These are among the books that landed on my desk in February – interestingly, two are South African autobiographies, while the first is an updated version of an old favourite. Some of the books mentioned here will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler
Lundy’s Best Walks in the Cape Peninsula, by Mike Lundy, revised by Tim Lundy (Struik)
Mike Lundy’s Best Walks in the Cape Peninsula was first published in 1991, with its eighth edition published in 2012. Not too long after that Lundy died, and now his son Tim has decided to update the guide to ensure no-one gets lost following outdated instructions.
In his preface Lundy jun writes he began hiking with his father almost 45 years ago, and now guides visitors and locals along Cape Town’s many mountain trails for a living.
“I couldn’t ask for a better job than being outdoors almost every day, getting exercise and being reminded of the many stories my father would tell during our hikes.”
In this new edition, Lundy sen remains the narrator, chatting about historical sites, plants, trees and birds en route. But all route descriptions and maps have been brought up to date, and there are now fabulous colour pictures by Luke Moore.
To revise the book, Lundy jun walked all 26 routes described in the earlier editions over the course of a year, reliving some of the experiences shared with his father. There were a few he had never walked before, he says, adding: “There are always new trails to discover.”
This guide also contains four new trails, replacing routes now considered “ill-advised”. They are the Devil’s Contour, the Reservoir Route, Chapman’s Peak Contour and the Devil’s Circular Trail.
The guide lists trails starting from Kloof Nek, from Camps Bay, from Hout Bay, the South Peninsula, Kalk Bay and Muizenberg, from Tokai and Constantia, and from Kirstenbosch and Newlands.
Each trail is graded for difficulty, gives the likely time to be taken, advises whether there is water available, and if dogs are welcome.
There is also an introductory section on safety tips, the weather, the geology of the mountain chain, and peninsula plants you’re likely to see, along with birds and, possibly, snakes.
As with the previous editions, this is a slim guide that will fit into a backpack without adding much weight.
Getting Back on the Bike, a journey of grit, grace and rising up again, by Cathy Carstens (Yes! Press)
Cathy Carstens is the only woman to have won five consecutive Argus Cycle Tours, between 1986 and 1990. Then she had a family, concentrated on her physiotherapy practice, and stopped competitive riding.
Until February 2002, that is, when she had a call from Pat White, race administrator of the Argus (now the Cape Town Cycle Tour). To mark the 25th anniversary of the Argus that year, White told Carstens, they had made commemorative jerseys for all the previous winners. And they wanted Carstens – and the others – to collect their jerseys at the start of the race.
Carstens thought about it, figuring if she was going to be up at 6.30am to collect the jersey, she might as well ride the race.
And she did, with no real training. Carstens seems to be one tough lady, who overcame several surgeries on a dodgy knee to become one of SA’s top cyclists.
Anchors Down in Africa: Into exile from communist Poland – a maverick shipbuilder’s journey, by Zbyszek Miszczak (Southern Right Publishers)
In the early 1980s, engineer and Gdansk shipbuilder Zbyszek Miszczak (wish he had told us how to pronounce his name) fled communist Poland with his wife and small child, the wife’s twin sister, her husband and their small child.
All highly educated, they wanted a brighter, freer future, and had managed to leave Poland before martial law was declared in 1981, closing the borders. After a stint in as refugees in Austria, the SA Defence force helped them emigrate to SA, where they achieved permanent residence and finally citizenship.
Mliszczak was employed in the SA Navy’s Simon’s Town dockyard for 17 years.
This book is the surprisingly readable account of Miszczak’s life, from the old days in Poland living in a tiny flat with his parents, his education and compulsory state service, as well as his decision to leave the country before he was called up for military service.
Driving down to Cape Town from Pretoria for the first time, the family stopped at the top of Du Toitskloof Pass to look at the view. Miszczak gazed at Table Mountain in the distance, covered in its tablecloth, with Devil’s Peak just poking through the cloud. To the west was the Atlantic Ocean, sparkling in the sun. Below them were lush green vineyards dotted with little dams. “I will never forget this first impression I had of Cape Town. Scenic beauty beyond anyone’s imagination.”
He told himself: “You can relax now, buddy, the journey is over. Anchors down!”
Digging Deep – A history of mining in South Africa, by Jade Davenport (Jonathan Ball)
The first edition of Digging Deep was published in 2013; this is the second, revised and updated.
I have been interested in mining ever since doing some research into the life of my great-grandfather, a hard-rock miner who came to South Africa around 1890 from the Isle of Man (where he was a lead miner) via Cornwall (tin) and Colorado (silver) to Johannesburg (gold). His decision to come here is why most of our family still live here.
In her introduction, author and mining commentator Jade Davenport says this book does not profess to be a comprehensive history of the industry, although a quick scan of the index shows it to be pretty wide-ranging.
She felt the second edition was needed, she says in the preface to the new edition, because since 2013 “the mining industry has gone through a profound and, in many ways, deeply distressing evolution.
It has seen structural decline, “reflecting the fundamental challenges associated with ageing assets, rising operational costs, unreliable electricity supply, logistical bottlenecks in rail and port infrastructure, a chronic lack of exploration investment, and periods of labour unrest”.
She says these challenges have been compounded by the policy direction and regulatory uncertainty under the ANC government.
The new edition includes two chapters that cover the post-apartheid transformation of the industry, and concludes with the appointment of Gwede Mantashe as Minister of Mineral resources in 2018. Say no more.
The tale is disillusioning in many ways, she writes, but essential, “for what is the purpose of history if not to confront uncomfortable truths, learn from past experiences, and provide a foundation upon which to build a resilient future?”
When you get to the last line in this memoir, it’s hard not to weep.
Seventeen-year-old Grace Clark finds it’s a long way from Tewkesbury to the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa, where her estranged father has dragged her so he can meet the famed archaeologist Mary Leakey.
Theo of Golden is a novel about an old Portuguese man who comes to stay in Golden, a small college town in the southern US state of Georgia. He makes friends and spreads love.
The World War 1 battle for Delville Wood on the Somme in France, was the most devastating fight South African soldiers have ever taken part in.
When the new treatments for type 2 diabetes – with brand names we’ve become familiar with, such as Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro – were discovered to help people who did not have diabetes lose weight, there was indignation.
On a bitter winter day, Chloe Dalton left her converted barn home for a walk in the English countryside. It was during Covid and she, a busy, foreign policy political adviser based in London, had been grounded.
I have just finished this novel and I am in tears. It’s a dog book, and I am a dog person. It gets to you.
Salman Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 when he was 41 years old. It was highly regarded, being a finalist for the 1988 Booker Prize, and winning the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year.