Readers of the 361 pages of ‘Some People….’ have been intrigued, confused, angered, enlightened, delighted , dazzled and mesmerised by its contents. No literary effort on its own, since William Caxton printed the first English book in 1474, has offered the reading public such a variety of fact, fiction, fable, fantasy and fun in one illustrated volume.
Read the book from A to Z (cliché) or, depending on your taste, stamina, orientation and interests, select from the following in any order:
1. First High School experiences, wet dreams and shooting an elephant.
2. Hearing ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ for the first time and jokes – especially Jewish ones.
3. Grandma’s influence on a growing boy and meeting Mrs Palm and her five daughters.
4. Learning the art of writing and explaining in detail how Jonah survived in the belly of a big fish.
5. Four enchanting fairy tales starting with ‘The Magic Piano’. One gay one, ‘The loitering Knight’, is strictly for adults.
6. A senior school boy and his girlfriend conduct a survey in London to find out whether 25% of parents allegedly tell their children that their private parts will fall off if they play with them too much.
7. Adam and Eve were created near modern day Cape Town because anthropologists have come to the irrefutable conclusion that all human life originated in Africa.
8. Two ideas for blockbuster movies in Hollywood.
9. Lady Macbeth is played in the nude by a school boy.
10. Are you sure there is a God? Find out if there is one.
11. We are all potential savages under a thin veneer of civilization.
12. Oh, the joy of scoring for the first time with a hot girl!
12. Critics’ and readers’ reactions to the first edition of ‘Some People….’ Except for the opinion of one reader, the book doesn’t seem to be a serious contender for the Nobel Prize for literature.
Johann Gutenberg's first printed Bibles amazed and shocked medieval Europe. He had started a revolution that would one day put books in the hands of any man or woman who wanted them. The project was fraught with danger, for it threatened the power of politicians and the Catholic church.
Who was this Gutenberg? In Alix Christie's evocative and compelling novel, he comes vividly to life - driven, caustic and ruthless. Behind him stands a brilliant young scribe, Peter Schoeffer, whose genius is to stay true to his artistic values in the cauldron of the printer's workshop. Caught between the old ways and the new, the two men struggle with one another and the world outside to prevail against overwhelming obstacles... and change history.
Op 29 April 1963 stuur die 30-jarige digter Ingrid Jonker 'n telegram aan Andre P. Brink. Sy bedank die 28-jarige skrywer vir blomme en 'n brief wat hy aan haar besorg het. In die meer as tweehonderd skrywes wat hierna tussen die twee volg, ontvou sekerlik die bekendste liefdesverhouding in die Afrikaanse literere geskiedenis. Jonker se finale brief aan Brink is gedateer 18 April 1965 – drie maande voordat sy die see in loop by Drieankerbaai. 'n Halfeeu later word lesers se verbeelding steeds aangegryp deur die hartstog van die teer, dikwels stormagtige verhouding. In Desember 2014, drie maande voor sy dood, het Andre P. Brink die liefdesbriewe tussen hom en Ingrid Jonker vir publikasie aangebied. Die briewe is nog nooit voorheen gepubliseer nie en sluit onbekende persoonlike foto’s in.
On june 14th, 2007, the king and prime minister of sweden went missing from a gala banquet at the royal castle. Later it was said that both had fallen ill, the truth is different. The real story starts much earlier, in 1961, with the birth of nombeko mayeki in a shack in soweto. Nombeko was fated to grow up fast and die early in her poverty-stricken township, be it from drugs, from alcohol or just from plain despair. But nombeko takes a different path. She finds work as a housecleaner and eventually makes her way up to the position of chief advisor, at the helm of one of the world's most secret projects. Here is where the story merges with and then diverges from reality. South africa developed six nuclear missiles in the 1980s and then voluntarily dismantled them in 1994. This is a story about the seventh missile the one that was never supposed to have existed. Nombeko mayeki knows too much about it and now she's on the run from both the south african justice and the most terrifying secret service in the world. She ends up in sweden, which has transformed into a nuclear nation and the fate of the world now lies in nombeko's hands. Jonasson introduces us to a whole cast of eccentrics a nerve-damaged american vietnam deserter, twin brothers who are officially only one person, three careless chinese girls, an angry young woman, a potato-growing baroness and the swedish king and prime minister. Quirky and utterly unique, 'the girl who saved the king of sweden' is a charming and humorous account of one young woman's unlikely adventure.
The first glimpse of the sea on Marine Drive filled my heart, if not my head. I turned away from the red shadow. I stopped thinking of that pyramid of killers, and Sanjay's improvidence. I stopped thinking about my own part in the madness. And I rode, with my friends, into the end of everything.
Shantaram introduced millions of readers to a cast of unforgettable characters through Lin, an Australian fugitive, working as a passport forger for a branch of the Bombay mafia. In The Mountain Shadow, the long-awaited sequel, Lin must find his way in a Bombay run by a different generation of mafia dons, playing by a different set of rules.
It has been two years since the events in Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life. But Lin can't leave the Island City: Karla, and a fatal promise, won't let him go.
Fox, as the celebrated composer Harry Fox-Talbot is known, wants to be left in peace. His beloved wife has died, he's unable to write a note of music, and no, he does not want to take up some blasted hobby.
Then one day he discovers that his troublesome four-year-old grandson is a piano prodigy. The music returns and Fox is compelled to re-engage with life - and, ultimately, to confront an old family rift.
Decades earlier, Fox and his brothers return to Hartgrove Hall after the war, determined to save their once grand home from ruin. But on the last night of 1946, the arrival of beautiful wartime singer Edie Rose tangles the threads of love and duty, which leads to a shattering betrayal.
With poignancy, lyricism and humour, Natasha Solomons tells a captivating tale of passion and music, of roots, ancient songs and nostalgia for the old ways, of the ties that bind us to family and home and the ones we are prepared to sever. Here is the story of a man who discovers joy and creative renewal in the aftermath of grief and learns that it is never too late to seek forgiveness.
Iris Langley is forced to take charge when her mother, Grace, has a stroke. This is no easy task: Iris suffers from the lingering effects of a near-fatal fall as a child. The accident turned her mind into a place where a dragon lives: one that roars in her ears and fills her head with smoke.
As her mother retreats into dementia, Iris realises that Grace is hiding something – a secret about that fateful day in the mountains that could threaten everything she believes about herself and her family. But with her own memory fragmented, and Grace’s mind in tatters, how can she find the truth?
Set against the sombre beauty of the Drakensberg mountains, Bridget Pitt’s powerful new novel takes us into the labyrinthine world of brain injury, and reveals how the strands of guilt, secrecy and devotion that bind mother to daughter may devastate or redeem them.
‘The struggle to forget, or not; courage in small things – Bridget Pitt’s new novel has found a voice for wounded memory. It’s a searching voice, evoking from jumbled discards something that perhaps we’ve all lost … but which might still be found.’ – Jeremy Cronin
Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks. When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris in June of 1940, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.
In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure’s.
Can liberals be racist? Should black people help white people understand racism? Is white wealth because of racism, or hard work and good genes? Should coloured people just call themselves black? In Run Racist Run, Eusebius McKaiser explores the non-bloody aspects of contemporary South African racism. While vigorous public debates about racism rage on, McKaiser tackles questions about the true and complete nature of racism with the rigour and honesty we have come to expect from his writing. In a year when South African students have protested against colonialism’s continued presence on university campuses, when acts of racism continue to erupt in social spaces, when brutal racism is witnessed in the United States and elsewhere, it’s clear that we urgently need to journey into the heart of racism. McKaiser takes that journey in this new collection – raising new questions about race and racism, and offering original, provocative meditations on these themes.
Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes.
At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.
