"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
~ Douglas Adams
"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
~ Dr. Suess
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
~ Anton Chekhov
So there we are. It’s done and it’s dusted and a great deal of bubbly has been consumed. Of course, I am talking (finally) about the Sunday Times Literary Awards. In case you haven’t heard, the prestigious Alan Paton Award went to Bongani Ngqulunga for The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley […]
Wherever you look there are books. Marvellous books on groaning shelves. And the pity of this end of year literary orgy is that you can’t buy everything. What an extraordinary year of fact and fiction there has been. Until three months ago, it seemed that it would be a year of stellar fiction. I still […]
Thank goodness. It’s enough with the book awards for 2017. It’s also enough with the book festivals for 2017. We need a break now that the Booker Prize 2017 has come and gone. Now it’s time for whatever peace we can find as we run down the steep slope towards the end of a turbulent […]
Twenty years ago a distinguished and influential South African publisher rubbed his hands together and said: “Now that we have our freedom I’m looking forward to the great South African novel.” Our Gone With the Wind, our To Kill a Mockingbird, is yet to be written. But what is happening in our vital local book […]
