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Today’s Sunday Independent ran a review, by the South African poet Ingrid de Kok, of The New Suffolk Hymnbook (Jacana/Snail Press, 2006), which was based on her introduction of the novel at its 19 June Cape Town Book Fair launch. The review is available online to the Independent’s subscribers only - click here for the story if you subscribe - but here is the full text of de Kok’s original speech:

The New Suffolk Hymnbook Considered
by Ingrid de Kok

It is a pleasure to be participating in the launch of The New Suffolk Hymnbook. I read Ben Oswest’s novel some years ago in manuscript form, and thought then that it was a startling and unique achievement. On a second reading, I feel even more intrigued and impressed. I can’t pretend to claim that I entirely understand this radical book - but I think one of the purposes of the book is to confront the very idea of “entire understanding” . At the same time as it engages us every step of its way, the book questions the solidity of its own surfaces and the nature of its own evidence. It dislodges expectation and leaves one half knowing, half confused, as if in a dream whose meaning is elusive but full of portents.

• Purchase a copy ofThe New Suffolk Hymnbook.

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by Gus Ferguson

The free coffee is
awful the expensive
disappointing

*

So much for literacy:
Hordes of intellectuals
shoving and bickering
to exit the entrance.

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Ingrid 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.

It’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.

Ben Trovato

I’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