We recommend: Till we can keep an animal

"(This) fascinating debut novel was awarded the European Union Literary Award (in 2008)."
"It is the story of Susan, a woman in her fifties who is raped, then shot and killed by robbers in Cape Town."
"Susan relates the story of her death as a kind of omniscient narrator. When she is killed she doesn't go wherever it is dead people go. Instead, she hovers in the world between ours and the next, eavesdropping on the conversations of the living, reminiscing about her life. We, as readers, share in these reminiscences. In a deft way the narrative defies the cliché that dead people don't tell tales."
"The story's narrative poise and control means we are composed about many things that could possibly enrage us, sending us into tantrums. But we don't come out emotionless; Voysey-Braig is much too ruthless to let us go off easily; we feel a kind of a slow-burning, consuming rage at crime, the single biggest blight on South Africa's exemplary democracy."
"Till We Can Keep an Animal is not exactly an easy book to read, both in terms of its narrative structure and its subject. Perhaps it is worth the trouble, for forging a nation from disparate groups and interests is never easy." (Excerpts from a 2009 review by Percy Zvomuya in The Mail & Guardian)

We recommend: The Slap

The plot: "(a)n obnoxious child does something faintly threatening at a family barbecue, and the father of the threatened child smacks him. Everyone is so upset by this that the barbecue breaks up in a hurry, and (...) the parents of the slapped child have the slapper arrested."

"(A)ll the characters in The Slap are touchy, and that seems to be part of Tsiolkas's point – in the Australia of the 21st century, multiculturalism has won. People of all ages, all ethnic groups and all political persuasions are interconnected and intermarried, and, at least some of the time, they just can't handle it. The Slap, which was first published in Australia in 2008 and has since won the Commonwealth prize, is a "way we live now" novel, and it is riveting from beginning to end."
(Excerpts from a review by Jane Smiley in The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk)

The Library celebrates 1st annual National Book Week

The Library has been celebrating the 1st annual National Book Week (6-13 September 2010), by focusing on the fiction available in the library's collection and offering new books for sale on Level 3.

Peter Carey up for Booker Prize

London - Australian writer Peter Carey has moved closer to a literary hat trick on Tuesday by being named a finalist for fiction's prestigious Booker Prize, an award he has already won twice.

Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America - a US odyssey inspired by philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville - is one of six contenders for the £50 000 prize, which guarantees a glut of media attention and a big boost in sales.

Carey took home Bookers in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of Kelly Gang. He would be the first writer to win the prize three times, but it is considered a long shot.

South Africa's Damon Galgut is also on the list. See the article on www.news24.com for favourites and other finalists

Literary bad boy in plagiarism row

Paris - Sexist, obscene, racist were the accusations thrown at Michel Houellebecq over his previous novels.

Now it's plagiarism, after France's best-known living writer allegedly cut and pasted chunks of Wikipedia into his new book.

(From www.news24.com)

We recommend: "The Native Commissioner"

"A few years ago, Shaun Johnson discovered in his cellar by the sea in Cape Town the collected papers of his own father, and the narrator in The Native Commissioner does the same. George kept every letter, every report, every scrap of paper, his whole life contained in one large cardboard box forgotten for 40 years. The places and towns described - Libode, the Transkei and Witbank - are places Shaun knew as a child. Shaun's father, like George Jamieson, was a Native Commissioner and, in the novel, George's son, coming upon this great treasure trove, pieces together his father's life, developing all the while a great affection and understanding of a man he barely knew. The Native Commissioner, which basically lets George's letters, reports and notes do the story-telling, works on all sorts of levels - as a picture of the last days of colonial rule, of the full awfulness of apartheid as practised on the ground, and of a voyage by a son almost entering his father's soul".
Ivan Fallon, The Independent (2006)

We recommend: Boston Snowplough

Review:
We’re in not-so-sunny South Africa in Boston Snowplough: specifically, the Natal Midlands during a snowstorm. The local constabulary asks petrol station proprietor David Roth to take his ancient grader on to the roads. Along the way to the Edendale turnoff Roth comes across a stranded bus, which, unbeknown to the driver, is carrying a couple of killers among its more ordinary passengers. He leaves half the passengers, including the killers, at a small rural settlement and brings the rest to the tearoom across the road from his petrol station. Roth’s a man with a secret — and we don’t discover what it is, the mission of the killers or the twist in Rabie’s tale, until close to the end of the book. We have a copy in the library!