September 12, 2009
Tall Stories Makes A Point
We are attending the annual Knifemakers Guild of Southern Africa where we are selling books with a fine edge. As we are honed well, things are going swimmingly.The show takes place over two days every year. This is day two, and we are rearing to go, though tired in manner of canines.
Posted by Andre Kruger.
June 17, 2009
 There used to be a vacuum in South African fiction, right there on the border between crime fiction and thrillers with contemporary interest. One that needed to be filled with fast-paced, high tension, relevant stories with recognisable, interesting characters set in the roiling society of post-apartheid SA. That gap has been filled by Deon Meyer. At the outset you will discover that he possesses that vital skill authors in these genres need (and often lack) –... Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : Crime Fiction
June 9, 2009
The Weirdness
 I have just finished reading Christopher Brookmyre's Be My Enemy and it was hugely enjoyable.He is one of the foremost satirical authors in the UK and writes a kind of crime fiction. I say a kind of because he is very hard to classify and label, much in the same way that Iain Banks is. He is often likened to Carl Hiaasen but to my mind is much funnier and subtler. While he normally starts out in a manner that lulls you into thinking that you are confronted with a run-of-the-mil... Continue reading...
Posted by André Krüger. Posted In : Crime Fiction
May 30, 2009
 This is one of my favourite poems. Almost every night I drive home, from Pretoria to Johannesburg along the Ben Schoeman and when I reach the Woodmead interchange, I think of the Wally Serotes’ “neon flowers”.
City Johannesburg - Mongane Wally Serote
This way I salute you: My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket Or into my inner jacket pocket For my pass, my life, Jo'burg City. My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets For my thin, ever lean wal...
Posted by meredith kempthorne. Posted In : South African Poetry
April 23, 2009
Just Unpacked ! Memorandum : a story of painting by Marlene van Niekerk & Adriaan van Zyl
We have just unpacked copies of Memorandum : a story with paintings by Marlene van Niekerk & Adriaan van Zyl. 
In this unique book, the text and visual images offer parallel narratives that resonate poignantly with each other. Adriaan van Zyl's series of more than 20 paintings portrays a patient's experience from waiting room to ward giving a quietly disturbing view of the soullessness of hospitals ... Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : South African Literature
April 23, 2009
Christopher’s Ghosts, by Charles McCarry
 This fascination with spy novels may pass soon, or it may not. I’m not making any apologies or taking any bets. Not really. I seem to be more powerfully attracted to good spy fiction as time goes by, as I age. (Or decay, depending on your level of compassion or charity). It’s like one of those exercises you would find in a magazine, edited by someone who took one undergraduate course of psychology, where you are asked to share with someone yo... Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : Spy Stories
April 23, 2009
Devil May Care, a James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming, read by me.
 As a general rule one wants a book title to be pithy and to the point, the front wrapper to be clean and clear. In this the above book fails. In fact, the cover is, well, covered in writing. However, it needs every word, except of course the bit about me being the reader. That’s just me being facetious, but I think you gathered that already.
It does need all of the title though. If you have seen b... Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : Spy Stories
April 23, 2009
 Louis de Bernières – Explaining to Humans What They Did
It’s probably true that readers come to expect a certain product from an author, though this may be more true of specific genres like crime fiction and historical romances, built, to a more or lesser extent, on working, known models. Good authors, however, surprise. They are to be identified, as often as not, by the breadth and range of their writing, the diversity of the situations they tackle and the spread of characters they inven...
Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : Literature
April 23, 2009
Twilight of the feet of the Idols
No hero is ever safe from being felled by his/her past. I discovered this when the story broke that Gunther Grass had served in the Waffen-SS. I, and others, had believed him when he claimed that he did not fight in the war, and subsequently found his anti-nazi stance strenghtened by the courage of his convictions. In his old age he admitted that he had lied about it. What a quandry for his supporters. He was, and I suppose still is, despite the evidence of hi... Continue reading...
Posted by meredith kempthorne. Posted In : Literature
April 23, 2009
Nick Hornby’s Slam, Easily Excellent.
 Nick Hornby is a remarkable writer, not because he writes well (he does), but because he is easy to read. It is one of the most difficult illusions for an author to master: making the reader believe that writing is easy. In this Nick Hornby is simply inspired. The eye flies over the page, the pages turn quickly and the voices of the characters chatter away in your head like an overheard conversation in a quiet room.
His latest offering, Slam, is ostensibl... Continue reading...
Posted by Andre Kruger. Posted In : Literature
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