View Toward the N7
Sunday, June 4th, 2006
Cape Town, South Africa. Single exposure (Nikon 990), “raw� jpeg - no editing, cropping, “developing�, etc.
{archive: June, 2006}
Gas Cylinder
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006
Cape Town, South Africa. Single exposure (Nikon 990), “raw� jpeg - no editing, cropping, “developing�, etc.
Mandela’s Ego - Cape Town Book Fair Launch
Saturday, June 10th, 2006
I’ll be speaking at the launch of Lewis Nkosi’s novel, Mandela’s Ego, on the Sunday evening of the Cape Town Book Fair (18 June).
Cape Town Book Fair: Festival “Fringe” at Baobab Books
Thursday, June 15th, 2006Julie Aitchison, proprietor of Baobab Books in Long Street, has organised a “fringe” evening for the Cape Town Book Fair, on Saturday 17 June.
(That’s the night of the Sunday Times Book Awards banquet - if you don’t have an invitation, Baobab makes a good alternative.)
Signed copies of various Book Fair books will be on sale in her shop, and the following events have been confirmed:
- 6.30 pm CHRIS MANN: Lifelines, a multi-media presentation of art, graphics, poetry and sung lyrics by the “ad hominem” Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University. (Lifelines’ graphics and scientific commentary by Julia Skeen and Adrian Craig, respectively.)
- 7.45 pm DENNIS BRUTUS: the renowned poet and activist, who is visiting Cape Town for the Book Fair, will launch and discuss the new book about him, Poetry and Protest, edited by Lee Sustar and Aisha Karim.
Julie will lay on complimentary wine for both events, and there will also be a cash bar. She may sponsor another “fringe” event for the next evening, too.
Baobab Books
Baobab Mall
210 Long Street (opp. The Dubliner at Kennedy’s) | Map
+27 (0) 21 422 3894
Views from Table Bay
Friday, June 16th, 2006
Cape Town, South Africa. Multiple exposure (16) (Nikon 990), “raw� jpeg - no editing, cropping, “developing�, etc.
Cape Town Book Fair: First Day
Saturday, June 17th, 2006The Cape Town Book Fair - as anyone who vistited it today will agree - is already a ravishing success, at just one day old. By 11am, the CTICC had resorted to overflow parking - I found space only several minutes’ walk away from the complex - and nearly every Book Fair event has been oversubscribed, judging by anecdotal evidence.
My first day: a marvellous, moving poetry reading with Ingrid de Kok, Antjie Krog and Jeremy Cronin (moderated by Gus Ferguson); many visits to the splendid Jacana booth, where The New Suffolk Hymnbook is being released; a seminar on the universe of online book information with Google; and much hobnobbing besides.
I’ve posted a first-day photo gallery on Flickr; here’s the link: Cape Town Book Fair Photos. This shot of Alexander McCall Smith and a happy reader is fairly representative:
Alexander McCall Smith
…signing books at the Cape Town Book Fair
- To borrow from the signage of Johnny Carson, more to come…
Cameron, Levin and Brown Win the Sunday Times Book Awards
Sunday, June 18th, 2006South Africa is known as a land of compromises - and last night the judges of the Sunday Times Book Awards did the country’s reputation awkward justice, by failing to pick a clear winner in the non-fiction category. Edwin Cameron and Adam Levin shared the spoils, for their books Witness to AIDS and AidSafari, respectively.
The fiction award went to Andrew Brown, for his Coldsleep Lullaby. I haven’t yet read any of the winners - had had high hopes, in fact, for Russel Brownlee’s novel, Garden of the Plagues, in the fiction category.
I confess to being irked at hung juries, because a jury that can’t make up its mind is ultimately a selfish one - it wants to draw attention to itself. I’m probably not half so irked, however, as Cameron and Levin, who are now each possessed of half an award, and burdened by the necessity of being gracious to each other in public. This is not to say that they were not fast friends to begin with, just that it’s unpleasant to share the limelight, and to know that it was a genre - reportage from the HIV/AIDS front - more than any particular effort of theirs, that got the prize.
- Official coverage: Sunday Times | Sunday Times Book Awards
Edwin Cameron
…at the Cape Town Book Fair.
Cape Town Book Fair: Michelle Magwood Interviews Richard E. Grant
Sunday, June 18th, 2006In the heart of the maelstrom that is the Cape Town Book Fair, Sunday Times books editor Michelle Magwood sat down with Richard E. Grant to add to the noise. Her interview, however, was anything but noisesome. Grant is a formidable, if gracious, interlocutor - many would have shrunk under his glittering gaze. But Magwood was more than equal to the task, peppering the actor with incisive questions, to which he was obliged to supply thoughtful, genuine responses. The salon-style affair was organised in aid of promoting Grant’s book, The Wah-Wah Diaries, which is the story of the making of an autobiographical film of the same name.
We in the audience - who literally sat at Grant’s feet - learned quite a bit about the swashbucklingly candid actor, who was born in Swaziland - including the fact that Robert Altman is his favorite director; that an unnamed French women is his most-reviled producer, reserved for high execration; that a Swazi priest named Bheki, who had received evangelical training in the USA, leapt into his (Grant’s) father’s grave as he was being buried, removed the coffin’s cover, and attempted to raise the corpse from the dead - a scene that didn’t make the movie’s final edit, but will appear, apparently, in the dvd extras; that Gayle Immelman was the first girl who, at twelve, Grant seriously kissed (she was in the audience); and that Michelle Magwood is forty-six years old (information prised from the interviewer in one of those table-turning moments that gives everyone a thrill).
REG, as Grant is known (both to himself and throughout his book), is making a new film, called Zeitgeist - his discription of it made it sound like Noises Off combined with a space-disaster-follies flick - always wears two watches - one perpetually set to Swazi time - and never fails to thank a person who takes an interest for noticing him. At the Cape Town Book Fair, he’s hard to miss.
Richard E Grant & Michelle Magwood
New Cape Town Book Fair Pictures
Sunday, June 18th, 2006I’ve posted a few new pictures from the Cape Town Book Fair, Day 2; have a look:
- Cape Town Book Fair Photos (Flickr set)
Here are Fred Khumalo, opinion editor at the Sunday Times - and author of Touch My Blood and Bitches Brew - and his wife Nomvuso:
Mandela’s Ego Launch, M Bar, Cape Town
Monday, June 19th, 2006Last night saw the launch of Lewis Nkosi’s new novel, Mandela’s Ego, at the Metropole Hotel’s M Bar in Long Street, Cape Town. I introduced Lewis and his wonderful book, which is, as I said, a “serious satire”, locked in contest with the monumental founding narrative of the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, for the territory of the South African imagination.
I’ll post a full review of Mandela’s Ego in the next few days (and possibly some further speech notes). Meanwhile, I’ve put up a few launch photos on Flickr. See them in the Cape Town Book Fair Photo Set.
The New Suffolk Hymnbook Launched Tonight
Monday, June 19th, 2006My first novel, The New Suffolk Hymnbook (Jacana Media & Snail Press) will be launched this evening at the Cape Town Book Fair, CTICC.
- Time: 5h30 for 6 p.m.
- Venue: Sontonga room (at the far end of the CTICC, nearest the Arabella hotel)
- Guest speaker: the poet Ingrid de Kok
The book’s price is R135; it will be available in South African bookstores and via online retailers within the next few weeks. Credit cards will be accepted at the launch.
Cape Town Book Fair Photos: Day Three
Monday, June 19th, 2006A few shots from day three at the Book Fair - still going strong - are up, including this one, which I couldn’t resist taking, because of the subject’s choice of boots.
You need tough boots, of course, if you’re going to write a book about Brett Kebble, the murdered mining “magnate”, and general all-round fraud. The conspiracy theories that Barry Sergeant elaborates in his Brett Kebble: The Inside Story aren’t dismissible with a mocking laugh and wink. Kebble was up to his thick neck in manure, and troweled out plenty of the same substance himself before he was shot, in his E-Class Mercedes Benz, on an isolated stretch of Johannesburg highway late last year.
Launch of The New Suffolk Hymnbook: Photo Gallery
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006I’ve posted pics from last night’s launch - see the Cape Town Book Fair Photo Set. It was a splendid occasion, with a very funny speech from Gus Ferguson, a very formidable explication of my convoluted writing from Ingrid de Kok (which she’s been gracious enough to agree to let me post, later this week), and a short reading from myself, from the novel’s chapter five, “Piety” (pp. 119-121).
Many books were sold, and signed - a good start. Thanks very much to organizers Caroline and team (of Jacana Media), and to all who came, I was thrilled that the evening went so well.
With Di Oliver, Gus Ferguson and Mary Burton
Cape Town Book Fair: Photos from Day Four
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006It’s the fourth and final day of the Cape Town Book Fair - but you wouldn’t know it upon first sight of the teeming masses inside the CTICC. (The fact that parking’s easier to find is a better clue.) As usual, I wandered into the melee - and there are five or six new photographs in the Cape Town Book Fair Photo Set as a result, including this fine shot of Ben Trovato’s hand. Elusive chap, Ben Trovato. I highly recommend his first book, The Ben Trovato Files, as one of South Africa’s best tomes of blistering satire.
Cape Town Book Fair Coda: Launch of Seasonal Fires
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006Ingrid de Kok’s book Seasonal Fires was launched this evening in Kalk Bay, inside the high-ceilinged bakery of the famed Olympia Cafe, as a kind of coda to the Cape Town Book Fair. The poet Karen Press introduced her: “Ingrid’s gaze is steady but also tender.”
Spotted in the crowd (in no particular order): Jeremy Cronin, John Samuel, Sue Clark, Amina Mama, Dominique le Roux, Mike Cope, Julia Martin, Helen Moffett, Annari van der Merwe, Hugh Hodge, Finuala Dowling, Ignatius Ticha, Tony Morphet, John Higgins, Neville Alexander and Gus Ferguson.
The first poem Ingrid read was in honor of someone absent, Luke Fiske: “When Children Leave” (p. 139).
Karen Press
…at the Olympia Cafe’s bakery, introducing Ingrid de Kok.
Tags: Amina Mama, Annari van der Merwe, Cape Town, Cape Town Book Fair, Cape Town International Book Fair, Dominique le Roux, Finuala Dowling, Gus Ferguson, Helen Moffett, Hugh Hodge, Ignatius Ticha, Ingrid de Kok, Jeremy Cronin, John Higgins, John Samuel, Julia Martin, Karen Press, Luke Fiske, Mike Cope, Neville Alexander, Poetry, Seasonal Fires, South African Literature, Sue Clark, The Margin, Tony Morphet, Umuzi
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Notes From the Cape Town Book Fair
Monday, June 26th, 2006by Gus Ferguson
The free coffee is
awful the expensive
disappointing
*
So much for literacy:
Hordes of intellectuals
shoving and bickering
to exit the entrance.
Security Light
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
Cape Town, South Africa. Single exposure (Nikon 990), “raw� jpeg - no editing, cropping, “developing�, etc.
