, biomedical, social and political issues surrounding Aids. This generalist approach makes the handbook an ideal starting point for anyone who wants an introduction to Aids. |
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Painting life and philosophyWhat a joy to open this book and feel the rich uniqueness of the spirit of Mozambican aritist Malangatana flow over you - the vibrant energy, the colour, the movement, the people and creatures that are undeniably African. |
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