Archive for the ‘Fiction’ Category
by Kate on May 23rd, 2013
What Emma van der Vliet would like readers to take away from her new novel Thirty Second World, is that you shouldn’t confuse doing it all with having it all. In the book, two women try to balance careers in the advertising industry with their relationships and family life.
“It’s not about balancing things, because that is definitely wishful thinking,” Van der Vliet told the Classy Bird blog. “Sometimes certain fields have to lie fallow for a bit while you tend to others, for instance my fiction writing field while I was busy with baby-making and a PhD”.
It has been six years since you released your first novel. Why has there been such a long break between books?
I was still working full time as a lecturer for the first few years after Past Imperfect was published, and I also popped out a third child and a PhD. Oh, and I did a teaching degree. So it was hard to find time to write in that mix! A lot of mental gestation happens in the back of my mind while I’m doing school projects, cooking fish fingers, trying to get my head around chunks of film theory or having a bath. But the actual writing takes time.
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by Kate on May 22nd, 2013
Never Let Go by Gareth Crocker was published earlier this year and Reader’s Digest has already expressed an interest in it for their international Pegasus Programme, which condenses fiction titles for the Select Editions volumes.
Crocker’s first novel, Finding Jack, was published in seven Reader’s Digest volumes, making him the second South African, after Alan Paton, to have his work selected by them.
Crocker’s agent in London is also in negotiations with “a top Hollywood producer” who is interested in adapting both Never Let Go and Finding Jack.
Press release:
As South African author, Gareth Crocker, continues to launch Never Let Go (Penguin 2013) around the country, the novel has already attracted interest from both Hollywood and publishing giants, Reader’s Digest International.
The novel, a high-octane thriller, tells the story of a famous American novelist who loses his young daughter in a botched kidnapping. Following her death, the author is on the verge of taking his own life when a stranger arrives at his gate, promising the impossible: to bring his daughter back.
Never Let Go has just been released by Penguin South Africa and has already and attracted interest from Reader’s Digest’s international Pegasus Programme. The programme selects what it believes are among the hottest fiction titles from around the globe which are then condensed for their various Select Editions volumes in territories such as the United States, Australia, Asia and The United Kingdom. Crocker became only the second South African author (after Alan Paton) to have his work selected by Reader’s Digest when his first novel, Finding Jack, was signed to Reader’s Digest in 2009. On that occasion, Gareth’s novel appeared in seven different volumes together with the likes of Lee Child, Mary Higgins Clark, Jeffrey Archer and James Patterson.
In addition to this, Gareth’s London agent is currently in negotiations with attorneys on behalf of a top Hollywood producer who wants to make films out of both Never Let Go and Finding Jack.
‘It’s all been quite overwhelming,’ Gareth explains. ‘While you hope your work will be well received, it really is quite something when it attracts this sort of attention. I’m thrilled that Reader’s Digest have expressed an interest in condensing another one of my novels and am even more excited by the interest from Hollywood. The producer concerned has put together films that have been nominated for multiple Oscars and currently works with some of the biggest names in the industry.’
Crocker is unfortunately unable to reveal the producer’s name until the contracts have been finalised.
‘While there are never any guarantees in Hollywood, I’m just grateful that my work is being considered for production,’ says Crocker. ‘I’m desperate to play a driver or a pizza delivery guy in the films, just for a laugh.’
Ends
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by Kate on May 21st, 2013
In The Cutting Room, Mary Watson explores not only crime in South Africa but also “the relationship between different kinds of spaces and the people who inhabit them”. That is why she used the haunted house motif in this thriller, as an extreme example of this relationship, Watson said in an interview for the Classy Bird blog. The house is “given a presence and seems to come alive, possibly acting in a malevolent way towards its occupants”.
After winning the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2006 for your short story, ‘Jungfrau’; what made you decide to write the psychological thriller, The Cutting Room?
I wanted to write a book that reflected on the experience of crime in South Africa. I also wanted to explore a relationship that was riddled with contradictions. Most simply, it’s a book about how people do bad things to each other, however subtle or dramatic.
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by Kate on May 15th, 2013
Isaac is smuggled into Botswana lying beneath a coffin in the back of a hearse in Eleanor Morse’s White Dog Fell From the Sky. He is left lying on the side of the road, and when he comes to, he sees a white dog sitting next to him. “I am already dead, he thought, and this is my companion.”
Read the rest of the excerpt, as Isaac meets a woman who helps him, tries to find his way in Botswana and encounters someone from back home:
The hearse pulled onto a scrubby track, traveled several hundred feet, and stopped. The passenger door opened, followed by the driver’s door. Two men stepped out. They walked to the rear door, and to- gether the men slid out a coffin and laid it carefully on the ground. They returned to the car, struggled with something inside, and dragged out a limp body. It was so covered with road dust, its face was gone.
The driver splashed a bucket of water over it, nudged it with a toe. Rivulets ran down the side of one cheek, water etching through dust to walnut-colored skin.
“He’s late, no more in this world,” the passenger said.
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by Kate on May 14th, 2013
How did the leopard get his spots? Why do cats act as though they own the place? What does a crocodile like best for lunch? Why are rhinos so cranky? What causes the ocean tides to rise and fall? Who wrote the alphabet?
Generations of children have grown up with the Just So Stories and have been captivated by Kipling’s wonderful insights into the world around us – all delivered in his mesmerising, read-aloud prose.
Now these classic gems have been given a new look for a new generation. Illustrated by children’s book author Alex Latimer, each story comes alive anew with Latimer’s own insights and humour.
About the illustrator
Alex Latimer is a South African illustrator. His first children’s book was published by Random House in the UK and Peachtree Publishers in the USA. Alex is also part of the team responsible for the cartoon The Western Nostril. He lives in Cape Town.
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by Kate on May 13th, 2013
Taiye Selasi, who was recently named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, was interviewed by Ellah Allfrey for the Granta podcast about her debut novel Ghana Must Go, which is set in a few different countries.
Allfrey commented on the novel’s various settings, saying that this seems to “reflect the contemporary reality of Africans”. Selasi spoke about her own experience of living in different places and described her life as “sort of a five CD disc changer rotation” between Delhi, New York, Accra, Rome and London.
Selasi also shared her “Writing Playlist” with Granta, naming six songs that she likes to listen to while writing, including “Fool for You” by Cee-Lo Green, performed by Alice Smith, and “Summertime” performed by Kat Edmonson:
1. In a Sentimental Mood by John Coltrane
Perhaps it’s because I was raised by a music-loving mother, perhaps because I studied piano, cello, music theory – whatever the reason, my approach to prose is informed by my sense of sound. For me, notes tell stories; stories are melodies. No piece of music makes this point more clearly than Coltrane’s. Those first seven notes of ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ hit my ears like words, not notes. I shall never tell stories as well as Coltrane’s alto sax, but it’s my greatest joy to try.
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by Kate on May 10th, 2013
On his visit to South Africa, Anthony Schneider met with Sue Grant-Marshall to discuss his novel A Quiet Kind of Courage.
Schneider, who was born in South Africa and now lives in New York, spoke about his lead character, Henry Wegland, who joins the ANC during apartheid, goes to their secret meeting place at Lilliesleaf farm, and gets involved in an assassination attempt.
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by Kate on May 9th, 2013
Rahla Xenopoulos visited Indulgence Cafe in Johannesburg for an Author Talk in April and was filmed giving a reading from her book Bubbles, a re-imagining of the life of murder victim Bubbles Schroeder.
Xenopoulos read from a chapter titled “Cry Me a River”, in which Bubbles describes the poker evenings that the middle-aged bookie Barry would hold with his friends. Usually when Barry had men come to visit he would expect her to be around, sitting on his knee or pouring drinks, but during the poker evenings she was expected to make herself scarce.
Watch Xenopoulos giving the reading:
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by Kate on May 8th, 2013
On his Radio Today show, Bruce Dennill interviewed Louis Greenberg, one half of SL Grey, about writing the first two books in Grey’s horror series The Mall and The Ward.
Greenberg revealed that, unlike his co-author, Sarah Lotz, he was too afraid to watch horror movies as a child as he was prone to nightmares. He tried to exorcise and rationalise this fear in various ways, including studying vampires at university, and found, at last, that he could control it by writing about it.
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by Kate on May 8th, 2013
Incredibly moving and beautifully drawn, White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse is an intimate portrait of Africa. Botswana, 1976.
Isaac Muthethe thinks that he is dead. Forced to flee his country after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force, he finds himself, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, buried in a coffin, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Walking along the road into Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, White Dog following close behind, a chance encounter with an old school acquaintance changes the course of Isaac’s life – as does the job he finds as gardener for a young American woman, Alice Mendelssohn, who has abandoned her Ph.D. studies in order to follow her husband to Africa. But when Isaac goes missing and Alice goes searching for him, what she finds out will change her life and inextricably bind her to this sunburned, beautiful land.
“Eleanor Morse captures the magic of the African landscape and the terror and degradation of life under apartheid in White Dog Fell from the Sky …tense and heartfelt”. — O, The Oprah Magazine.
“Magic, friendship, the tragedy of apartheid and the triumph of loyalty are recounted in poetic, powerful prose by this unconventional and intelligent writer. Shattering and uplifting”. — Kuki Gallmann, author of I Dreamed of Africa.
“Morse’s writing is lyrical and quite beautiful, with searing descriptions of the dusty earth, unforgiving sun, and stark skies”. — Entertainment Weekly.
About the author
Eleanor Morse has taught in adult education programs, in prisons, and in university systems, both in Maine and in southern Africa. She currently works as an adjunct faculty member with Spalding University‘s MFA Writing program in Louisville, Kentucky. She lives on Peaks Island, Maine.
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