These are among the books that landed on my desk in June. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The End of Normal – Witness to the unravelling of white power in South Africa, by Max du Preez (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

I can just hear the remark: “Hey Max, you’ve lived through interesting times. Why don’t you write a book?”

I’m not being snide – I’ve lived through the same interesting times (he’s about a year older than I), but he has been much more front and centre. He’s also a bloody good, articulate writer whose perspective as an Afrikaner from a traditional middle-class Christian Nationalist family and one who came to reject much of what it stood for, makes his observations fascinating.

He had a very sheltered youth – he writes he discovered the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Dylan et al only when he went to university in Stellenbosch (whereas I was taken to see A Hard Day’s Night when I was 12.)

After beginning his professional life as a reporter on Die Burger (we were magistrates’ court reporters together in 1973, with me working for the Cape Argus), he moved to Beeld in Johannesburg which is why he was in Soweto reporting on escalating tensions there early on June 16, 1976.

He describes the police shooting that day as “the single most impactful event since South Africa became a unitary state in 1910”.

He goes on: “The Soweto uprising of 1976 altered the entire mood of the country, the climate of opinion, and set in motion a series of events that changed the course of South African history forever. It was the beginning of the end of apartheid.”

In his introduction he says this book is in no way a full history of the past 50 years, nor a definitive explanation of the psyche of Afrikaners and white South Africans. “It is merely my personal, subjective effort to give some insights into that soul.”

I’ve started The End of Normal, and am finding it extremely readable.

Of All Things, We Need Hope, by Sally Cranswick (Modjaji Books)

The premise of this debut novel is a strange one: Heather’s son has been killed, and the young man accused of his death has been jailed for 20 years.

The day after the sentencing she looks up the prison and discovers it is 300% full. Some of the inmates sleep on the floor as there are not enough bunk beds in their communal cell. There are rats.

Heather is appalled. What if the man, Smith, dies in this ghastly prison? Would anyone ever know? She decides to visit him.

Her lawyer is against it. No good will come of it, he advises. “We’ve got the sentence we were after: now it’s time for you to get on with your life.”

Her husband, Richard, is trying to get on with his, and encourages her to do the same. She could mentor at a children’s home, visit friends, get on with work. But Heather sees no point in this. She needs to visit Smith.

And for two decades she does, doing whatever she can to keep him safe in prison so that he can eventually come home to her.

The rest of her family eventually reject her and she loses pretty well everything. But none of that matters if Smith can be saved.

This is Cranswick’s first novel, but she is also the author of a book of short stories: Women Out of Water. She lives in Cape Town.

Millwood, by Tom Cottrell (TMC Publications)

This novel begins with a modern-day murder in Johannesburg, and the delayed discovery of a rotting body.

We are then transported to the Knysna of the 1870s, where Charles Frederick Osborne, a talented road engineer, is working on the building of the Great Cape Road between George and Knysna, under the supervision of the legendary Thomas Bain. Their relationship is not cordial, because Bain believes Osborne is distracted by dreams of gold.

And Bain is right, because Osborne, born in California as the son of a successful gold prospector, believes there is gold in the hills behind Knysna.

In 2013 author Tom Cottrell, the blurb tells us, was unwillingly drawn into the unsolved murder of his cousin, Kevin Millwood Osborne, to whom the book is dedicated.

His search for answers stirs something else, “an inheritance of guilt and shame stretching back to 1876”, when his great-great grandfather did something that would haunt the Osborne-Cottrell family for generations.

This story is part memoir, part mystery, with some magical realism. In the first few pages I have read, it certainly looks like something I’d like to get my teeth into.

Cottrell is a former ultramarathon runner and author of The Runners’ Guide to Road Races in South Africa. He has also written two other books on running. Millwood is his first novel.

A Bluebird in a Baobab – A memoir, by Jeri Lynn Johnson Russell (Self-published)

Jeri Lynn Johnson Russell is an American-born trauma therapist and homeopath who fell in love with Africa, particularly Botswana, Eswatini and Ghana.

On Thanksgiving Day in 2008, while she is preparing a celebratory dinner for family and friends at her adopted home in London, she has a message from a woman who runs a homeopathic charity in Botswana.

Would she be interested in teaching homeopathy and work in homeopathic clinics in southern Africa? She would. By February 2009 Jeri is in Botswana, having finally passed the test to drive a manual car.

She discovers that Africa is where she feels she truly belongs, and muses: “Many of us save all year to have a moment of this on vacation. We miss so much in our air-conditioned world, away from children and each other, we in the west are so busy being prolific and efficient, alone in a cubicle. As I gaze at this bustling scene of women working together, this seems to be the most natural rhythm for humans.”

 

Here is a sample of the books that landed on my desk in May 2026, and for once they’re all South African. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Boy in the Barrel – Based on the true story of a boy who lost his childhood and found himself, by Eric Lieberman (Batya Bricker)

In the late 1890s in Vilna, Lithuania, six-year-old Izzy Lieberman lives with his family – his mother Rachel who smells of flour and woodsmoke, his father Abraham and his five brothers and sisters.

One night the soldiers come on horseback to take Jewish boys for service to the Tsar’s military machine. The three Lieberman boys are hidden in the root cellar, and survive. But the next day, when the family emerges, their area of town is smoking and devastated. That is the night Abraham loses his faith.

Over the next two years things fall apart for the Lieberman family, and it is decided Abraham will take Izzy and scout out a home in Africa, in Cape Town. Later the rest of the family will join them.

But somehow, in the clatter and confusion of the port at Cape Town, Izzy and Abraham are separated. Abraham is taken for a Boer and locked up in the Breakwater Prison. Izzy, now eight, is all by himself in a strange land, where he does not know any of the languages.

He becomes a street boy, whose only home is a barrel. It is the beginning of a childhood of struggle.

Eleven years later, 19-year-old Izzy arrives in Johannesburg and discovers the truth about his family.

Under a Blood Red Sky – A memoir, by Annemarie van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns (Tafelberg)

This may be a memoir, but it opens like a crime thriller: it’s a Saturday afternoon in a tiny farming hamlet somewhere between Indwe and Elliot in the Eastern Cape.

Tannie Hermien Gouws, who is 88, has nodded off in her chair while watching TV. Her son Ruben, the retired principal of a little farm school, has watched TV with his mother and is now closing up his adjoining home on the farm Pinevale for the night.

Then two former pupils arrive, and ask him to open up Tannie Hermien’s shop so they can buy cigarettes. He reluctantly agrees – it’s late Saturday afternoon and this is his time – and they trail over the road towards the shop. They are joined by a third man, who produces a knife and demands access to the safe.

Within minutes, Ruben and his mother are dead. It’s just another rural black-on-white murder.

But Ruben has been friends with Annamarie van Niekerk, once a lecturer in Afrikaans literature at Wits and a former editor of Kwela Books. Now she lives in The Hague in the Netherlands, where she writes books and book reviews.

Just back from a holiday in Paris, Van Niekerk gets a message from a cousin of Ruben’s: “Ouma and Ruben were murdered tonight on Pinevale.”

Two days later Van Niekerk is on her way to the funerals.

The bulk of the memoir is made up of three journeys. The first is between Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) and Umtata (now Mtata). This section tells us about Van Niekerk’s youth, her politicisation and her exposure to the violence endemic to the land of her birth.

The second journey is between The Hague and the Eastern Cape, when Van Niekerk heads home for Ruben and Tannie Hermien’s funeral in 2015. The third is another journey from the Netherlands to the Eastern Cape about 18 months later.

The memoir was first published in Dutch under the title Om het hart terug te brengen in 2021, and then in Afrikaans under the title Onder ’n bloed rooi hemel in 2023.

The English version has just been published. From what I’ve seen, this looks like a gripping story about being a South African over the past 50 or so years. Reviewers of the Dutch and Afrikaans versions describe it as unforgettable and moving, and “a tender book illuminating some harsh realities”. Several reviews say every South African should read it.

Lifting the Lid, by Bonnie Espie (Kwela)

Winifred and Sylvie live in the rural village of Riviervalleij where they run The Novel Eatery – a combination book and coffee shop. They also have a couple of secrets, one of them being the body of Solomon, who is in Sylvie’s freezer. And they don’t know how he got there.

But someone in the village knows something about their side hustle, they think gloomily, and this hustle is not the sort of thing they want publicised. But what can they do – they have to keep the bank balance healthy and the Novel Eatery isn’t doing that by itself.

Now the excitement in the village is that a wine TV reality show is coming to town, and that has to be good for business. But reality shows mean cameras all over the place, and who knows what may be spotted through a lens?

The Which Word, by Catriona Ross (Mirari Press)

All by itself, on a page where an epigraph would usually be found in a book, appears this brief sentence: “This book contains a lot of sex.” And a shout on the cover from author and columnist Paige Nick describes the book as “sexy as f***”.

Everyone, we are told, has their own word, and it is one that will stay with you for all your life. Your word will find you, whether you can handle it or not.

Rafi Paterson has moved into a gated community in Cape Town called The Plex, where every front door is painted a different colour. But it’s not a bog-standard complex, as Rafi soon realises

There seem to be some interesting male neighbours, which Rafi finds promising. And a fabulous fortnight beckons when Rafi’s sister Elvi and the glamorous Bruna, who was once an Italian exchange student with the Paterson family for a year, come to The Plex for a reunion of the “godsisters”.

Then an art academic disappears after a party at The Plex, and the godsisters discover a sex diary under Rafi’s bed, which they believe has all the answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 25^th 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?”

 

Some gorgeous, contemplative, interesting and utterly readable books have landed on my desk in the past few weeks, and a brief description of them makes a fitting end to The Books Page for 2025. The whole family is arriving for Christmas, some from Australia, two from the UK, and I know from experience not much reading gets done. So I wish all followers of The Books Page a blessed Christmas, a fabulous holiday season, and a wonderful, healthy and happy new year. Regular weekly reviews will resume on January 11(unless inspiration strikes before then!) – Vivien Horler

A Guide to Wild Swimming in the Western Cape – Explore 101 of the region’s most beautiful swimming spots, by Serai Dowling & Matthew Dowling (Rockhopper Books)

Serai Dowling, author of the bestseller A Guide to Tidal Pools of the Western Cape, and her husband Matthew have expanded the concept of the first book to include more general gorgeous places to swim, from sea coves and beaches to rivers, mountain pools and even dams.

Like the first book the text is accompanied by glorious photographs designed to get you out into nature.  And even if you’re not lucky enough to live in the Western Cape, you can exult in the places the Dowlings uncover from the comfort of your armchair, and start planning your holiday.

The authors point out that wild swimming is not to be confused with adventure swimming or “open water” swimming, although they can overlap. Wild swimming takes place in beautiful spots and allows the swimmer to embrace the joy of natural waters and serene places.

Adventure swimming tends to push the swimmer, mentally and physically through challenging environments, while “open water” swimming tends to be competitive with a set distance and speed.

On the other hand, the experience of wild swimming “lies in soaking yourself in a fully living ecosystem exposed to wind, weather, water creatures, shifting light and the contours of the land. It means being vulnerable and attentive”.

In her preface Serai Dowling says her swims represent “rituals of connection to land, to history… I have witnessed how wild swimming can soften grief, build community and restore a sense of wholeness”.

Dining with Elephants: French cuisine. African journey. Wild Inspiration, by Francoise Malby-Anthony

Francoise Malby-Anthony is the widow of the conservationist and best-selling author Lawrence Anthony (author of The Elephant Whisperer), and they founded the glorious Tula Tula wildlife reserve in KwaZulu-Natal in 1998.

Malby-Anthony continues to run the reserve today, surrounded by the (usually) gentle giants that both husband and wife have written about before.

This new volume is part memoir, part cookbook and part celebration of living close to nature, or as Malby-Anthony puts it – “we live with nature, not on top of it. This cookbook is a celebration… of the elephants. Of the wild. Of the food.”

Malby-Anthony may have been born in France, with its rich culinary heritage, but this book goes further, to celebrate great food with an African twist. And things are not easy, since Tula-Tula is in the bush, 25km from the nearest supermarket.

Breakfast offerings include scrambled eggs and biltong on potato rosti, as well as pumpkin and Malva pudding rusks. Soups include exotic fruit gazpacho with Amarula, and chilled tomato and basil soup with avocado sorbet.

There are splendid entrees, seafood recipes, cassoulets and sweets that, judging from the pictures, are to die for.

And interspersed among all this are stories about life at Tula Tula, the day the matriarch elephant raided the boma, what happened to the vegetable and herb garden (elephants again), the wedding at which Malby-Anthony served what she thought was would dazzle the guests: crocodile vol-au-vents topped with a chocolate and chili sauce. The wedding MC described it as “memorable” and she adds: “I don’t think it was a compliment.”

Then there was the time her chef confused habanero chillies with peppadews in the tomato soup.

This looks like a delightful book.

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 – Fully revised and updated, by Bill Bryson (Doubleday)

A shout from the Economist on the cover of this weighty tome says: “This book is possibly the best scientific primer ever published.”

It turns out in the 20 years or so since version one was published, a lot has changed, and so the Short History has needed revision. For instance, this version explains to us why Pluto is no longer a planet; how the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years; how scientists have used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans; why we still don’t know what most of the universe is made of; and how the little Biggs boson transformed physics.

Bryson is an extraordinary writer who has never allowed himself to be typecast. The first Bryson book I owned was Troublesome Words, written when he was a lowly sub-editor on The Times of London.

Then there were the hilarious travel books, of which my favourite remains Down Under, although Notes from a Small Island made me laugh out loud. Subsequent subjects have been science, the fascinating At Home, about the history of everyday objects in his home in Norfolk, and most recently The Body, an owner’s manual.

He explains in his introduction to Secret History 2.0 how as an elementary school pupil in the US in the 1950s he was struck by a diagram of the planet Earth, which explained the various layers, from the crust to the upper and lower mantles, the liquid outer core and the burning hot inner core of iron and nickel.

He remembers thinking, in wonder: “How do they know that?” He was to discover, in years of school science education, the answer to that question was rarely given.

“How do they know what goes on inside an atom? And how, come to that…can scientists so often seem to know nearly everything but then still not be able to predict an earthquake or even tell us whether we should take an umbrella to the races next Wednesday?”

So he has devoted five years of his life to finding out.

• This is one of Exclusive Books top reads for the summer holidays.

Lessons from my Father, compiled by Steve Anderson & Melinda Ferguson (Melinda Ferguson Books)

Some South African leading lights have contributed to this book, all speaking of the importance of their fathers in their lives. They include Proteas cricket captain Temba Bavuma, former Springbok rugby coach Nick Mallett, Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman, author and publisher Joanne Hichens, Olympic gold medallist swimmer Chad le Clos and a score of others.

In an introduction editor Steve Anderson says in a country where gender-based violence by men against women is rife, many people believe the lack of a supportive fatherly figure is a major contributing factor.

This book looks at people whose fathers did play a supportive role, and what these fathers taught their children. Anderson writes: “My sincere hope … is that some of the many gems of good fathering on these pages will make a difference to even just one father, or father-to-be, and thereby to his family.”

The first contribution I read was that by Temba Bavuma, partly because for years I worked with his father, Vuyo Bavuma, at the Cape Argus and Weekend Argus. Vuyo certainly had a way of coming up with great stories almost unheard of in what in those days were largely white newsrooms catering mainly to white readers.

Temba says he’s often been asked if his dad helped helped in the development of his batting technique. No to that says Temba firmly, but in a wider sense Vuyo “taught me things that have benefited me enormously, not only in my cricket, but in my broader life”.

He tells a story of how Vuyo taught him to deal with setbacks. Temba was playing for the Under 14A team at school and expected to be selected for the Gauteng Under 15 team. But when the team was announced, Temba’s name wasn’t called.

He was devastated. He had had a good season and had made lots of runs. He writes: “It wasn’t hard to see that I was broken.”

When father and son got home from the announcement, Vuyo handed his son a pen and paper and said: “Right, Temba, this is how we are going to go through this. Where do you think you can improve? In your batting, your fitness, your bowling, your fielding?”

They went through the list, and Temba wrote down what had been identified. “Then we listed actionable steps as to how I could improve on each point I’d noticed.

“I’ve become big on that approach: deal with the hardships; deal with the challenges. Try not to dwell on the emotional side of things, but rather plan and then focus on the practical aspects of how to move forward.”

I was struck by both Temba and Nick Mallett’s fathers’ attitude to their wives.

Temba writes: “Dad respects Mom’s views. If there’s an issue that has to be decided on, he doesn’t make a unilateral decision. It’s a collective ‘team’ process. In many families, especially in African culture, it’s most often the man who will consider the matter at hand and then make an ‘executive’ decision… My dad is very seldom like that.”

Mallett, in his tribute to his father Anthony Mallett, wrote: “I’m going to wrap up my story about my father with what is the single, most significant aspect of the impact of Dad on my life. It is this: He absolutely adored our mother. So much of what I’ve been gifted in my 68 years is rooted in his unwavering love for my fantastic mom. From an early age, it was abundantly clear to us as children: Mom was Number One.”

A few paragraphs later he writes: “Hs deep love for my mother gave me such a sense of stability…”

This looks like a seriously interesting and moving book.

Undone – Healing from botched cosmetic surgery: a memoir, by Michelle Roniak (Melinda Ferguson Books)

The first thing I looked for when I opened this book was pictures. I mean, how badly botched was she? But there are none, except for one postage stamp-sized pic on the back cover, of an attractive blonde.

Which is at odds with her story. From an early age she thought she was ugly. Or as she says in the first line of her preface: “Even before my botched cosmetic surgery, I lived with the deep conviction that I was a factory reject… I believed I was born defective, assembled from inferior parts… I morphed, obsessed, camouflaged, sliced, filled, injected and agonised.”

She had a jaw correction, a boob job, botox and heaven knows what else. And then she made the fateful decision to have extensive liposuction and a labiaplasty.

From the way she describes the results, she must have looked like a monster. Some time after the surgery her remaining fat started to migrate all over her body, to her neck, to her upper arms, to her breasts and to her thighs. The breasts, which reportedly grew several sizes virtually overnight, along with her thighs, were hideously painful.

She was so unhappy, uncomfortable and distraught she wanted to die. She took cocaine, mushrooms, plenty of alcohol.

In 2018, as a single woman aged 39, she even wrote to Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that provides doctor-assisted suicides, telling them she hated herself and strongly felt she could not go on living.

But she said she wanted to go gracefully, and not cause further devastation to her family, adding: “Are there any options for someone in my situation or any resources you could recommend? I know this seems inhumane, but one way or another I am going to do this.”

On the night of her planned suicide – after a farewell party with her friends, who of course didn’t know it was a farewell party – she confessed her plans to a former lover, and within hours she was in a psychiatric clinic.

She discovered she was suffering from a mental condition called body dysmorphic disorder, “a preoccupation with perceived defects or flaws in one’s physical appearance that are barely, if at all, noticeable to the outside world”.

With therapy and support, she became a physical hero, entering Iron Man competitions, swimming to Robben Island and completing the Comrades Marathon in 2025.

She combs news and social media sources for information about people like her, but finds very little. A gynacologist she consults tells her: “The world really needs a story like this. Things are getting out of control regarding the unrealistic standards against which people are measuring themselves.”

She writes that after her botched surgery she developed avoidance behaviours and emotional numbness that disconnected her from everyday life. “Unlike the victims of other traumatic experiences who receive sympathy, those suffering from botched procedures often face judgement: ‘You did this to yourself’.”

There are days, she writes, when she feels the pull of old, destructive thought patterns. But now she has tools to deal with them –  meditation, communal support, writing and journalling and – above all – “sport that celebrates what my body can do rather than how it looks”.

Red Tape – The untold story of a visionary South African’s battle against bureaucracy, and the birth of a world-renowned wine region, by Bridgid Hamilton Russell (Quickfox)

If it weren’t for the surname of the author, this book’s title and cover would give barely any hint as to what it’s about: Tim Hamilton Russell’s heroic tilt at SA’s closed wine industry of the 1970s, dominated by monopolies, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid-era control.

Hamilton Russell, who has made Hemel-en-Aarde wines internationally famous, fought a courageous and ultimately successful battle against all sorts or reactionary forces including restrictive laws, industry boycotts and various court battles to prove Suth Africa could produce world class wines.

In her author’s note Bridget Hamilton Russell, the late winemaker’s daughter, writes: “This memoir is an account of one man’s quest to break down barriers and cut through the red tape imposed on him by the regime of the day. It recounts his ambition to make the best wine in South Africa by farming particular noble grape varieties and adopting the proven winemaking techniques that had been used by the French for centuries. Once he had found a farm in a location that had never previously been considered as suitable for winemaking, he discovered that to pursue his ambition, be would be breaking a number of the country’s laws.”

The Hemel-en-Aarde Valley – outside Hermanus – is now home to more than 20 wine producers, all making Burgundy-style wines that benefit from proximity to cool Atlantic breezes.

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)

From the author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach, this novel explores how climate change can utterly upend life as we know it.

It’s set in 2119, when Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs in the UK, part of Britain’s remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early 21^st century, ie today, “captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith”.

Vivien Blundy is the wife of Francis, a celebrated elderly poet. She had been an Oxford don, with potential to be made a professor, but after the death of her first husband and her marriage to Francis, she has become his secretary and housekeeper in a barn in rural Gloucestershire.

At her 54^th birthday he presents her with a poem he has written to her, A Corona for Vivien, but there appears only ever to have been one copy.

Now Metcalfe is searching for this poem, only once read aloud at Vivien’s birthday and never heard again.

It seems to have been a swansong for an English way of life before everything changed – before climate catastrophe and war – a symbol of all that has been lost.

The cover blurb tells us this is at once “a quest, a literary thriller and a love story… a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost”.

This is definitely my next read.

• This is one of Exclusive Books top reads for the summer holidays.

Remain – A supernatural love story, by Nicholas Sparks with M Night Shyamalan (Sphere)

Books about the supernatural are not my thing, even when they’re love stories, but this one does sound intriguing. Tate is a New York architect who heads off to Cape Cod to design a summer home for a friend.

Tate has had a rough time lately – his beloved sister died, and he has been in a psychiatric clinic being treated for acute depression. He’s also uncomfortable about his sister’s deathbed announcement that she can see spirits who are still attached to the living world, because he doesn’t reallygoin for that sort of thing.

At his Cape Cod bnb he meets Wren, a young woman with whom he forges an immediate connection. But not all in this charming little town is as delightful as it seems, and their blossoming relationship is threatened by various undercurrents. He decides he needs to unearth the truth about Wren’s past while there is still time.

This novel is a collaboration between the author of love stories like The Notebook, and the writer and director of blockbuster thriller films like The Sixth Sense.

 

Despite the frivolity of the holidays coming up, some seriously serious books landed on my desk in November. Fortunately two are written with a light touch. The others worthy but look extremely interesting. Some of these books will be reviewed in full later. We’ll start with the two lighter reads. – Vivien Horler

Loony Birds, Lion Men, and the Snake that was a Gerbil – 20 of the Best Bush Tales from Southern Africa by David Bristow (Jacana)

Writer, editor and adventurer David Bristow collects stories. He actually produced the four-volume Stories from the Veld. Anything that comes in four volumes is a bit daunting, but in this book he has selected 20 of the best tales.

Describing a hunt for a lion wounded by an amateur hunter somewhere near Maun, Bristow writes of lion claws: “These weapons of mass destruction are usually around four centimetres long, hard as carbon steel and sharp as razors. They can do a large amount of harm to a soft-skinned body.

“Then come the fangs…”

His first chapter about lions and lion men segues into the story of Harry Wolhuter, Southern Africa’s first game ranger. If you’ve been to Skukuza rest camp’s library-museum in the Kruger Park, you will have seen the skin of the lion that attacked him, and the knife he used to kill it while he was being dragged off for supper.

It is an extraordinary story of derring-do.

But the book is not all about lions.

There’s a chapter on the Cradle of Humankind, a camping trip that Bristow went on as a young man that went awry, a chapter on the sad story of Krotoa who became Mevrou Eva van Meerhoff, another on the extraordinary history of Mapungubwe, and many besides. This is a treasure of a book.

Raising the Bar – The making of a judge, by Jeremy Pickering (Staging Post)

Jeremy Pickering figures he’s the only SA judge ever to have worked as a clown. He may also have been the only clown ever to have become a judge.

The temporary career took place while he was on a gap year in the UK, where to start with he had to bed down in the elephant trailer. He says they were pretty rustig.

He grew up on a dairy farm in the Eastern Cape, studied law at Stellenbosch University, took his gap year – he also worked on a farm as an assistant pig man – before returning to SA where he became a prosecutor in Grahamstown (now Makhandla), an advocate in Mthatha, and director of the Legal Resources Centre in the Eastern Cape before becoming a judge of the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court. He retired in 2019.

He is obviously a clever, serious and erudite man, but he is also extremely funny and his book is a delight.

Or as retired Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron writes: “It is a delightful memoir – entertaining, richly populated and wittily written. I have read it with amusement and enjoyment.”

As for me, I was laughing out loud.

Unbroken Chains – A 5 000-year history of African Enslavement, by Martin Plaut (Hurst & Company, London)

Now things get a touch more serious.

Martin Plaut would seem to know what he’s talking about. He was the BBC World Service’s Africa Editor, and has published extensively on African affairs. He has been an adviser to the UK Foreign Office and the US State Department, and is a senior researcher at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

But he started off by growing up in Cape Town, and studying law at UCT. After 1976 he left for exile in Britain, and London has been his home since.

Plaut wrote the biography of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, the first black South African to win an election in the country, becoming a Cape Town city councillor from 1904 until his death in 1940.

Plaut wrtes: “Dr Abdurahman was the grandson of a slave, probably brought from Bengal. It troubled me that I knew so little about the slave trade across the Indian Ocean, which has been swamped by the Trans-Atlantic narrative, and so I decided to look at the subject in more detail.”

He writes of the slaves of the vast Sokoto Caliphate; the fate of the Oromo slaves from Ethiopia, captured and forced to march for weeks and months until they were sold in Arabia; and the men and woman of Irish villages captured and taken to North Africa as slaves.

“Each is a fragment of the African story of enslavement that has not yet concluded. Slavery continues to this day, with refugees trapped in Libya’s officially sanctioned detention centres still being sold to the highest bidder.”

This will be a tough read, but it looks seriously interesting.

Bosadi, by Kopano Matlwa (Jacana)

This is November’s only novel, and it opens dramatically: “I killed him. I sliced his neck open early on Christmas morning, while he slept with that pathetic look on his face.”

Matlakala was given the knife by one Rakgadi, who advises Matlakala to take it everywhere she goes. “It cuts like a hot knife to butter.”

And this proves to be the case. Matlakala says: “I was surprised at how easily the tissues split, did not resist being separated.”

Then there is Aunty, a Zimbabwean domestic worker, who watches as her employer’s marriage crumbles.

The two women, both lost and sad, develop a sort of sisterhood.

The cover tells us this story in told in alternating voices, and says: “Bosadi is a devastating exploration of gender, grief, immigration, violence and the impossible expectations that swallow women whole.”

It is written by the author who won the 2006/2007 European Award for her first novel Coconut.It was followed by Spilt Milk and then Period Pain, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Matlwa is a public health physician living in Johannesburg.

A Moon will Rise from the Darkness – Reports on Israel’s genocide in Palestine, by Francesca Albanese; ed by Mandy Turner and Lex Takkenberg (Pluto Press)

Francesca Albanese is the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine and has been documenting Israel’s actions in Palestine and Gaza. She recently – and controversially – visited South Africa.

In her introduction, she writes her first challenging encounter with the concept of genocide in Palestine came in 2023 – I gather before the Hamas attacks – when an Israeli holocaust survivor asked her why she was not investigating the genocide of the Palestinian people. She says she instinctively resisted the term, thinking instead of Nazi-occupied Europe, Rwanda and Bosnia. But she came to understand genocide is not committed by method, but by intent.

“This realisation, immense and unsettling, revealed the false premise that a state born from genocide could not commit genocide itself. History demonstrates the opposite: unhealed trauma can inflict further wounds.”

Apart from a foreword by former special rapporteurs on Palestine: Richard Falk, John Dugard and Michael Lynk, there are three chapters: Anatomy of a Genocide; Genocide as Colonial Erasure; and  From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.

This will clearly not be a summer holiday read, but I suspect it is a profoundly important book.

All sale proceeds will go to UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees.

These are among the books that landed on my desk in October. The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves is among Exclusive Books’s top reads for October. Some of these books will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Hope Arising – The story of SA’s Joule electric vehicle, and why it still matters, by Gerhard Swart (Quickfox)

Some years ago a neighbour had a sticker on the rear window of his bakkie reading: “I’d rather be driving a Joule.”

What’s a Joule, I wanted to know. It was an SA-developed electric car, he told me. He worked for the company.

It showed fantastic potential and promise, and yet in 2012 the project was halted.

Author and engineer Gerhard Swart was a co-founder of the project and lead engineer. In his career he contributed to the development of the Rooivalk attack helicopter and was the systems engineer behind the Southern African Large Telescope SALT.

In this book he describes the struggles, the innovations, the triumphs and the setbacks that led to the development and then the abandonment of the Joule project.

Of the book, Professor Wikus van Niekerk, dean of engineering at Stellenbosch University, says: “It’s a compelling and honest read that reveals the highs and lows of one of SA’s most daring engineering ventures. More than that, it’s a powerful reminder of what SA-trained engineers are capable of when given the chance.”

Fifteen Colonial Thefts – A guide to looted African heritage in museums, edited by Sela K Adjei and Yann LeGall (Pluto Press)

The Elgin Marbles, the Benin Bronzes – and thousands more artefacts were looted, stolen and sold to colonial powers. In many cases they are still displayed in the museums of Europe and the United States.

This volume is a collection of essays on 15 items that explore the history of colonial violence in Africa, all looted at the height of the imperial era and brought to first world museums. In most cases – although not all: the return of the remains of Saartjie Baartman from France being an example – there is stern resistance to their repatriation.

And yet usually the items have deep spiritual and cultural significance in their native lands.

One of the essays is a powerful piece by Nii Kwate Owoo from Ghana’s Gold Coast who went to London in the 1960s to study film.. A visit to the Africa section of the British Museum gave him an idea of the subject of his graduation film.

The Africa section was housed in “a huge room, filled with glass vitrines from the ground to the ceiling. I was amazed, because for the first time in my life I realised the amount of material that had been taken away, including exceptional pieces of Asante regalia… I had never seen these things before; some of them were very sacred cultural assets, works of art created by our ancestors that had only been meant for religious veneration in sacred shrines, not for public exhibition.”

He made his film, You Hide Me, in 1970, which resurfaced in 2020 after his son, living in the US shortly after the murder of George Floyd, persuaded his dad to let it be shown at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia. Later it won best short documentary at the 2020 Paris Short Film Festival.

The screening of the film has sparked interest in Ghana in the potential return of Asante artefacts to the country. Nii Owoo now wants his film “decolonised from the English language” so that it can be shown in Ghanaian languages to spark debates on the issue, and then in versions “in Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, isiZulu, IsiXhosa… This is my vision for the future”.

The Killing Stones – The return of Jimmy Perez, by Anne Cleeves (Macmillan)

Yay, a new Jimmy Perez novel!

If you haven’t read Jimmy Perez detective fiction before, you’re in for a treat. Or you might know that if you’ve seen the TV series Shetland.

Cleeves is prolific, what with her Shetland series, her Vera series and her newer Two Rivers series, set in Devon. The Vera and Shetland series are my favourites.

Not sure if I’ve missed something, but Jimmy Perez is now living with Willow, their four-year-old son and another baby on the way, in the Orkneys – an island archipelago a bit closer to the Scottish mainland than the Shetlands.

It’s December and the weather is wild. Archie Stout is out in it, shouting, knowing his words can’t be heard above the wind. He’s wet and windblown, and looking forward to joining his mates in the Pierowall Hotel bar – he’s already an hour late.

Archie is worried about a problem, and resolves to discuss it with Perez. And then a familiar figure emerges out of the gloom, swathed in a waterproof. “Ah,” Archie says. “So it’s you.”

Hours later Archie’s body is found, bludgeoned to death with a Neolithic stone bearing ancient inscriptions. The local community is shocked.

But fear not: Jimmy Perez is on the case.

Letters from Elena, by Anne Hamilton (Legend Press)

As children in an English village, April and Elena are inseparable. One day, they vow, when they are grown up, they will travel together to Cyprus, the island where Elena’s family is from.

But long before that, in 1974, Elena and her family disappear. apparently back to the now war-torn island. April is devastated.

Elena was good at writing, but never writes her friend a letter.

Except that it turns out she did write – letters to April and her former classmates and posted to their teacher.

For reasons which I haven’t discovered yet, the teacher passes them on only years later at a tough time in April’s life, when both her parents have just died and she and her long-term boyfriend have split up.

And suddenly April decides now is the time to visit Cyprus, and perhaps find out what happened to Elena.

She falls in with a group of hospitable Greeks, and also meets Red, an Irishman with whom she feels an instant connection – but there are complications there.

And that’s as far as I’ve got, but I certainly plan to go on reading.

Healing the Mother Wound – A guide that will change your life, by Moshitadi Lehlomela (Tafelberg)

Moshitadi Lehlomela wrote a book called The Girl who Survived her Mother, which I have not read, but I understand describes a toxic childhood.

In her introduction to this, a self-help book, she says she was conceived when her older brother was a little older than a year.

“Pregnant again while still caring for an infant, her husband became more and more distant, her mother-in-law abusive, and poverty tightened its grip as she mourned the slow but imminent death of her dreams.”

Even as a foetus, Lehlomela says she could sense the chaos on the outside.

“So by the time I was earthside, I had already sucked my thumb thin and dry.” She continued this habit into adulthood.

(I too sucked my thumb, until I was 11, but the only blame I placed on my parents for this was that they never offered me – deeply unfashionable at the time – a dummy).

Her mother was wrathful, mercurial, depressed, physically and verbally abusive. “…and so by the age of six I began to self-protect by turning away from my mother, having few expectations of her and actively dissociating from my environment”.

Healing the Mother Wound is part sequel to her first book, part workbook. She has tables with tick boxes: “Were you abused in any of the ways below: Constant yelling? Constant rage: Hatred? Humiliation? Emotional incest? Scapegoating? Favouritism” and so on.

I don’t think I, thank God, need this book, but there are many who may.

 

 

 

 

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk in September. Some will be reviewed in full later. Two of them – Wolf Hour by Jo Nesbo, and One Night in Paris by Nina George – are among Exclusive Books’ top reads for the month. – Vivien Horler

Malema: Money. Power. Patronage, by Micah Reddy and Pauli van Wyk (Tafelberg)

The authors, whose investigating journalistic credentials are impeccable, proclaim in the first line of their prologue that this is not a biography of Julius Malema.

In fact, after writing a number of what they call unflattering articles about the Economic Freedom Fighters, amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism (Micah Reddy) and Daily Maverick (Pauli van Wyk) were banned from covering its events. The writers were labelled “agents of Stratcom”.

The authors have not interviewed Malema, and people who are close to him won’t speak to them. However, they have amassed enough information to fill more than 300 pages, and it looks like pretty damning stuff.

In the prologue they tell one brief story as an example of how the EFF “has been moulded around private interests”.

Malema’s friend and benefactor Matome Hlabioa became ill with cancer and died in May 2015. While he was being treated, Malema offered Hlabioa’s wife, Marubini, an EFF parliamentary seat so she could access the government medical aid.

“She had no political experiences and declined the offer, but it shows how Malema views the EFF as his own fiefdom – a vehicle for dispensing patronage. A seat in parliament with a salary of R1million and various perks became a means of honouring his personal obligations to the widow of his deceased friend.”

Yoh. And that’s almost certainly the least of it.

Daily Glimmers: The art of finding tiny joys every day of the year, by Bridget McNulty (Penguin)

If you find embedded corruption and the shenanigans of the likes of Julius Malema and others depressing, Glimmers might just provide an antidote.

Bridget McNulty is the co-founder of Sweet Life, SA’s largest online diabetes community. She defines “glimmers” as little slices of joy, tiny noticings, specific to you, that cheer you up.

She writes: “The concept is simple: instead of waiting for The Next Big Thing to make you happy – a holiday, a life partner, a promotion, a child – you look out for three-second moments in your everyday life that make you smile.”

Joy isn’t happiness or contentment – it’s accessible even in the darkest moments, if you’re up to looking for it.

The book will tell you how to notice glimmers “…it’s a practical, useful way to start feeling better about your life, no matter what it looks like right now”.

Here are a handful of glimmers: a cutting from a friend’s garden, the burble of a stream, writing with a lovely pen, turning the music up loud, a hug, an absorbing book, taking a happy dog for a walk on the beach…

The Invisible Boy from Bramble Way, by Anwar McKay (Southern Right Publishers)

You might not have heard of Anwar McKay, who grew up in Bonteheuwel, but you’ve probably heard of his husband, the comedian Marc Lottering.

McKay writes that he was a 12-year-old, effeminate Muslim boy from working-class Bontehewel, living in a hate-filled Calvinistic apartheid South Africa.

In a foreword, journalist and writer Marianne Thamm asks: “How does a sensitive and talented boy find a way through a ruthlessly macho world, populated by men who might be gang members, or inclined to beat up or taunt anyone viewed as effeminate?”

By becoming invisible, that’s how.

But McKay certainly hasn’t stayed invisible. He is now a distinguished theatre producer and director, and credits his mother, Tyra, who gave him unconditional love, and Lottering, “who loved and adored me when I felt most unlovable and invisible”.

Love and courage are behind this remarkable story of growing up different on the Cape Flats.

One Night in Paris, by Nina George (Michael Joseph)

Claire Cousteau is a French biologist with what appears to be a wonderful family life. But she has become increasingly frustrated by her marriage, and the fact her husband routinely has affairs.

So she starts having affairs too – well, casual sexual encounters with strangers.

Leaving a hotel room one afternoon, she comes across a young hotel cleaner, a woman, singing the Jacques Brel song Ne me quitte pas. The woman has a pierced eyebrow and tattoos on her left arm.

But what strikes Claire is the woman’s “old dark gaze out of young eyes”. Claire feels suddenly exposed, as though the cleaner knows exactly what she’s been doing. She resists the compulsion to say: “Because he looked at me, do you understand? Because he looked at me the whole time and didn’t close his eyes.”

The women stare at each other, and eventually turn away.

Now it’s the beginning of the holidays and Claire and her family are off to Breton. Her son asks her if he can bring his new girlfriend.

Of course says Claire. And the girlfriend turns out to be the young hotel cleaner.

“Sensual, provocative, and stirring, One Night in Paris is a story of becoming who you were meant to be by breaking apart things you’ve always known,” the cover tells us.

Wolf Hour, by Jo Nesbo (Harvill Secker)

It’s September 2022 and Holger Rudi arrives in Minneapolis from Oslo to do research on the true crime novel – The Minneapolis Avenger – he’s writing. True crime is the hottest genre in the book market right now, he muses on the drive in from the airport. People just can’t get enough of stories about bloody and preferably spectacular murders.

He’s interested in a series of killings that took place in the city in 2016. They started with the shooting of a small-time crook in the streets, and it seems the sniper was a lone wolf.

A detective called Bob Oz is assigned to the case when the shooter strikes again. The authorities believe this second victim won’t be the last.

And they’re right.

The cover blub tells us: “Wolf Hour is a gritty standalone thriller packed with unexpected twists, dark secrets and bubbling personal and political tension, from the king of the cliffhanger.”

Hell of a Country, by David Cornwell (Kwela)

Talking of true crime stories, here is one. In 1974 a young woman called Marlene Lehnberg, who lived in a boarding house in Rondebosch, instigated and took part in the murder of her lover’s wife, a woman called Susanna Magdalena van der Linde.

It became the famous Scissors Murder case. This book is a fictionalised version.

Lehnberg, who was 18 at the time, was convicted and sentenced to death, along with her co-accused, an amputee called Marthinus Choegoe, who was supposed to carry out the murder but chickened out several times.

Eventually Lehnberg and Choegoe went into the Van der Linde house. Lehnberg pistol-whipped Van der Linde, who fell down. Choegoe then stabbed her to death with a pair of her own scissors.

Both Lehnberg and Choegoe’s death sentences were remitted.

I’m familiar with this story because about three or four weeks before the murder I met Lehnberg, by chance, in her boarding house, where my boyfriend’s brother was staying.

I was astonished by her, as she leaned against the desk in the room, filing her nails and telling us she wished her boss-lover’s wife would just drop dead. “I told him, and I meant it.”

She also said she was about to leave Cape Town for Joburg in her car: “I got a Anglia and it goes, hey!”

Then the murder story broke – and the victim was Lhenberg’s lover’s wife.

We’ll see how this book goes.

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk in August. Some of them will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Shadow State – Why Babita Deokaran had to die, by Jeff Wicks (Tafelberg)

Just a cursory read of the opening pages of this book is enough to enrage one. Within a very brief period of the acting CFO and whistleblower of the Gauteng Health Department being shot in her car outside her home early on August 23, 2021, the crime scene had been abandoned.

In fact, writes prize-winning author and News24 investigative journalist Jeff Wicks, the police left the crime scene around the same time the ambulance taking Deokaran to hospital. Her bloody, bullet-riddled car was abandoned in the street where it had come to a stop, her handbag, cellphone and laptop were inside it. There was no crime-scene tape securing the area.

Later that day Deokaran’s brother moved the car into her garage (he didn’t want her 16-year-old daughter to see it) and removed the handbag and devices.

It was at sunset, hours later, when senior detectives from Gauteng’s Serious and Violent Crimes Unit arrived, and did what police are supposed to do. And then, just days later, the Hawks took over the investigation – “someone with a lot more brass on their shoulders had pulled rank”, writes Wicks.

Then the Hawks proceeded to do nothing, too.

This book looks fascinating but enfuriating.

Confessor Cop – The detective who persuaded killers to talk, by Captain Jonathan Morris, as told to Michael Behr (Kwela)

It’s pretty handy when you, as a Serious and Violent Crimes cop, have a gift: you can persuade killers to confess. This is a book about one such cop, Captain Jonathan Morris of Mitchell’s Plain, who has an impressive record of solving crimes behind him.

Author Michael Behr writes: “this is a true story, although at times it doesn’t seem like it. At times it seems like a nightmare. The cop’s nightmare. His trauma… How he suppressed it to do his job. How it got him in the end. It’s a story about his cop life, and his home life, his wives, his children, his mother.

“…he’s a man with a story. It’s a story about what cops have to deal with daily, serious stuff that is something difficult to read. Stuff like this…”

And Behr launches into the Sizzlers’s case, the gay massage parlour in Sea Point attacked by murderers in January 2003.

Two handguns were used to shoot nine terrified rent boys in the back of the head. One who refused to lie on his stomach was shot in the face. Kitchen knives were then used to slit their throats. There were four survivors, but within hours three had died.

There was one precious survivor who might be able to tell detectives what happened.

Eish.

A History of the World in Six Plagues – How contagion, class and captivity shape us, from cholera to Covid-19, by Edna Bonhomme (Dialogue Books)

I used to be a health reporter, and I loved it. I loved the way the beat provided three different types and sources of stories: science and advances in medicine; human stories of suffering and triumph (and occasionally the opposite); and then the political – were the budgets adequate, were there enough medical personnel, and so forth.

So I leapt on this book with enthusiasm. The plagues listed are cholera, human trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness, Spanish flu, HIV/Aids, Ebola and Covid.

But the book is less of an exploration of various waves of disease that have swept the world and more a musing on how they – and the policies used to fight them – have affected black bodies.

The book’s subtitle sums up the contents, with captivity taking various forms, such as slavery in the plantations of America’s south – where cholera was a recurring problem – as well as quarantine and lockdowns.

Edna Bonhomme, who grew up in Miami, is of Haitian descent, and describes her indignation as a young woman when HIV/Aids was first identified in 1982. The authoritative US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed four supposed groups as a “high risk” for contracting or transmitting the syndrome: homosexuals, heroin users, haemophiliacs and Haitians.

She writes: “Haitians were the only members of the ‘4H club’ included on the basis of their nationality. As a consequence they and their US-born children were denied housing and employment. Working class Haitians found themselves marginalised four times over: They were Black…; they were poor; they were migrants; they were marked out as diseased.”

A page or two later she writes: “Yet we Haitians were hardly the first groups of people to be blamed or stigmatised over an epidemic. This book is a journey towards understanding how disease management is influenced by how society defines humanity.”

I think this book, while offering some profound truths, will not be an easy read.

These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. Some will be reviewed in full later. The first four: The Names, The Immortalites, 38 Londres Street and Summer Island, are from Exclusive Books’s top reads for July. Some of these books will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Names, by Florence Knapp

It is October 1987 and Cora is wheeling her new baby boy in his pram to register his birth. Her husband, Gordon, expects her to record the baby’s name as Gordon, a name passed down by the men in Gordon’s family. But Cora thinks to herself that by calling the baby Gordon he might turn out like her husband.

She asks her nine-year-old daughter Maia what name she would choose for the baby. She likes Julian – a name Cora also favours. But then Maia says the name she really prefers: Bear. “It sounds all soft and cuddly and kind,” she says. “But also, brave and strong.”

These are qualities Cora hopes for her son. She knows going against Gordon’s wishes will have consequences, but naming the baby after his father, grandfather and great-grandfather feels like “a chest-beating, tribal thing”.

So Cora registers the baby as Bear. Or is it Julian? Or is it Gordon? And do these names affect how the baby turns out?

There are three stories here – one about Bear, one about Julian and one about little Gordon. It is also about standing up to a dominating man, and the bond that develops between the boy and Maia.

This is a debut novel, and has had a slew of wonderful reviews, with people describing it as heartbreaking, hopeful, gorgeously crafted, gripping and resonant. One reviewer wrote: “Knapp deftly weaves three narrative strands into a powerful examination of free will, generational trauma and fate…”

The Immortalites, by Claire Robertson (Umuzi)

I have high hopes for this novel after Claire Robertson’s wonderful The Magistrate of Gower.

Ellen Kent has grown up an orphan in a bleak British home for girls.

She feels she has never belonged – and then comes an opportunity: to become a governess for a family heading for the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony.

But after a nightmarish voyage aboard the Immortalite, she is once again abandoned, and now she is in a land that offers little comfort. After dropping most of its passengers in Simon’s Town, the ship proceeds up the east coast.

Eventually Ellen finds herself in a tent town with her keeper, Captain Makepeace, spending her days trying to find scraps of food.

The blurb on the cover tells us this is “a sweeping frontier fable, a masterfully crafted tale of survival, discovery and the search for belonging”.

38 Londres Street – On impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia, by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Philippe Sands is a British human rights lawyer whose previous books include East West Street, about the Nuremberg trials and the acceptance of the legal terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”; and The Last Colony about the plight of the Chagossian islanders who were evicted from their homes by the British government so the Americans could build an air base in the Indian Ocean.

Londres Street is a street in central Santiago, Chile, and no 38 was the home of the Yucatan Barracks, an address with links both to Augusto Pinochet, former president of Chile, and Walter Rauff, a former Nazi SS officer who used gas vans to exterminate Jews during World War 2.

Pinochet had been president of Chile’s military junta and of the country from 1973 to 1990, and was believed to have been responsible for the disappearance of thousands of his countrymen.

In 1998 he was in a London clinic for back treatment when police entered his room and arrested him on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide.

Sands was called in to advise him on his claim to immunity from prosecution but later, in part after a conversation with his wife who said she would divorce him if he represented Pinochet, he ended up representing a human rights organisation against him.

Later he came across Pinochet’s connection to Rauff, and the possibility the former Nazi was connected to some of Chile’s “disappeared”.

This book is described as “a blend of personal memoir, historical detective work and gripping courtroom drama to probe a secret double story of mass murder, one that reveals a shocking thread that links the horrors of the 1940s with those of our own times”.

Summer Island, by Kristin Hannah (Macmillan)

Kristin Hannah is another author I admire. Her last book, The Women, about American nurses in the Vietnam war, was fabulous.

This latest offering is about the joys and perils of the mother-daughter relationship.

Norah Bridge is a Dear Abby advisor on a radio talk show, projecting a kind, wholesome and understanding persona to the people who call in to her in distress.

But what they don’t know is that years before, Norah had an affair and walked out of her marriage, leaving her two young daughters behind. This has been a carefully preserved secret, as if it became known, it would dent her image big time.

Her relationship with her elder daughter is so-so, but is non-existent with the younger, Ruby, a struggling stand-up comedian.

Then one day the tabloids discover Norah’s secret, and uncover some dodgy black-and-white pictures she actually posed for – and just like that her radio career is over.

Meanwhile Ruby has been using her famous mother to fuel her comedy schtik. Two things happen – Norah is injured in an accident, and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a lot of money to write a tell-all book about her mother.

Ruby thinks this is a great idea, and offers to return home on the pretext of caring for her mother. But Norah insists her convalescence must take place on Summer Island, at their lovely old beach house where Ruby grew up.

Perhaps being in a place so rich with happy memories – before Norah walked out – will heal the breach. Then again, it might not…

On the Railway – The great South African train story, by David Williams (Tafelberg)

When I was a student at Rhodes I would travel between Cape Town and Grahamstown by train. You could fly from Port Elizabeth, and the flight was only an hour or so, but it was expensive. The train, on the other hand, took two nights and a full day in between, but it was much cheaper. (My little sister, 14 years my junior, always flew.)

I remember the green (second class) compartments, the leather-covered benches that turned into bunks at night, the bedding attendant in khaki who would come around with bedding rolls containing blue blankets and crisp white sheets, the little basin, the gong that would be sounded up and down the corridors when dinner was served in the dining car.

David Williams was the son of an SAR & H electrician and grew up in a railway house beside the shunting yards in Escourt. He briefly worked on the railways himself.

In his foreword, former Constitutional Court judge Edwin Cameron points out the railways were central to apartheid SA’s massive project of affirmative action for whites, and was the biggest employer in the country.

“For most, it was a job for life, a necessary comfort for those many families haunted by the poverty and unemployment of the 1920s and 1930s.”

The chapter headings give a flavour of the contents: Locomotive Breath: Steam Engines; Footplate: drivers and firemen; Dinner in the Diner; Slegs Blankes: Separate but not equal; Going off the Rails: decline and fall of a great railway system.

In his acknowledgements Williams refers to his late father, Russell, adding: “Thankfully he was spared from witnessing the theft and neglect of hundreds of kilometres of overhead electrical equipment that, over a period of 40 years, he installed, repaired, maintained and inspected to keep the trains running.”

Many South Africans will have fond memories of train journeys across the country, something that doesn’t really happen anymore. If you’re one of them, this may be the book for you.

The Murder of Deveney Nel, by Julian Jansen (Tafelberg)

Last year, just two days before Women’s Day in August, 16-year-old Deveney Nel disappeared during a major sporting event at her school, Overberg High in Caledon. That’s the big school on your left as you head through Caledon on the N2 towards Swellendam.

A huge community search followed. First, her cellphone and a ribbon were found in the back of a bakkie belonging to a teacher from the adjoining primary school.

Later that evening her body was discovered in a storeroom next to the school kitchen. She had been stabbed multiple times in the neck.

Shortly after her memorial service a week later, a fellow pupil, named in this account only as Frank, 17, was arrested. He had been a previous boyfriend of Deveney’s, and his mother was due to drive Deveney and her sister, along with Frank and his brother, home to Grabouw that evening.

It later emerged Frank, then aged 13, had been apprehended for the rape of an 11-year-old girl at a campsite near Albertinia four years previously. But it appears no real action had been taken.

Judging from the first 35 pages, author Julian Jansen, a retired Cape Town-based Rapport journalist, has written a gripping account of this terrible tragedy. He is also the author of The De Zalze Murders: The story behind the brutal axe attack.

Frank is still awaiting trial.

 

 

 

 

 

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 (4^th 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.