South Africa | South Africa
Mar.16.2013
Summertime by J.M. Coetzee is labeled "fiction," not "a novel," or "a collection of autobiographical investigations disguised as a story cycle," or some other generic propositon. Just "fiction."
Ok, it goes this way: there is a biographer, an academic, who goes through the...
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Feb.11.2013
Not infrequently I think of the job of writing fiction as picking at things that make us uncomfortable. This means novels, in particular, have changed a good bit in their function over the centuries. Once upon a time novels confirmed the social order--think of Jane Austen. Now we...
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Nov.26.2012
That pleasing assesment of The Book of War comes from a recent review.
"Eventually, we realise we are in the Cape Colony during the relentless 100-year Xhosa wars, but Whyle’s nomenclature is archaic and foreign. Its estrangement makes his story universal.
The reduction of context, a peeling away...
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Oct.03.2012
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is about the North American border wars of the 1830s. The Book of War is about the Southern African border wars of the 1850s.
Sir Harry Smith, known in The Book of War as 'the General', the man who was unable to defeat the great Xhosa strategist, Maqoma, was also...
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Sep.19.2012
On a typical day I wake up, write, work out, write, and then read for several hours. When I'm worn out, I often settle into a deep chair with my IPad on my lap and rummage through Netflix for a movie I can watch until bedtime.
Quite often, almost always in fact, I look...
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Sep.14.2012
"A brilliant, unforgettable debut."
The Times.
"One is thrown ... into the heart of the action, in a state of dread and fascination induced by the dire events, the pristine setting and the perfection of the writing."
Mail & Guardian.
"Cuts to the bone."
GQ South Africa
"Can be reckoned with...
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Aug.24.2012
The Book of War is now available in the US via AfricanLookBook
"A BRILLIANT, unforgettable debut. Steeped in carnage..."
Andrew Donaldson in The Times:
"... one is thrown, like them, into the heart of the action, in a state of dread and fascination induced by the dire events, the ...
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Jul.18.2012
It is Mandela Day in South Africa.
This piece was first published by Playboy South Africa to coincide with President Mandela’s inauguration.
When I was running away from the army in Swaziland I came across Nelson Mandela's book, No Easy Walk to Freedom. It was a time when I had...
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Jun.06.2012
A few years ago, I was looking at Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. Africa looked enormous and I felt minuscule, like the grain of sand in Ingrid Jonker’s poem.
Part of its population still speaks Afrikaans, a language closely related to Dutch. Wikipedia provides a sample sentence: De man wat...
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May.18.2012
The Book of War is slowly making its way in the world and has had two published responses. Writing in The Times of Johannesburg, Andrew Dondaldson called it "a brilliant, unforgettable debut, steeped in carnage..." In the Pretoria News, John Boje gave his assesment: "a stunning debut...
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