by Chris Walton
Published by Jacana.
reviewed by Ben Oswest
This review originally ran, in edited form, in the Sunday Independent. Here’s the link (subscribers only):
And here’s the review in full:
At first glance, this enjoyable Gothic sex farce dolled up as a murder mystery appears to be the product of pure indulgence on its publisher’s part: for what have Zurich, Switzerland and its inhabitants during the years of the First World War to do with South Africa today?
But one of the secret pleasures of Chris Walton’s Sound Bites is lifting evidence from its pages to fit a theory about its implausible release here: the theory that South African culture – the whole shebang, its producers, consumers, bureaucrats and police – has matured to the point where incidental voices singing unfamiliar notes are made room for, because of a general agreement that the local milieu – a milieu shaped mainly by voices more pleasing to those with a nationalist bent – offers everyone some agency, a small ledge on the mossy cliff on which to trill.
Keep reading »
1 comment »
by Tony D’Souza
reviewed by Ben Oswest
{Boswestblog is back! - after a three-month absence. Thanks for readers’ patience. More to come…}
An edited version of this review originally ran in the 4 February 2007 Sunday Independent.
To the outsiders who have tried their luck in Africa, when it comes time to write a novel about it, the first struggle is with political realism. Should their story be set in the actual African country where they did their deeds, or, more delicately, in a territory that bears all the clues, but remains nameless, or masquerades under a pseudonym? The artless title of Tony D’Souza’s first novel reveals his choice: Whiteman is an clear declaration in favour of reality.
Keep reading »
1 comment »
Today’s Sunday Times published a short review of mine (slightly edited) of Birds in Words, the quirky poetry compilation by Gus Ferguson and Tony Morphet. Here’s the link:
And here’s the review in full:
Keep reading »
No comments »
Today’s Sunday Independent features a survey of a few dozen writers’ “books of the year” - mine among them. Here are the links for subscribers:
Only three of the titles I submitted actually made it into print - here’s the full list:
New books (all South African)
Mandela’s Ego by Lewis Nkosi (Fiction, Umuzi). Wicked satire that rivals Nkosi’s first novel, Mating Birds, as a surgical dismemberment of cherished beliefs - pure jazz to read. (Click title for review in Boswestblog.)
Keep reading »
No comments »
An edited version of the novelist Sheila Roberts’s review of The New Suffolk Hymnbook appeared in The Weekender on Saturday. Here’s the link:
And here’s the review in full:
Keep reading »
No comments »
