Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category
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!
Event Details
Book Details
» read article
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.
Book details
» read article
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:
* * * * * * * *
Facebook gallery
Book details
» read article
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
Book Details
» read article
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:
Book details
» read article
by Amanda on Apr 30th, 2012
Zebra Press and The Book Lounge invite you to the launch of Solace by Andrew Brown. The author will be in conversation with Michiel Heyns on 8 May at 5:30 for 6:00 PM.
See you there!
Event Details
Book Details
» read article
by Amanda on Apr 26th, 2012
Forthcoming from Zebra Press:
The body of a Muslim boy is found in a synagogue, mutilated in what looks like a ritual sacrifice, and Inspector Eberard Februarie is called in to solve the case. As news of the murder quickly becomes public, a storm of religious violence threatens to engulf Cape Town. Eberard, however, suspects that the case is not as clear cut as it seems. But can he prove this before the storm breaks?
In his investigation, Eberard must steer between Islamist agitators determined to spread unrest, shady security agents trying to trip him up, and a powerful church pastor intent on exploiting the situation for his own purposes. The story moves swiftly from forensic laboratory to drug house, from church office to street demonstration, as the case takes unpredictable and violent twists.
A gripping novel with an unstoppable plot, Solace exposes the religious tensions that threaten to tear society apart.
“Andrew Brown is probably one of the best of the new generation of South African writers…With writers like him, the South African crime novel is both coming of age and becoming a serious contender on the global literary stage.”
– Anthony Egan, Mail & Guardian
About the author
Andrew Brown practises as an advocate in Cape Town, and is a reservist sergeant in the South African Police Service. He is the author of four novels: Inyenzi, about the Rwandan genocide, and the crime novels Coldsleep Lullaby, Refuge and Solace. In Street Blues he wrote about his experiences as a police reservist. Brown won the 2006 Sunday Times Fiction Prize for Coldsleep Lullaby, and his work has been shortlisted for the Alan Paton Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa Region). He is married, with three children.
Book details
» read article
by Amanda on Sep 3rd, 2009
Andrew Brown‘s Sunday Times Fiction Prize winner, Coldsleep Lullaby, has been published in Germany by BTB, an imprint of Random House/Bertelsmann, as Schlaf ein, mein Kind. Mechthild Barth is the translator, and her version of Brown’s brilliant thriller has been killing ‘em in Deutschland.
The book made it on the KrimiWelt Bestenliste, a list for the best new crime novels (German and translated), released by ARTE TV (a nationwide newspaper and radio station), debuting at number 9:
Zwei Handlungsstränge, die Brown parallel laufen lässt, ohne auf eine der beliebten „Verknüpfungen“ von „damals“ und „heute“ zu setzen. Zwei Stränge, die erst ganz am Ende des Buches miteinander zu tun haben – aber das weiß nur der Erzähler und damit der Leser; die Figuren wissen es nicht. Daraus entsteht eine grausame Pointe. So etwas ist ungewöhnlich, weil explizit literarisch, nicht genre-üblich.
And the book was reviewed on national radio last week (a summary of the German follows):
Ein paar hundert Jahre früher, im späten 17. Jahrhundert zur Zeit des berühmten holländischen Gouverneurs Simon van der Stel, Namensgeber von Stellenbosch, “Mischling” und Initiator des Weinanbaus am Kap: Eine junge Sklavin wird von einem für die Kolonie unersetzbaren Weinanbauspezialisten vergewaltigt und gedemütigt. Sie wehrt sich.
Zwei Handlungsstränge, die Brown parallel laufen lässt, ohne auf eine der beliebten “Verknüpfungen” von “damals” und “heute” zu setzen. Zwei Stränge, die erst ganz am Ende des Buches zusammenkommen – aber das weiß nur der Erzähler und damit der Leser; die Figuren wissen es nicht. Daraus entsteht eine grausame Pointe. So etwas ist ungewöhnlich, weil explizit literarisch, nicht genreüblich.
Says one of Zebra Press’ sources, the “review is extremely positive: ‘teriffic’, ‘very literary, very well written, like the stroke of a brush’, stating that [Coldsleep Lullaby] cleverly uses patterns of the crime novel but is not a typical crime novel… it’s brilliant how [Brown] – throughout the plot – looks at the characters through different focal widths with his complex literary lens… the reviewer [Thomas Wörtche, a very renowned crime novel expert in Germany] says: the fiction… stands for itself, is unique. And if we were looking for an author to compare it to, it would maybe be Patricia Highsmith”.
Well done to Brown – here’s hoping Coldsleep Lullaby keeps the whole nation of Germany awake at night!
Book details
» read article
by Amanda on Jun 22nd, 2009
As the countdown begins to the 2009 Sunday Times Literary Awards in Johannesburg on August 1, we look at two of the shortlisted writers.
Tymon Smith spoke to Andrew Brown, who wrote Street Blues to shatter popular misconceptions about the police.
This is your first work of non-fiction. Why did you decide to write about your experiences as a police reservist?
There were a number of motivations for writing the book. I had already started writing down some of my experiences — not to publish them, but to help me work through some of the traumas that I was exposed to while working with the police. After Coldsleep Lullaby did so well and won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, I actually felt quite intimidated at the idea of writing again — I hadn’t until then thought of myself as a writer and so I wrote without any pressure, simply for the enjoyment of it. After the award, it suddenly felt that there were expectations of me and I thought that writing about my own experiences — where I didn’t need to make up the characters or the stories — would be an easy way to get over my anxiety. But a strong motivation was also to try and debunk some of the stereotypes about the police force (many of which I held myself before joining). My 10 years as a reservist have changed the way I see the police; I have enormous respect and fondness for them.
What inspired you to join the reservists?
I had been involved in the UDF in the ’80s and this had given me a real sense that I was contributing towards the community. After 1990, my involvement fell away as I am not a political animal and I couldn’t see myself working in the ANC. I then read an article about my local police station (Mowbray) and how it was battling with a lack of vehicles. I offered to assist, although joining the reservists was the last thing on my mind — my experiences in the ’80s had left me with a huge distrust of the police and I viewed them as dangerous, even in the ’90s. But then a particularly committed inspector, who was the head of the reservists, slowly cajoled me into accepting the idea.
(more…)
» read article
