by Amanda on May 24th, 2012
Please join Random House Struik and The Book Lounge for the launch of Alex Latimer’s new children’s book, Penguin’s Hidden Talent. The launch will take place on Saturday, 2 June at 3:00 PM.
See you there!
Event Details
~ ~ ~
Penguin would love to take part in the Big Annual Talent Show. But he just can’t seem to find his special talent. He tries magic tricks and juggling household appliances – even burping the alphabet…But nothing seems quite right. Can his friends help him discover what he’s really good at?
This is an even-funnier follow-up to the brilliant Boy Who Cried Ninja. Alex Latimer has created another beautiful, atmospheric world that you long to visit and return to.
About the author
Alex Latimer is an author and illustrator living in Cape Town, which is why he regularly has to shoo baboons out of his lounge. Penguin’s Hidden Talent is his second book for children.
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Tags: Alex Latimer,
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by Amanda on May 23rd, 2012
In Broers in die stryd skryf Chris Schoeman oor die groot aantal Hollanders en Hollandse uitgewekenes wat gedurende die Tweede Anglo-Boereoorlog in 1899 aan die kant van die Boere geveg het.
In die eerste twee uittreksels hieronder word die verhale van Hollanders vertel wat deur die Britse Leër tereggestel is. Die laaste uittreksel bevat interessante aanhalings uit Hollanders se dagboeke wat die kommandolewe in Suid-Afrika beskryf:
Die Britse Leër se teregstelling van Kaapse rebelle en ander vir sogenaamde oorlogsmisdade en verraad het ook groot woede plaaslik en oorsee ontketen. Die legendes van Boerehelde soos Kommandante Gideon Scheepers en Hans Lötter, en Veldkornet Willie Louw is almal deeglik geboekstaaf, maar wat minder bekend is, is die verhale van sommige buitelanders wat gedurende die oorlog tereggestel is. Onder hulle was tien Hollanders, van wie nege in die veld saam met die Boere was.
Een van die mees aangrypende verhale is dié van die 22-jarige Hendrik Johan Veenstra, wat op 4 September 1901 in Colesberg tereggestel is saam met ‘n Sweed, Frederick Toy, en ‘n Boer, Hendrik van Vuuren. Veenstra is in Amsterdam gebore, was in die beste skole en het verskeie sertifikate op die gebied van handel verower. Sy toekomstige werkgewer, ‘n Frans-Hollandse maatskappy, het hom na Suid-Afrika gestuur om sy oom, Frans van der Ahee, in Colesberg te besoek kort voor die uitbreek van die oorlog. Hy het op 3 April 1901 by Kommandant Gideon Scheepers se kommando aangesluit, waarskynlik omdat hy soos baie van sy mede-Hollanders geesdriftig oor die Boeresaak gevoel het en daadwerklik iets wou doen om dit te bevorder. Sy adres is later in hofdokumente aangegee as ‘Rietfontein, Murraysburg’. Skaars drie maande later is hy saam met Toy en ‘n Luitenant Izak Liebenberg by Onbedacht in die Camdeboo gevange geneem. Op 5 Augustus 1901 is hy deur ‘n militêre hof in Graaff-Reinet verhoor op aanklagte van hoogverraad, die dra van vuurwapens en rebellie – aanklagte wat streng gesproke onmoontlik was aangesien hy steeds ‘n Hollandse burger was en op geen manier Britse burgerskap kon verkry het nie. hy is ook aangekla van brandstigting en stropery. Volgens die hof het hy drie huise in die Murraysburg-gebied aan die brand gesteek, waaronder die magistraatskantoor en die pragtige ou woning op die plaas Vleiplaas. Waarskynlik in die hoop dat hy as Hollander gevrywaar was teen vervolging, het Veenstra skuldig gepleit. ‘n Paar maande later, toe Scheeepers in Graaff-Reinet verhoor is, het hy erken dat hy Vleiplaas afgebrand het, sowel as die Rose-Innes-huis, Sharwood-huis en ‘n stoor.
Nog ‘n Hollander wat in die Kaapkolonie tereggestel is, was Piet de Ruyt, blykbaar die eerste man aan Boerekant wat tereggestel is vir die dra van ‘n Kakie-uniform. Lord Kitchener het vroeër bevele uitgevaardig dat enige Boere wat in ‘n Britse uniform gevang word, deur ‘n standregtelike krygsraad verhoor moes word, en indien hulle skuldig bevind is, moes hulle op die plek doodgeskiet word. Die verhaal rondom De Ruyt se gevangeneming is ietwat komies, maar nie minder tragies as dié van Veenstra nie.
De Ruyt, ʼn voormalige lid van Theron se verkennerskorps, het hom later in die Kaapkolonie by Generaal Ben Bouwer se kommando onder Generaal Smuts bevind. Hy was een van ʼn geslote groep van elf man wat deur Deneys Reitz die ‘Rijk Section’ gedoop is – ʼn ironiese verwysing na die vodde wat hulle as klere gedra het. Jan van Zijl, ook ʼn Hollander, was ook in dié groep, soos Reitz self. Die afdeling is deur Smuts gevra om as sy verkenners op te tree.
As dit nie die skroeiende son van die Suid-Afrikaanse somer was nie, was dit die snerpende koue en reën wat hul lewens uiters miserabel buite in die veld gemaak het. Vir die Boere wat gewoond was aan die land se toestande was dit erg genoeg, maar vir die buitelanders was dit selfs erger.
‘Hier ben ik nu onder enkel boeren, gedwongen te leven als zij en geen hooger eischen dan zij te stellen,’ skryf Ver Loren van Themaat. ‘Het kost me in het eerst wel moeite aan dit harde leven te wennen; ‘s nachts slaap ik onbehagelijk van de kou. De beschutting van den enkelen doornboom mag iets helpen tegen de uitstraling en den regen, het is of de nactwind er nog vinniger onder door blaast. Eens op een nacht, als we de paarden bij ons aan de takken van den boom hebben vastgebonden, kom een verschrikkelijk onweer opzetten. Zoo fel slaat het licht uit, zoo vlak boven ons ratelen de slangen, dadelijk op het licht volgend, dat ik het onverantwoordelijk oordeel langer onder den boom te blijven slapen; ik neem mijn kooigoed op en ga in het water in de modder wat verder liggen. Het felle lighten kan ik aan mijn oogen niet verdragen en ik kruip geheel onder de kombaars. Een echte nact der verschrikking. Den volgenden dag houdt predikant Louw uit Heidelberg, die dezer dagen in het lager verblyft, godsdienstoefening; hij dankt God, dat we allen weer de zon hebben mogen zien opgaan, en dit zijn zeker geen ijdele woorden; door dit buitenleven wordt men weer meer natuurmensch en voelt de geweldige natuurmachten in haar volle verschrikking.
Boekbesonderhede
Cats: Afrikaans,
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Tags: Afrikaans,
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by Amanda on May 18th, 2012
Hanlie Retief gesels met Sarel van der Merwe, “die legende met alles: die roem, die snor, die rykdom, die meisies”, oor sy outobiografie, SuperVan & I:
Hy cruise die kar asof hy in ’n leunstoel sit. SuperVan op ’n agterpaadjie naby die Paarl, SuperRustig. Net die wenkbrou lig so nou en dan effens.
Ons Koning van Koel.
Maar daar dans duiwels in sy oë.
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by Amanda on May 18th, 2012
Join Random House Struik and Skoobs for the launch of Solace by Andrew Brown.
On Thursday 31 May at 6:30PM the author will be in conversation with Corina van der Spoel at Skoobs Theatre of Books, Montecasino.
See you there!
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Cats: Crime,
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Tags: Andrew Brown,
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by Amanda on May 16th, 2012
Lucy Graham attended the recent launch of Andrew Brown‘s Solace at The Book Lounge and discovered just how Brown finds time to write in between his job as an advocate, police reservist and father of three. Graham expresses her thoughts on the event in an article for SLiPNet:
By the time Andrew Brown is seated on the small podium, along with Michiel Heyns, who will interview Brown on his latest novel, Solace, The Book Lounge is full to overflowing. The buzz in the room, I notice, is peculiar to the launch of crime fiction novels. It was the same vibe at the launch of recent novels by Deon Meyer and Margie Orford. Say what you like about South African crime fiction as a genre, but there is no denying its burgeoning readership and the interest – even now among academics – that it is garnering.
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by Amanda on May 16th, 2012
Two Random House Struik imprints have just launched eBook library apps for the iPad. The apps, Earth & Nature (Struik Nature) and South Africa in Print (Zebra Press), will house a wide selection of natural history and current events eBooks at discounted prices.
Titles available at the initial launch include Guide to Night Skies of Southern Africa, Basic Bird ID in Southern Africa, Filmer’s Spiders, Winnie Mandela: A Life, Herschelle Gibbs’ biography To the Point and eBook bestseller 32 Battalion.
Additional titles will be added to the libraries on an ongoing basis and will immediately be available for purchase when the customer next opens the app.
The Apple iBookstore is currently not available in South Africa, but South Africans can purchase apps from iTunes. These library applications enable local and international iPad users to purchase South African eBooks. The apps can be downloaded for free from iTunes and customers can then purchase eBooks seamlessly from within the app.
The apps can be downloaded from here iTunes: Earth and Nature and South Africa in Print.
Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd is South Africa’s leading publishing house and offers readers the best of both local and international titles. It promotes books written in both English and Afrikaans through its many diverse and highly respected imprints, which include the Struik Lifestyle, Struik Nature, Struik Travel & Heritage, Zebra Press, Umuzi, eKhaya and Fernwood Press imprints.
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eBook options – Download now!
eBook options – Download now!
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by Amanda on May 10th, 2012
The launch of Andrew Brown‘s fourth novel, Solace, was a Book Lounge humdinger. Eager fans crammed into every available space to hear the award-winning author, who is variously a lawyer, farmer and police reservist. Brown was joined in conversation by Michiel Heyns and together, they were welcomed by Mervyn Sloman as “two of South Africa’s best, most important contemporary writers.”
Brown and Heyns kept the audience enchanted with their wry and understated dialogue that was nevertheless a highly personal account revealing much about both men’s gentle, subtle and refined approach to literature and the writing process.
Brown spoke of his queasiness on completion of a manuscript and the ensuing anxiety “… that what I’ve managed to create won’t stand any kind of test, and that I don’t really know when it was written. I can remember times when I was writing but I can’t remember a coherent period of time that gave rise to this manuscript… the worry is that I’ll never be able to do it again. Now I have these 90 000 words, but clearly I’ll never be able to do it again.”
He said he stole time, never writing in a single fluid motion, never taking it seriously enough to insist that everybody left him alone “because writing is a serious business.” The easiest place for him to write was not “spledid isolation in a rural getaway”, but at home, with the bergies knocking on the door and his children needing help with their Afrikaans grammar. “It stops me from getting on a pedestal about writing, stops me from pushing the real part of life away….”
For Brown, writing is not a career but a passionate hobby: “I don’t give it enough coherent time. That makes it quite hard because it becomes disjointed. Anybody whose tried to write anything longer than a short email knows that you don’t sit down and stick with it when you come back to it you’ve lost your train of thought; you’ve lost all the atmosphere you had in your mind. Each time you’ve then got to read yourself back into it, and that makes it time consuming and inefficient.”
In a similar vein, Brown spoke with disarming candour about the editing process. He advising that one needs great “heart and spirit” to fully appreciate how the latter involves engaging with “very intelligent, very pedantic people” who go to great lengths to explain your errors. “They are, of course, right; and you are, of course, wrong,” he said, dryly.
He concluded: “Books should have on their front cover, the author, and the person who edited the book. I had no formal training in how to write. Everything I know about writing has been taught to me by editors. Without them, no one would have the heart to say, ‘That’s the most awful piece of purple prose I ever saw.’”
By the end of the launch The Book Lounge had sold out of copies of Solace, marking the start of good things for Andrew Brown.
* * * * * * * *
Liesl Jobson tweeted from the launch using #livebooks:
* * * * * * * *
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Tags: Andrew Brown,
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by Amanda on May 10th, 2012
A story of war and peace in Mozambique and beyond, Memories at Low Altitude spans four decades of southern African history, from the point of view of one of its main protagonists. Jacinto Veloso participated in the Mozambican liberation struggle and served in Samora Machel’s cabinet after independence, when the region was dominated by civil war and the conflict between East and West.
Veloso’s story covers many fascinating issues of this period, among them: the conflict between FRELIMO and the South African-backed RENAMO; the negotiations that resulted in the Nkomati Accord, in which he was a key participant; the processes that resulted in the withdrawal of Cuban and South African troops from Angola and the independence of Namibia; the impact of post-independence Mozambique’s strictly socialist economy and its subsequent shift to a more market-orientated approach; and the aeroplane crash in which Samora Machel was killed.
Velosa’s insights are particularly interesting given his role in the commission of inquiry into the crash.
About the author
Jacinto Veloso was born in Lourenço Marques (today Maputo). In the 1950s he studied at the Military Academy in Lisbon, where he qualified as an aviation pilot. In 1963, together with João Ferreira, Veloso abandoned Mozambique, piloting a Portuguese Air Force plane to Dar es Salaam and becoming a member of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). He participated actively in the national liberation struggle and accomplished risky missions abroad. After independence he became National Director of Intelligence Services and Minister of State Security. He has also served as Minister for Economic Affairs, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister of Information. In 2005 he was elected by Parliament as a member of the National Defence and Security Council.
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by Amanda on May 7th, 2012
Zebra Press and Kalk Bay Books invite you to the launch of Solace by Andrew Brown.
Brown will be in conversation with fellow crime writer Margie Orford on Wednesday 16 May at 6 for 6:30 PM.
See you there!
Event Details
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by Amanda on May 4th, 2012
Zebra Press has released a book trailer for Andrew Brown‘s fourth novel, Solace, a gripping crime thriller set in Cape Town. Take a look:
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Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
