These are among the books that have crossed my desk this month. The first three, The Paris Express, Butter and I Am a Girl from Africa are among Exclusive Books’ top reads for June. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler
The Paris Express, by Emma Donoghue (Picador)
In 1895 the Paris Express from Granville on the Normandy coast burst through the front wall of Montparnasse station in Paris, killing a newspaper seller on the pavement below – but, remarkably, no one else.
As the acclaimed author Emma Donoghue (Room, The Wonder) writes in an author’s note, the derailment was, technically, a minor one.
And yet she has written “an edge of your seat historical thriller” that cannot be put down. I haven’t read it yet, but I have started.
It begins with a description of some of the people on board the train that October day, starting with young Mado Pelletier, who has taken an overnight trip to Granville to see the sea, and to buy “what she needed”.
Then there is seven-year-old Maurice Marland, making his first major rail trip all by himself, (who in real life went on to become a Resistance hero in World War II).
There are the “rollers” – the two men on the footplate, and the guards, one of whom appears to have saved the day, and many other passengers, real and imagined.
The Paris Express looks most interesting, and since it’s written by an acclaimed storyteller, is probably very good indeed.
Butter, by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton (4th Estate)
Rika Machida is a socially aware, anti-misogyny journalist who is desperate to have an interview with gourmet cook Manako Kakjii. But Kakjii is in prison, awaiting a retrial for the murder of three businessmen she is said to have seduced and defrauded.
Kakjii ignores all Rika’s written entreaties, until a friend suggests a different way of getting through to the prisoner – by asking her for a recipe.
This prompts an immediate response: “Feel free to come and see me whenever suits you. Regards.”
Rika drops everything to get to the prison. She is not much of a cook herself, but realises she is going to have show some interest in food if she is to get Kakjii to open up to her.
When Kakjii asks her what’s in her fridge, and she mentions margarine, Kakjii is appalled. Even if you can’t cook, she says, you could make hot rice with cold butter and soy sauce.
“There are only two things I can’t tolerate,” says Kakjii. “Feminists and margarine.”
Back home Rika tries the rice/butter/soy recipe and is enchanted. A BBC reviewer of this novel wrote she made this recipe herself “and it’s incredible”.
And that’s the beginning of this intriguing novel that has been an international bestseller.
I Am a Girl from Africa – A memoir of empowerment, community and hope, by Elizabeth Nyamayaro (Scribner)
This memoir opens with a little girl lying in the dirt under a leafless, drought-ravaged tree, telling herself to get up. But she can’t. She is close to death from starvation.
And then she senses a shadow, and looks up to see a much older sisi standing over her. This sisi kneels down and produces a bowl of porridge, which the little girl gobbles up. She tells the child she is from Unicef, and is there to help feed hungry children.
Elizabeth Nyamayaro writes: “What I don’t know yet is that this particular encounter will define the purpose of my life, acting as a beacon that motivates my actions and aspirations; the light that guides me through every darkness.”
And it’s an extraordinarily inspiring tale, because little Elizabeth, who spent her first 10 years in a remote rural village in Zimbabwe, and went to school for the first time when she was 10, has gone on to become a political scientist and former senior advisor to the Under-Secretary -General and executive director for UN Women.
She has also had leadership roles at the World Bank, the WHO and UNAIDS.
She now lives in New York.
Behind Prison Walls – Unlocking a safer South Africa, by Edwin Cameron, Rebecca Gore and Sohela Surajpal (Tafelberg)
My heart sank a bit when this volume landed on my desk. As retired Constituional Court judge Edwin Cameron says in a foreword, despite SA having 243 prisons, we prefer not to think about them. “Like abattoirs, they are designed not to be open or transparent.”
I live close to Pollsmoor Prison and pass it most days. Sometimes friends and I go for a meal at Steenberg Village, which shares a boundary with Pollsmoor, and the plight of those inside does cross my mind when I’m off to a nice evening of dinner and wine.
Cameron writes that for the most part, “our prisons are miserable and failing in their task of rehabilitating inmates… Overcrowding is ever present, a dangerous bane for personnel and prisoners alike”.
Not the first book you reach for. And yet I’ve found the first two chapters thoroughly readable – who knew Judge Cameron’s father had spent time in prison for car theft?
So maybe worth reading after all.
Corporate Newsman – A life of integrity, by Kaizer Nyatsumba
Kaizer Nyatsumba and I worked at different newspapers owned by the same company, he at The Star in Johannesburg and me at the Cape Argus in Cape Town.
But his career path was stellar – what happened to me, as my mum might have said.
In a foreword to this autobiography, The Star’s former editor-in-chief, Peter Sullivan, said of Kaizer: “He is like one of those Russian dolls, the matryoshka, each time you uncover one there is another inside.”
Sullivan then goes on to list Kaizer’s many manifestations: “Academic, sportsman, activist, author, poet, journalist, father, businessman, political analyst, TV personality, role model, fearful of his God, respecting his ancestors. That’s 12… of course there is Kaizer the lover, and husband…”
His early years were typical of the lives of many poor, rural African children – his first home was on a farm near White River and school was kilometres away – but his life trajectory has been anything but typical.
He won a bursary to Georgetown University in Washington, later joined The Star, eventually rising to become the first African editor of a mainstream newspaper in SA, the Independent on Saturday.
And from there it was into the boardrooms of Anglo American, Coca-Cola, Sasol – not a happy time – and PetroSA.
There have been – as there are in all lives – ups and downs, but Kaizer’s trajectory is probably summed up by the title of his epilogue chapter: “A life well lived”.
The Man Who Changed a Landscape – The Adrian Gardiner Story, by Dean Allen (Dean Allen)
Here’s another tale about a remarkable South African – Adrian Gardiner, the man who created Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape and introduced upmarket eco-tourism to the country.
This book is a vanity project, but a quick scan reveals it to be well-written and interesting, authored by the man who wrote Empire, War and Cricket.
Born in Bulawayo, Gardiner was educated at UCT (a party animal, he took seven years to get his undergraduate degree) and his first job was at Spar’s head office in Cape Town, followed by a stint at Golden Arrow. His first foray into the Eastern Cape was thanks to going back to Spar there.
A varied and mostly successful career followed. In 1989, living in what was then Port Elizabeth, with his sons at school in Grahamstown, he decided it would be fun to buy a small farm in the Eastern Cape as a weekend retreat.
The farm, not far from what is now Makhanda, had been farmed and over-grazed for generations. Yet as Allen points out: “Within three short years he would not only develop this part of the Eastern Cape into an exclusive wildlife destination. He would also bring back the elephants and other species that belonged there.”
This book tells the story of how he did it.
Rick Atkinson is no stranger to the military. The son of an infantry officer, he grew up an army brat and after entering journalism, he took time off from his day job to write the first of his World War 2 trilogy, An Army at Dawn, to be followed by The Day of Battle and The Guns at Last Light.
The Story of a Heart was published last year, but I heard about it only when Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor with Britain’s NHS, won the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction this month on the strength of it.
Addict is a tough read for adults. What I would like to see, though, is it rewritten, perhaps in a comic or graphic book format, aimed at 12-year-olds.
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission sat in the mid-1990s to dig out the secrets of South Africa’s nefarious past, it was decided to use simultaneous interpretation, a process relatively new here.
I have a magnet on my fridge that reads: “No matter how old she is, a mother watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.”
Merle Levin wanted to call this memoir Rolling Shit Backwards, with a picture of a dung beetle on the cover. This was vetoed by the powers that be, but she has nevertheless dedicated it to “the ordinary, innocuous, unnoticed black beetle that quietly does its job of saving the planet by rolling shit backwards”.
One does very much like a dog.