Monthly Archives: May 2018

Help choose the Man Booker Prize’s top novel from half a century of excellence

The Booker Foundation has launched a search for the best of the best to mark the English literary prize’s 50th year this year.

Sadly South African novelist JM Coetzee, the first writer to win the Man Booker prize twice – in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K, and in 1999 for Disgrace – didn’t make the shortlist of five books nominated for the once-off Golden Man Booker Prize.

But Hilary Mantel, who won it in 2009 for Wolf Hall and in 2012 for Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to her Henry VIII/ Thomas Cromwell saga, has been nominated for Wolf Hall.

The idea of the Golden Man Booker Prize was to select the best book for each decade of the prize’s existence, and each judge was allocated one decade of winners to choose from. In a tribute to the power of the prize, all 51 winners are still in print.

The five books to make the shortlist are: In a Free State by VS Naipul (1971); Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (1987); The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (1992); Wolf  Hall by Hilary Mantel 2009; and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017).

Coetzee – and Australian writer Peter Carey who has also won the Booker twice – needn’t feel too badly about not making the shortlist. Novels their works were in competition with included Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974); The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978); Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981);  The God of Small things by Arundhati Roy (1997); Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002); and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (2014).

The five judges were writer and editor Robert McCrum (1970s); poet Lemn Sissay MBE (1980s); novelist Kamila Shamsie (1990s); broadcaster and novelist Simon Mayo (2000s); and poet Hollie McNish (2010s).

The shortlist was announced at the Hay Festival in the UK on May 26. From now until June 25 readers are asked to reread these top five novels, and then submit their vote for the overall winner of five decades of the prize, which will be announced at the Man Booker 50 Festival at London’s South Bank Centre on July 8.

To participate, send your vote to the Man Booker Prize website (themanbookerprize.com). The website features videos of each judge discussing their choice. – Vivien Horler

 

Listen to the silence and be amazed

guide to garden routeReview: Vivien Horler

A Guide to the Garden Route – fifth edition, updated by Grahame Thomson and Julie Carlisle (Jacana)

The stretch of coastline from Mossel Bay to the Tsitsikamma area has been regarded as a “garden route” for more than 150 years.

As far back as 1840 one R Gordon Cumming, a member of the Southern Cape Hunting Expedition, wrote: “The Garden Route – a vast and endless world of loveliness, unseen, unknown, untrodden save by those varied multitudes of stupendous, curious and beautiful quadrupeds, whose forefathers have roamed its mighty solitudes from primaeval ages, and with whom I afterwards became so intimately acquainted.”

Today no one could call the Garden Route “unseen, unknown, untrodden”, but it is still a world of loveliness which includes places of solitude, provided you know where to look.

And this guide is designed to show you just that.

The Garden Route lies within a global biodiversity hotspot, the Cape Floristic Region, one of the smallest but richest floral kingdoms in the world. In his foreword, former CEO of SANParks Dr Robbie Robinson points out that 70% of the 9 600 plant species in the Cape Floristic Kingdom are found nowhere else.

Last year, as this guide was being prepared and while the Knysna section of the Garden Route was in flames, Unesco declared the Garden Route South Africa’s ninth biosphere reserve. This is an important declaration – biosphere reserves are given international recognition due to their unique nature, history and culture.

In his introduction to this fifth edition author Grahame Thomson says the preservation of the natural world of the Garden Route must be considered “a fundamental national priority”.

The guide begins with sections on sea life, plants, trees and insects, land mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians, to human history and the impact of humans.

It then has a series of maps of the areas covered, with attractions including museums in the various localities, cultural and historic sites, festivals and events, adventure tourism including boat trips and bungy jumping, and hiking trails including the famous Otter Trail, slack-packing trails, and guided and self-guided trails.

The Garden Route is a land of rivers and forests, and once teemed with game while its sea life was rich in diversity. The name Outeniqua comes from an ancient tribe of people who once roamed the area, and the word means “man laden with honey”.

As a result, say the authors, it is no surprise that humans have thrived here through the ages, starting with original modern man about 160 000 years ago, according to archaeological discoveries at the Pinnacle Point caves near Mossel Bay.

Published in a portable A5 format, the book is rich in gorgeous pictures of bays and estuaries, mountain passes and a wide variety of flora and fauna. It’s a wonderful resource for anyone heading to the Garden Route or living there.

It will help you, as Thomson says in his introduction, to “venture beyond the known tourism routes, listen to the silence, be amazed by the world we have been given.

“Choose the roads and paths less travelled, and you will find a world that will enrich your life forever.”

  • A version of this review appeared in Weekend Argus on Sunday on May 27 2018

 

 

Eleanor Oliphant may be completely fine – but there’s something wrong with this picture

Eleano

Review: Vivien Horler

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)

Eleanor Oliphant may think she’s fine, but she isn’t, not by a long chalk.

She works for a graphic design company in Glasgow, but is not one of the creatives: she works in accounts. She comes to work at 8.30am, takes an hour for lunch, and leaves at 5.30pm.

She listens to a radio serial while she eats her supper – always pasta with pesto and salad – and then either reads, does the crossword, or occasionally watches television. She goes to bed at 10pm. Every Wednesday she speaks to Mummy on the phone. Continue reading

Novels bring fading memories of World War II to frightening life

alice networkReviews: Vivien Horler

The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn (William Morrow/ Harper Collins)

Everyone Brave is Forgiven, by Chris Cleave (Sceptre)

Wars that still echo down our history are slipping beyond human memory. No one alive remembers the Boer War, which continues to have a huge impact on South Africa today, nor World War I.

As for World War II, it ended literally a lifetime ago – 73 years ago this week – and there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

Within a decade it will be gone from lived experience, and our only access to a conflagration that changed the world will be through novels that bring it alive.

everyone brave is forgivenTwo absorbing war novels demonstrate the courage demanded by people who lived through the war, not all of them soldiers.

The Alice Network is a page-turner about women spies in France during World War I, and how their experiences in that war affect their lives during and just after World War II.

It is London in 1947, two years after World War II has ended, and Charlie St Clair is a wealthy young American whose mother has brought her to Europe for an abortion. Continue reading

Franschhoek link in sweeping historical novel set in France

burning chamabers

burning chambers

Review: Adelle Horler

The Burning Chambers, by Kate Mosse (Mantle/ Pan Macmillan)

Fans of Kate Mosse – the author, not the model – will be delighted to know there’s another historical French trilogy on its way, with the first book, The Burning Chambers, released in May.

Happily for us in South Africa, part of the series will play out here – in fact, the entire story was inspired by Mosse’s visit to the Huguenot Museum while at the Franschhoek Literary Festival* several years ago.

“There, on the wall, was the name of a family I’d written about in my first historical novel, Labyrinth,’’ she says. “It was a shiver-down-the-spine moment.” Continue reading

Real-life crime thriller shines spotlight on fish poaching

catching the thunderReview: Vivien Horler

Catching the Thunder – the race to save our oceans from poachers and criminal kingpins, by Eskil Engdal & Kjetil Saeter (Tafelberg)

Patagonian toothfish is a deepsea delicacy often called “white gold”. It lives in icy waters near the Antarctic, in black depths of up to 2000m.

It was first caught and described at the end of the 19th century, and then forgotten until rediscovered in the 1980s. The Norwegian authors of this gripping real-life thriller say that served in US restaurants, it caused a gastronomic sensation. Continue reading

How Mozambique went from Portuguese colony to “complicated” independent country

mozambique history

mozambique history

Review: Myrna Robins

A Short History of Mozambique, by Malyn Newitt (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

 

Malyn Newitt, who has penned more than 20 books on Portugal and its colonial history, is one of the leading historians on the former colony and now independent Mozambique.

Presently retired, he was deputy vice chancellor of  Exeter University in the UK and – given his background – one expects his latest title to be academic in tone and content. Continue reading