HOT off the press Book of the Month
Between the Assassinations
Aravind Adiga
Just in, the keenly-awaited second book from the author of last year’s Booker Prize Winning The White Tiger.
Welcome to Kittur, an imaginary everytown nestling on the Indian coast south of Goa and north of Calicut. Journeying through its streets and schoolyards, bedrooms and businesses, its inner workings and outer limits, Aravind Adiga weaves a remarkable fictional tapestry of India in the 80s, the years after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and before that of her son Rajiv.
From a middle-aged Communist to an Islamic terrorist; from the young children of a Tamil building-site worker to a privileged and alienated schoolboy; from an idealistic journalist to a Brahmin housemaid, an entire Indian world comes vividly and unforgettably to life. Muslim, Christian and Hindu, high-caste and low-caste, rich and poor: all of Indian life - the ‘sorrowful parade of humanity’ - is here.
Series of the Month
Penguin African Writers Series
This wonderful new series, just launched, will be publishing the very best from the classic Heinemann African Writers Series (which started in 1962), as well as some of the best new voices in African literature. Chinua Achebe - the original series editor for Heinemann - has agreed to come on board as Editorial Advisor for the new series, and writes, in his introduction – “I am honored…in inviting young and upcoming writers to accept the challenge passed down by celebrated African authors of earlier decades and to continue to explore, confront and question the realities of life in Africa through their work; challenging Africa’s people to lift her to her rightful place among the nations of the world.”
This promises to be a very exciting venture - watch this space for further titles.
The first six in the series are…
Chinua Achebe – Girls at War
Lilia Momple – Neighbours
Dambudzo Marechera – Black Sunlight
Ngugi wa Thiongo – Weep not, Child
Karen King-Aribisala – Hangman’s Game
Veronique Tadjo – As the Crow Flies
For the Imagination
Dreams of Rivers and Seas
Tim Parks
For some time now, I have been plagued, perhaps blessed, by dreams of rivers and seas, dreams of water.
Just days after Albert James writes these lines to his son John, in London, he is dead. Abandoning a pretty girlfriend and the lab where he is completing his PhD, John flies to Delhi to join his mother in mourning.
Just days after Albert James writes these lines to his son John, in London, he is dead. Abandoning a pretty girlfriend and the lab where he is completing his PhD, John flies to Delhi to join his mother in mourning.
A brilliant and controversial anthropologist, the nature of Albert James’ research, and the circumstances of his death, are far from clear. On top of this, John must confront his mother’s coolness, and the strangeness of the cremation ceremony that she has organised for his father. No sooner is the body consigned to the flames than a journalist arrives, determined to write a biography of the dead man. The widow will have nothing to do with the project, yet seems incapable of keeping away from the journalist.
In Tim Parks’ masterly new novel, India, with its vast strangeness, the density and intensity of its street life, its indifference to all distinctions between the religious and the secular, is a constant source of distraction to these westerners in search of clarity and identity. To John, the enigma of his father’s dreams of rivers and seas appears to be one with the greater mystery of the country.
‘A haunting and accomplished novel…Dreams of Rivers and Seas is a book that has already repaid a second reading. I am sorry not to see it on the Booker longlist.’ Guardian
Land of Marvels
Barry Unsworth
It is 1914, and an English archaeologist called Somerville is fulfilling a life-long dream: to direct an excavation in the desert of Mesopotamia. Yet forces beyond his control threaten his work. The Great War is looming, and various interest groups - Turkish, German, British and American - are vying for control over the region and its strategic and economic prizes. The Germans are securing trade routes with a new railway; a major in the Royal Engineers is working undercover, secretly mapping for the British the areas rich in oil; the Bedouin Jehar takes what he can from his new paymasters. The greatest idealist is Somerville, whose intention is to discover and preserve the land’s ancient treasures.
In this extraordinary narrative, Booker Prize-winner Unsworth weaves a rich and delicate skein around the events which led to the birth of modern-day Iraq. The characters are vividly and intricately drawn, and it is their desires, ambitions, greed, love, jealousy and idealism that lead the novel to its inevitable and explosive conclusion. Very highly recommended.
This is How
M.J. Hyland
When his fiancee breaks off their engagement, Patrick Oxtoby leaves home and moves into a boarding house in a remote seaside town. But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action. This is How is a mesmerising and meticulously drawn portrait of a man whose unease in the world leads to his tragic undoing. With breathtaking wisdom and an astute insight into the human mind, award-winning M.J. Hyland’s new book is a masterpiece that inspires horror and sympathy in equal measure
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“M.J. Hyland has a ferocious imagination, and an eerie way of squeezing the distance between author, character and reader, so that the atmosphere of the book soaks and penetrates the reader’s mind. When you’ve been reading Hyland, other writers seem to lack integrity; they seem wedded to weak confabulations, whereas she aims straight for the truth and the heart.” Hilary Mantel
The Women
T.C. Boyle
T.C. Boyle has long validated his credentials as one of the most individual writers at work today, with a style and a vision quite unlike that of any of his contemporaries. The Women, his latest book, will only add to his reputation. It is a novel that brings to mind the claustrophobic narratives of William Faulkner, though its subject could not be more different: the life and loves of the most famous of the great American architects, Frank Lloyd Wright.
The imposing estate of Taliesen is a noted feature of rural Wisconsin, and it is a place where passions - of all kinds - run high. Reporters haunt the property, hungry for more revelations guaranteed to sell newspapers - because Taliesen is the home of the celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose messy private life is a considerable source of interest and scandal - over and above his considerable artistic achievements. His first wife, Kitty, lives in a world of her own, persuading herself that his other amours are transitory; his mistress, Mamah, is passionate and strong-willed; and his second wife, Miriam, is deranged. And as if this weren’t enough, there is Oglivanna, a Serbian immigrant, who shares most closely the turbulence and terror of the architect’s jumbled private life, with Miriam, a kind of avenging fury, enlisting a host of pretty officials to get her way. Narrated by one of the architect’s apprentices, Boyle gives incandescent life to this remarkable set-up, with the character of Frank Lloyd Wright brilliantly conjured at the heart of this compelling narrative.
The Rehearsal
Eleanor Catton
A high-school sex scandal jolts a group of teenage girls into a new awareness of their potency. The sudden publicity seems to turn every act into a performance and every space into a stage. But when the local drama college decides to turn the scandal into a show, the real world and the world of the theatre are forced to meet, and soon the boundaries between private and public begin to dissolve…
The Rehearsal is an exhilarating and provocative novel about the complication of human desire. Startlingly original, it is at once a tender portrait of its young protagonists and a shrewd expose of emotional compromise. A bold, exciting and unusual novel.
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
“Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,” says Thomas More, “and when you come back that night he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks’ tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.”
England in the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey’s clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage. Longlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize.
“A stunning book. It breaks free of what the novel has become nowadays. I can’t think of anything since Middlemarch which so convincingly builds a world.” Diana Athill
“A magnificent achievement: the scale of its vision and the fine stitching of its detail; the teeming canvas of characters; the style with its clipped but powerful immediacy; the wit, the poetry and the nuance.” Sarah Dunant
“A superb novel, beautifully constructed, and an absolutely compelling read. Mantel has created a novel of Tudor times which persuades us that we are there, at that moment, hungry to know what happens next. It is the making of our English world, and who can fail to be stirred by it?” Helen Dunmore
A Proper Education for Girls
Elaine di Rollo
Lilian and Alice are the bright young twin daughters of the eccentric Mr Talbot, who resides in a huge mansion full of fossils, inventions, suits of armour, botanical specimens and other elements of his sprawling collection of curiosities. When Lilian rebels against Victorian standards of morality she is packed off to India as the bride of a dreary missionary, leaving Alice alone and in danger of falling victim to her father’s bizarre hair-raising schemes. This dazzling and entertaining novel follows the two girls on their very different paths to freedom, and is set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Indian Mutiny.
“Beautifully written and an absolute joy to read…Elaine di Rollo’s debut should be read and it should be rewarded too.” Scotsman
“A generous, rollicking read…it harks back to the loving pastiche of Angela Carter and, more recently, the camp Victoriana of Susanna Clarke and Michel Faber.” Scotland on Sunday
Dr Ragab’s Universal Language
Robert Twigger
Dr Ragab is a mysterious man. Talked about by pretty much everyone in 1920s Cairo, only a few get the chance to make the doctor’s acquaintance, and fewer still - just one fortunate individual, in fact - get to study his life lessons first-hand. Hertwig is that lucky soul. Or not so lucky perhaps: not when he finds himself imprisoned in a German bunker just after World War II. To make matters worse it’s not any old bunker, it’s Hertwig’s own, and 100% escape-proof. And yet…there is a possible way out. Not in the conventional sense, maybe, but convention isn’t always a good thing, as Dr Ragab would be the first to note - and it’s his Universal Language that may just provide Hedwig with the escape route he needs.
As unconventional as the eponymous Ragab, Robert Twigger’s novel takes the reader on a quirky and surreal journey that starts in modern-day England, but spans continents and decades; part tall tale, part mystery - complete vivid imagination!
Short Stories of the Month
Berlin Tales
Helen Constantine (ed), translated by Lyn Marven
These seventeen tales take us on a journey around the extraordinary city of Berlin, past and present. The decadence and modernity of the Weimar Republic years, the horrors of war, the divided city and the decades of the Cold War, the fall of the Wall, and the experience of reintegration are all distilled in these miniaturist stories - by turns tragic, humorous, and intensely personal. Spanning a hundred years, and with many pieces translated for the first time, the book juxtaposes great writers of the last century with new voices from the current boom in German fiction.
Mind expanding!
Outcasts United
Warren St John
The extraordinary story of a refugee football team and the transformation of a small American town. Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement centre in the 1990s, becoming home to scores of families in flight from the world’s war zones – from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colours playing football in any open space they could find. Among them was Luma Mufleh, a Jordanian woman who founded a youth football team to unify Clarkston’s refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees. Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. At the centre of the story is fiery Coach Luma, who relentlessly drives her players to success on the football field while holding together their lives – and the lives of their families – in the face of a series of daunting challenges. This fast-paced chronicle of a single season is a complex and inspiring tale of a small town becoming a global community – and an account of the ingenious and complicated ways we create a home in a changing world.
“A brilliant and empathetic depiction of our common quest for meaning and happiness. Warren St. John invites us into the lives of a community of refugees, their bewildered neighbours in a small town, and a Jordanian woman who not only coaches but also mentors, mothers, and inspires some remarkable boys, to create a heartwarming tale about the transformations that occur when our disparate lives connect.“ Ishmael Beah
The File: A Personal History
Timothy Garton Ash
This classic of modern reportage by one of Britain’s most distinguished non-fiction writers describes what happened when he got access to the file on him kept during his years in East Germany by the Stasi, the infamous secret police. In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash – who was by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe – returned. This time he had come to look at a file that bore the code-name ‘Romeo’. The file had been compiled by the Stasi, with the assistance of dozens of informers. And it contained a meticulous record of Garton Ash’s earlier life in Berlin. In this memoir, Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who actually informed against him to the secret police. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of British intelligence to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.
The Plant Hunters
Carolyn Fry
This beautiful and lavish book tells the story of our obsession with plants. It ranges from the entourage of Alexander the Great, which included naturalists, to the establishment of botanical gardens and the discovery through exploration of the plants that have made or broken economies, such as tulips, tea and rubber. Travelling right around the world and throughout history, this is a tale of the botanical pioneers who changed the face of the world’s landscape. Lavishly illustrated, it also includes some twenty items of memorabilia such as: a letter from Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy; extracts from Joseph Hooker’s notebooks; an extract from the orchid sketchbook of John Day; and an original map of Kew Gardens made in 1740 by Jean Rocque.
A Corkscrew is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire
Nicholas Murray
The early 19th century saw a huge increase in travel of all kinds. Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837 came barely a year after John Murray’s first guidebook was published; in 1838 Bradshaw’s famous portable railway timetable appeared; and in 1841 Thomas Cook, the world’s first travel agent, organised its first tour (from London to Leicester and back by train). The age of the tourist had arrived. Alongside this, another phenomenon began to develop: exploration to wilder shores and uncharted lands. This is the focus of Nicholas Murray’s fascinating book which draws upon the extraordinary stories of Livingstone’s journey across Africa; Burton and Speke reaching Lake Tanganyika; John Stuart crossing Australia from south to north; Livingstone reaching the Zambezi; Richard Burton’s travels across Arabia, and countless other extraordinary and brave expeditions.
“Murray casts a detailed portrait of Victorian international exploits both great and small.” Scotland on Sunday
“Nicholas Murray’s diligent, informative and well-written book summarises the histories and writings of a diverse collection of travellers in India, Africa, the Far, Near and Middle East, South America, Australasia, the Poles…The book reveals…the attitudes of empire, the entitlement, the romanticisation of the exotic and the ‘scientific racism’…Murray fills the book with illuminating anecdote and detail” Daily Telegraph
Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia
Jonathan Brent
To most Westerners, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the days of the Iron Curtain. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it seemed that Russia had an ideal opportunity to confront its tortured past. In this book, Jonathan Brent explores the reasons this didn’t happen.
Why are the anti-semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, despite his wholesale slaughter of so many Russians, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in Moscow airport?
Drawing on 15 years of access to high-level Soviet archives to answer these questions, Brent shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the streets, while now the shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets teem with BMWs. Stalin’s spectre, however, hovers throughout, and in the book’s crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator’s personal papers, an unnerving prophecy of the world to come.
Both cultural history and personal memoir, Inside Stalin’s Archives is a deeply felt and brilliantly vivid portrait of Russia. Recommended.
Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak Out On the Power of the Word
Toni Morrison (coll.)
“The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, cancelled films – that thought is a nightmare.”
Toni Morrison quoted in an article about censorship and the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council.
In ‘Witness: The Inward Testimony’ Nadine Gordimer discusses the role of the writer as observer, and as someone who sees ‘what is really taking place’. She looks to Proust, Oe, Flaubert and Graham Greene to see how their philosophy squares with her own, ultimately concluding “Literature has been and remains a means of people rediscovering themselves.” In ‘Freedom to Write’, Orhan Pamuk elegantly describes escorting Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter around Turkey and how that experience changed his life. In ‘The Value of the Word’ Salman Rushdie shares a story from Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita in which the Devil talks to a frustrated writer called ‘The Master’. The writer is so upset with his own work he decides to burn it: “How could you do that?” the Devil asks…”Manuscripts do not burn”. Indeed, manuscripts do not burn, Rushdie argues, but writers do. The contributors include Chris Abani, Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Jonathan Franzen, Nadine Gordimer, David Grossman, Pico Iyer, Rick Moody, Toni Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, Ed Park, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Safran Foer, and others.
Who Is Mark Twain?
Mark Twain
Considered to be far ahead of his time on issues of race and politics, Twain remains one of literature’s greatest and brightest stars. Best known perhaps for his legendary Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer – his writing actually reached beyond the simple, but perfectly crafted, adventure story to tackle serious cultural issues such as slavery, which most either avoided or ignored. But although it had serious intentions, his writing was always infused with a great sense of humour – and it is evident in abundance in these twenty-four never-published-before essays about all elements of life and culture. In the piece ‘Jane Austen’, for instance, Twain wonders if Austen’s goal is to ‘make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters’ whilst the ‘Happy Memories of the Dental Chair’ will make you seriously appreciate modern dentistry.
Who’s Writing This? Fifty-five Writers on Humour, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process
Daniel Halpern (ed.)
Who is really controlling the pen? Editor Daniel Halpern was profoundly curious about the creative process - so he asked 55 world-renowned writers to briefly muse on “the fictional persona behind the scenes” – the alter(ed) ego who takes over when there is true literary work to be done. And the writers responded in a myriad of ways. Margaret Atwood, Frank Conroy, William Gass, Czeslaw Milosz, Susan Sontag, James Michener, Joyce Carol Oates and others proffered snapshot reflections on the process, some thoughtful and deep, some downright silly. Many provided self-portraits, which are included in this delightful, revealing and surprising collection. An eloquent celebration of self-knowledge and artistic expression that uniquely bares the writer’s soul.
A Beginners Guide To Acting English: A Family on the Run in a Foreign Country…England
Shappi Khorsandi
When you’re young just growing up seems hard enough. But if you’ve been shipped off to a new country and you don’t speak a word of the language it’s even harder. And if the ayatollah wants you and your family dead, then it starts to get really tricky…
Born in Tehran, Shappi is the young, precocious darling of the Khorsandi family - a warm-hearted, eccentric Iranian clan. But when her father takes a job in London, Shappi, her mother and her brother Peyvand follow him there. Then the Islamic Revolution erupts and her father becomes a wanted man.
So this is the story of growing up a stranger in a strange land where everyone smells of milk. It’s about learning kiss chase and how to eat fish fingers. But it is also the story of a close-knit family tested by the treat of everything they cherish being taken away.
Written by one of the brightest new comic stars in the UK, this is a funny, heartwarming and unusual story of family, exile and fitting in.
Things to Make You Go Hmmm…
What would the Buddha recycle? The Zen of Green Living
Rosemary Roberts
If the Buddha were alive today, he’d be the living embodiment of green living. He’d be collecting cans on the freeway, riding his bike to work, and replacing all his lightbulbs – one little satori at a time. In What Would the Buddha Recycle?, readers can channel His Holiness, reduce their footprint, and experience little Aha! moments when they: eat mindfully and lose the meat; make a Zen garden that nourishes the earth; choose sustainable clothing; meditate while walking instead of driving; and let go of attachment to things by giving away belongings. Living green is living Zen. Now readers can take right action and walk a green talk, starting today – just think how proud the Buddha would be!
Listed: Hundreds of Amusing, Amazing and Downright Weird Lists
Geoff Tibballs
Many of us are slaves to lists – the shopping list, the ‘to-do’ list, packing lists…the list literally goes on and on. And if we’re not making them we’re reading lists compiled by other people – seeing who’s top of the batting averages, winning at the box office or which school comes out on top come exam time. Listed! follows in this noble tradition and offers a wealth of readily accessible trivia on every topic under the sun. There are hundreds of eclectic rundowns with over 6,000 fantastic facts.
The Cloud Collector’s Handbook
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Following on from his Cloudspotter’s Guide, here (at last) is a handy little guide in which you can identify and record the clouds you see, and award yourself the relevant points. Whether it’s a common or garden Stratocumulus cloud (10 points) or the beautiful and elusive Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud (the highest scorer at 55 points), this is the perfect companion for gazing at the sky, watching the clouds go by.
The Big Necessity : Adventures in the World of Human Waste
Rose George
Produced behind closed doors, disposed of discreetly, hidden by euphemism, shit is rarely out in the open in ‘civilised’ society, but the world of waste – and the people who deal with it, work with it and in it – is a rich one. This book takes us underground to the sewers of NYC and London and overground, to meet the heroes of India’s sanitation movement, American sewage schoolteachers, the Japanese genius at the cutting edge of toilet technology, and the biosolids lobbying team. With a journalist’s nose for a story, and a campaigner’s desire for change, Rose George also addresses the politics of this under-reported social and environmental effluent, and the consequences of our reluctance to talk about it. Witty and original, The Big Necessity proves that shit doesn’t have to be a dirty word.
“The first popular study written on the subject. And popular it deserves to be. George has the right kind of breezy serious approach needed with this universal taboo” Daily Mail
“A fascinating, wise, calm and scrupulously drawn portrait of the world and its waste – [this is] a seriously important book.” Simon Winchester
Sefika Awards 2009
At the Sefika Awards dinner in Durban (booktrade oscars jointly hosted by the Booksellers Association and the Publishers Association), we were thrilled to receive three awards –
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Best Independent Bookseller (General Trade category),
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a special award for the “Booksellers that went the extra mile”
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the overall Best Bookshop in the country.
The reason we’re in the position to collect awards such as this is the amazing support we’ve received from the book lovers of Cape Town (and further afield).
Thank you for your support and encouragement.
Thank you for buying the kinds of books we want to sell.
Thank you for supporting our events.
Writer’s Group
Writers, would you like:
- to share your stories, poems or journal?
- to receive a gentle critique of your work?
- to learn more about writing and publishing?
- to be around other writers?
Please join us at the first meeting of The Writer’s Group, where you can share your work and knowledge with other members. It doesn’t matter if you are a published, aspiring or closet writer or if you just want to learn from the other members, you are welcome. We will make up the rules as we go along based on the needs of the group. As writing is a solo endeavor, it will give you the opportunity to be around people who share your passion.
The first meeting will be at the Book Lounge some time in September 5:00p.m. – 7:00p.m.
If you have any question please contact Margaret at mmcewan0708@yahoo.com or Tel: 072-233-4141 (Please do not call the Book Lounge for information) .