These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first three: The Forgotten Names, by Mario Escobar, The Paris Affair by Maureen Marshall, and The Future, by Dion Chang, Bronwyn Williams and Faeeza Khan, are among Exclusive Books’s top reads for July, along with This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, which was reviewed on The Books Page on Sunday, July 21.

Some of the books mentioned below will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Forgotten Names, a novel by Mario Escobar (Harper Muse)

Remember the story of Moses? Pharoah had ordered the killing of all Hebrew boy babies in Egypt, but one mother could not bear it. She put her little son into a basket and pushed him off into the treacherous waters of the Nile.

It so happened that very day Pharoah’s daughter went down to the river to bathe, and came upon the basket caught in the reeds, with the baby in it. She took him home and brought him up, and changed the course of history.

The mothers in this extraordinary story did something similar. Early in World War II Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon”, ordered the deportation of all foreign Jews in France. In one internment camp, Venissieux, a group of people – clergy, civilians, the French Resistance and others – realised an ambiguous order from the Vichy government forbade the deportation of children abandoned by their parents.

So the mothers of 108 children gave up their rights to their children, not knowing if they would ever see them again. And of course they did not.

Fifty years later, French law student Valerie Portheret was doing research into Barbie when she came across the story of the children of Venissieux, and resolved to track them down and reunite them with their true identities. It took her 25 years, but she did it.

The Forgotten Names is a novel based on this extraordinary episode. WW II, and specifically the experiences of Jews in Europe, continue to be a rich source.

The Paris Affair, a novel, by Maureen Marshall (Grand Central)

It is 1886, and an impoverished Fin Tighe is an engineer, working on an exciting project: the building of the Eiffel Tower, which is to be a centrepiece of the upcoming Exposition Universelle and an advertisement for Parisian technological skills.

But not everyone in Paris is keen on the tower, fearing it will ruin the city’s skyline (today, of course, if your apartment has a view of the tower its value is at a premium). And even though the design has been accepted by the organising committee, the furore has meant the government is withholding its promised five million francs.

Now everyone working on the project is told to do what they can to raise money. Fin, who is gay and the illegitimate son of a British earl, meets Gilbert Duhais, wealthy and connected, who persuades him to claim to be the earl’s heir as a way of raising money.

Fin’s enthusiasm for the Eiffel project is palpable: “The mathematical precision involved – hundreds of thousands of joints and angles measured to the 10th of a millimetre – not even the Romans would have dared anything close at the height of their arrogance.”

While homosexuality is not illegal in the Paris of the time, it is not approved of, and Fin finds himself vulnerable. And when a friend is murdered in the rooms above a secret gay club, Fin finds himself in an increasingly dangerous situation.

Looks intriguing.

The Future – More than 80 key trends for South Africa, by Dion Chang, Bronwyn Williams & Faeeza Khan (Tafelberg)

If things seem to be speeding up and the world appears to be less comprehensible than before, it’s not that you’re getting old (although that could be a factor too) – things really are becoming stranger, according to the Flux Trends team.

This book is based on the Flux Trends annual State We’re In Trend, an annual summary of where the world is now and where it’s heading. “Not only does it feel as if we’re losing a sense of reality, but that the world is unravelling,” say the authors.

The current decade “started with the pandemic, which sped up the undercurrents of change already underway since the last decade: a contactless economy, a lockdown life audit that fast-tracked the ‘future of work’, simmering geopolitical tensions, the harsh realities of climate change and the reconfiguring of our social contracts”.

So the authors have produced this book to help us navigate uncharted waters. It describes key trends with insights on what to do so that companies and individuals can turn challenges into strategy.

The trends described fall under six broad headings: technology, retail and marketing, the economy, the natural world, diplomacy, and socio-cultural.

You are Here, by David Nicholls (Sceptre/ Jonathan Ball)

From the first two chapters you have an idea of what’s going to happen. Marnie lives in London where she works from home as a copy editor. She is lonely, but also resistant to getting out more.

Michael is a geography teacher, based in York, who has been increasingly solitary ever since his wife left him. He feels happiest on long solitary hikes, and certainly doesn’t want to see friends or meet people.

Both of them are friends with Cleo, Michael’s boss, who tries hard to get them out of their shells, but they are uncooperative. Until one day both agree to join a group hike across England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, a distance of 190 miles.

Not all of them plan to do the whole hike, and Marnie is a complete novice, but judging from the first couple of chapters she does agree to go further than planned. And then, according to information on the back cover, “Marnie and Michael suddenly find themselves alone on the most epic of walks and on the precipice of a new friendship… But can they survive the journey?”

A charming humour shines out from the first few pages I’ve read. David Nicholls’s novel Us was long-listed for then Booker, and one critic says: “No one does the minutiae of love as well as Nicholls.”

GQ writes: “Witty and moving at the same time, it’s a figurative and literal journey that might even have you hunting for your walking boots.”

This looks fun.

And now for a slew of SA historical non-fiction.

Rhodes and his Banker – Empire, wealth, and the coming of Union, by Richard Steyn (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

The first Johannesburg branch of the Standard Bank opened in October 1886, just after the diggings had been proclaimed. The bank has been central to SA’s story, and one of its earliest bosses was Lewis Michell, a Cornishman, who arrived at the Cape in the early 1860s.

In Richard Steyn’s preface he tells us Michell had helped expand the bank into southern Africa’s leading financial institution before and during the Anglo-Boer War.

Rhodes banked with the Standard, and eventually he and Michell became friends. Michell came to admire Rhodes as “a great man”, and worked hard to promote Rhodes’s reputation in South Africa and Rhodesia.

When Rhodes died in 1902, Michell left banking and spent the rest of his life promoting and protecting Rhodes’s legacy, also writing the first Rhodes biography, becoming chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines, and playing a key role in the Rhodes Scholarship programme.

Steyn tells us Michell was a committed diarist and letter writer, and was able to comment on many of the issues and the people of the day.

This looks interesting.

Botha, Smuts and the First World War, by Antonio Garcia and Ian van der Waag (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

The ground of Smuts, Botha and World War 1 seems to have been comprehensively covered, most recently by Richard Steyn, who is the author of Jan Smuts: Unafraid of greatness and Louis Botha: A man apart.

However, it has been welcomed by historians, with Professor Gary Sheffield of the University of Wolverhampton, Kings College London and the University of Buckingham writing: “The authors, by placing the SA experience into the wider context of the war effort of the British Empire, have written a book that is relevant to global as well as national history”, describing them as having taken an innovative approach.

Another reviewer, Professor Alex Mouton of Unisa, says Botha and Smuts’s military and political careers have until now not been covered in comprehensive fashion, and that there is a significant gap in the historiography…” which this book has plugged.

Commando – A Boer journal of the Anglo-Boer War, by Deneys Reitz (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

In 1899, aged just 17, Deneys Reitz joined a commando and rode off to war. He was well connected, being the son of the former Orange Free State president FW Reitz, and becoming a protégé of Jan Smuts.

He turned up wherever the action was, and kept a journal. He was with Smuts in Namaqualand when the peace was declared. After the war he became a bittereinder, refusing to swear allegiance to King Edward VII, and going into exile in Madagascar, along with a brother and their father.

While in Madagascar, and aged just 21, he wrote the manuscript of Commando, based on his war journals. Eventually, desperately ill with malaria, he was persuaded to return to what was now the Union of South Africa by Smuts’s wife Isie, who nursed him back to health.

The manuscript, written in Dutch, was translated into English and edited and abridged, to be published by Faber & Faber in 1929. This edition reportedly omitted negative remarks about the British, notably Lord Kitchener.

Now, nearly 100 years later, Emeritus Professor Fransjohan Pretorius of the University of Pretoria, has retrieved and annotated the original manuscript, which runs to 1 147 pages, and Jonathan Ball Publishers has published it, once again in English.

I loved the Faber& Faber version for its freshness and youth and first-hand account of extraordinary times. I look forward to reading this edition too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The top three – Moederland, by Cato Pedder; The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo; and Mr Einstein’s Secretary, by Matthew Reilly – are among Exclusive Books’s top reads for June. Some of them will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Moederland – Nine Daughters of South Africa, by Cato Pedder (John Murray)

Despite its title, Moederland is written in English by the British-born great-granddaughter of former SA prime minister Jan Smuts.

It looks at the stories of nine women across four centuries of South Africa’s history: Krotoa, a Khoikhoi translator for the Dutch East India Company; Angela of Bengal, a former slave; Elsje, a German child immigrant who was married at 13 and had her first child at 15; Anna, who was mistress of Vergelegen in the 1700s; Margaretha, a farmer who resisted the abolition of slavery; another Anna who trekked; Isie, wife of Jan Smuts; Cato, the author’s grandmother; and Petronella, the author’s aunt, who fell in love across the colour bar.

Pedder writes she is named after her grandmother, Smuts’s daughter Catharina, who too was called Cato (pronounced Cuh-too, not Kate-o). She says in her prologue that this name ensures “…I am forever connected to a country 6 000 miles from home, to a culture freighted with shame”.

This history has been reviewed on The Books Page website by Annamia van den Heever, but I’m mentioning it here as I have just received it and it is one of Exclusive Books’s top reads for the month.

Mr Einstein’s Secretary, by Matthew Reilly (Orion)

This is a novel by a best-selling thriller writer. It is the story of the fictitious Hanna Fisher who was born in 1902 and lived through many tumultuous events of the first half of the 20^th century.

The cover blurb tells us that all Hanna wants to do is study physics under Albert Einstein, but in 1919 her life is turned upside down, and she is flung into a new life as a secretary, a scientist, a sister and a spy.

Hanna meets racist gangs in Berlin, gangsters in New York City, works with some of the greatest and most egregious minds of the 20^th century, goes through some terrible times, and desperately tries to stay alive.

This novel, described by the Guardian as “a thrilling, action-packed adventure from cover to cover”, looks like a blockbuster of note.

The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

There is an old adage that novelists should write about what they know, and in this debut novel Claire Lombardo obviously took that to heart. Her book is about a family of two parents and four grown daughters, and in her acknowledgements she thanks her siblings, three sisters and a brother to whom she says she owes a great deal.

This novel tells the family saga of David and Marilyn, he a Chicago GP and she a housewife and later hardware store owner, and their four daughters. The story loops forward and back between the past of the milestones of the couple’s relationship, and the present, which sees all four sisters going through varying degrees of crisis.

So far it’s a wonderful warm novel, and I’m loving it.

Crash and Burn – A CEO’s crazy adventures in the SA airline industry, by Glenn Orsmond (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

One of the problems in the airline industry is that it attracts people who love aeroplanes – hence, too many pilots and not enough accountants end up running things.

That’s the view of chartered accountant Glenn Orsmond, who was CEO of Comair twice and the founding CEO of 1time. After 30 years in the airline industry, he was the boss under whose watch in 2022, in the wake of Covid, Comair crashed and burned.

Shareholders, lenders and suppliers lost money, employees – including Orsmond himself – lost their jobs, and thousands of travellers lost the fares they had paid.

Orsmond’s career in aviation began in 1991 with Bop Air, the national airline of the ostensibly independent homeland of Bophuthatswana. Soon after the homeland’s reintegration into South Africa, Bop Air applied for a licence to operate in SA proper, facing competition from SAA, Flitestar, Comair and Nationwide.

This looks like a rollicking account of a career and a really interesting book.

Saltblood, by Francesca de Tores (Bloomsbury/ Jonathan Ball)

In 1685, in Portsmouth, baby Mary Read is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes the split-second decision to turn Mary into Mark, so she will continue to collect his inheritance.

Mary becomes a footman in a great house and later joins the navy, but being a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing to be. Eventually she becomes a pirate.

The novel opens in 1721, with the pirate Mary/Mark in gaol, condemned to the gallows. It appears Mary Read was a real historic character.

Saltblood has had some ecstatic reviews, such as “a complete triumph. A glittering jewel of a novel; a treasure chest of delight”, but the one I liked best was: “Master and Commander meets Thelma & Louise”. Which sounds promising.

Birds of Greater Southern Africa, a Helm Field Guide, by Keith Barnes, Terry Stevenson and John Fanshawe; illustrated by John Gale and Brian Small (Sunbird Publishers)

This is a magnificent tome, beautifully illustrated and featuring thousands of birds – resident, breeding and migrants, as well as vagrant species – found in nine African countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.

It also includes birds found in the waters of the Mozambique Channel, the African sector of Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the islands of these waters including Tristan da Cunha and the Prince Edward Islands.

There are maps, and discussions about landscapes and habitats. Each entry includes  pictures, physical descriptions of the bird concerned, the difference between adult and immature birds, their status and habitat, and the sounds they make.

Only one caveat: this is a field guide but you might need a porter – it weighs a ton (about 1kg).

 

 

 

It’s been a wonderfully book-rich month, and there are books on every surface in my house. These are some of the offerings that landed on my desk this month, of which I will review a few in full in coming weeks. The first two – Show Me the Place by Hedley Twidle, and The Comrades’s Wife by Barbara Boswell – are among Exclusive Books’s top reads for May, along with Diva by Daisy Goodwin, a novel based on the life of Maria Callas, which will be reviewed in full on Sunday June 2 on The Books Page website. – Vivien Horler

Show Me the Place – Essays, by Hedley Twidle (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Thirty-six “is no longer young, promising or even emerging”, writes academic and essayist Hedley Twidle in a delightful piece on learning to surf, 20 years too late.

No matter, it is fun, even when he and his friend Alex battle to cope with 2-foot waves off Milnerton lighthouse and have to dodge the odd nappy in the surf. It is also humiliating out there, “being whistled off a wave by a seven-year-old”.

It’ll take five years to get even half way good, says Alex gloomily, even if they surf every day. But they press on, till Covid strikes and the beaches are declared off limits. “The world needed people who loved surfing without feeling the need to surf themselves,” says a resigned Twidle.

Other essays are about seeking Rhodes’s chopped off bronze nose, attending an academic conference in Brazil where a British colleague is obsessed with relationships in her department back home, spending weeks in a Scottish bothy with a pair of grumpy anarchists, meditating for seven hours (it hurts, physically), and the tragedy of his mother’s dementia.

“Hedley Twidle is an essayist of rare brilliance,” is a shout on the cover of this book.

The Comrade’s Wife, by Barbara Boswell (Jacana Media)

This is a tautly plotted novel about a divorced Cape Town academic in her mid-40s who meets a delicious man of a similar age online. He is handsome, urbane, educated, apparently wealthy, and he fancies Anita big time, as she does him.

He turns out to be a rising star backbench MP for the ruling party, so that he travels a great deal. This becomes a problem for Anita who wants more of him, despite Neill pointing out that she knew he was a devoted comrade from the get go.

There are a couple of red flags, but Anita tells herself to be a grownup, because when she has Neill’s attention she has all his attention. He is also kind, generous and a tender and fantastic lover.

Within months of meeting, they marry, but sudden work commitments mean Neill is unable to accompany Anita on their honeymoon trip to Vic Falls.

And so it goes on. When the relationship is good, it’s very good, but when it’s bad…

It turns out scorned wives are not powerless.

This is a triffic read.

Hunting the Seven – How the Gugulethu Seven assassins were exposed, by Beverley Roos-Muller (Jonathan Ball)

The 1980s were a terrible time in South Africa. The Struggle against the apartheid government was ratchetting up, and in response the authorities were becoming more viciously heavy handed.

Early on March 3, 1986, Gugulethu residents heard an explosion, followed by gunshots. Minutes later, all was quiet again. For those who were looking, seven bodies lay sprawled in NY1. There was an unusually high police presence.

What had happened? The official version was that seven heavily armed young black men had been planning to ambush a police van returning to the nearby Gugulethu police station.

But it happened that Chris Bateman, a Cape Times reporter who could speak isiXhosa, arrived at the scene and was amazed by the number of senior police milling about. This was unusual in an under-policed area.

The scene was overlooked by a hostel lived in by dairy workers. Bateman found three hostel dwellers who had seen what happened. Two men told a similar story: there had been an explosion, and they had run to the windows to see what was going on. Outside a man lay in the dirt under a big tree. A policeman walked up to him and shot him in the head.

A third hostel dweller said he had seen a man near the bushes on the opposite side of the road. A policeman confronted him, kneed and kicked him till he was down, and shot him.

These reports were key to establishing the truth of what really happened that day.

But most of this became known, thanks to testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Beverley Roos-Muller takes matters further: the men’s families denied they were activists. Why had the police shot them? Roos-Muller went hunting for answers.

When Love Kills – The tragic tale of AKA and Anele, by Melinda Ferguson (Melinda Ferguson Books)

Author Melinda Ferguson describes this tale as echoing a Shakespearean tragedy, “a story that broke my heart”.

The rapper AKA – Kiernan Forbes, 35 – was shot dead along with his friend, chef and entrepreneur Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, in Florida Road, Durban on the night of February 11, 2023.

This was big news around the world. He was a talented rapper and producer, although he did not impress author and publisher Melinda Ferguson much. In an author’s note she writes: “…for me, his chaotic personal life had blurred his genius”.

Somehow, in all the publicity around his death, little was said about the death of his fiancée, Anele Tembe, more than 10 years his junior, who fell from the 10^th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel in Cape Town in April 2021.

In fact not everyone was silent about Tembe’s death. There was speculation AKA’s assassination might have been an act of revenge. Was it an inside job? Was it a suicide, a dreadful accident, or a murder?

Ferguson says this book, which is controversial, is not a biography of either of the couple. “Rather it’s a twisted love story involving a highly talented and flawed man, a bright and flawed young girl and some significant characters who crossed their paths.”

Sizzlers – The hate crime that tore Sea Point apart, by Nicole Engelbrecht (Melinda Ferguson Books)

I was still working on the newsdesk of the Cape Argus when on January 23, 2003, ten men were tied up and attacked at Sizzlers, a gay massage parlour in Sea Point, Cape Town. It was a very big story at the time.

Extraordinarily, after the killers had left, one of the victims, Quinton Taylor, who had been shot in the head twice and had his throat slit, dragged himself to a nearby petrol station and raised the alarm.

Eventually two killers, Adam Woest and Trevor Theys, were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

And then, in 2018, Woest became eligible for parole, despite the fact that none of the victims’ families had been contacted, much less consulted, and nor had Quinton Taylor. Eventually the sister of one of the victims, who lived in Canada, took matters in hand. Woest was not going to be released if she had anything to do with it.

 

 

 

 

South African readers have always had access to a cornucopia of books from abroad, but the proportion of new books available in any one month contains an increasing number of books published in this country.

May is Exclusive Books’ annual Homebru campaign, when the spotlight is on the homegrown voices defining the SA literary landscape.

“South Africans have always had a way with words, and while meanings may differ, we understand each other all the same,” said a spokesperson for the book chain.

“That why this year’s Homebru campaign is a celebration of words: the unique and quintessentially SA words that bring us together, help us express ourselves and give us an avenue to tell our story.”

There are 58 books in the 2024 Homebru catalogue, ranging from fiction and nature books to poetry, current affairs and children’s reads.

To see the full selection, visit the Exclusive  Books website. But here are a few of the Homebru books sent to me. – Vivien Horler

Place – South African Literary Journeys, by Justin Fox (Umuzi)

Olive Schreiner’s Karoo, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s lowveld, Herman Charles Bosman’s Marico, Dalene Matthee’s Knysna forest, Zakes Mda’s Wild Coast and Stephen Watson’s Cederberg – these are among the places travel writer Justin Fox explores.

A former editor of Getaway magazine, Fox goes on a series of magnificent journeys around our country and into the landscapes that inspired generations of South African writers.

He has chosen landscapes that are still wild and largely unspoilt, and writes: “My choice of literary works is all about places of the heart, both for the authors and myself. The selection is personal, reflecting my own literary and literal geographies… In each instance, setting is no mere backdrop but an integral part of the work and a reflection of the author’s heart-land.”

This is, he says, a book about a series of journeys around SA, “with an old kitbag of books instead of maps to guide us”.

How to Fix (and unf*ck) a Country – Six things to reboot South Africa, by Roy Havemann (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Roy Havemann has consulted to the SA Presidency, the Treasury, the World Bank and private companies. He joined the national Treasury in 2002, eventually becoming former Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s speechwriter. (Which makes me wonder who actually wrote Mboweni’s foreword…)

In his introduction Havemann says some countries are stable and prosperous, while others are failed states. But none of this is destiny. History is full of examples of countries that have pulled themselves out of – or got into – a hole.

He points out that once successful countries like Argentina, are successful no longer. North Korea, with plenty of natural resources, is poor. South Korea, which has no minerals and a relatively small population, is among the richest places in the world.

Havemann says there are six priorities – things we could do practically to get us moving in the right direction, all beginning with the letter “E”: Eskom, Education, Environment, Exports, Equality and an Ethical and Effective state.

In a brief shout on the cover, News24’s respected business journalist Carol Paton says: “This book will make you smarter. Packed with lively anecdotes and lessons from history, economics, and the world, [it] explains the hole South Africa is in how we can climb out.”

As Mboweni says in his foreword: “This book aims to create a conversation. My hope is that it stimulates a discussion on growth. We need it.”

Bullsh!t – 50 fibs that made South Africa, by Jonathan Ancer (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

What is it with books that employ swear words in their titles and then don’t have the courage of their convictions but coyly hide behind an asterisk or an exclaimation mark, like Scope magazine’s topless models and their strategically placed stars.

In my opinion, if you want to say bullshit, or fuck, just say it. The asterisks fool no one.

Right, rant over.

Jonathan Ancer, a quirky and clever former colleague has written an intriguing book about the lies that some or all of us believe.

The first he picks at is the 1994 election, which was, he says, “an agreed fiction”.

Organising the first democratic election was an impossible task for the brand new IEC. They had no voters’ roll and just four months to do it all.

Ancer quotes the political scientist Professor Steven Friedman who in 1994  headed the IEC’s information analysis department. He says a lot of the 1994 results were absurd, especially in KwaZulu-Natal.

“For example, by any credible population estimate, in some voting stations you had 800% of the adult population voting. The whole thing was dodgy.”

Before election day, Friedman wrote a paper on what would constitute a fair and free election, and said there was a single major criterion: whether the losers accepted the results.

“It’s a legitimacy issue. If the losers accept the results, then does it matter if five votes go astray here or there?”

He believes if the IEC had been purist about the results, conflict would have been inevitable. “In my view, it was not a lie but a ‘negotiated truth’ or an ‘agreed fiction’.”

The historian Bill Nasson says in his foreword: “Combining journalist raciness with a magpie mind and an alligator’s nose for a swamp, Ancer is a shrewd recorder and interpreter of SA’s steaming pile of follies, crimes, misfortunes and absurdities.”

Prescription: Ice Cream – A doctor’s journey to discover what matters, by Alastair McAlpine (Macmillan)

This is an interesting and even inspiring book which I’m not going into detail about here as it will be the subject of the Sunday book review on May 26 on The Books Page.

 

Among the other books in the Homebru catalogue are Margie Orford’s vulnerable Love and Fury, Ivan Vladislavic’s The Near North, and Graham Coetzer’s Hunting with the Hawks, all three of which have been either reviewed or mentioned in previous weeks of The Books Page.

 

 

 

Here is a taste of the books that landed on my desk this month. The first four are from Exclusive Books’ list of top reads for April. Another, One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall (Macmillan) was reviewed on this website on Sunday April 21. Some of the rest will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Love and Fury – A memoir, by Margie Orford (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Most readers know Margie Orford for her crime thrillers, the five Clare Hart novels (a sixth is due to be published next year). She’s been described as the “queen of SA crime-thriller writers” by The Weekender.

I didn’t know about her impressive academic pedigree. She was a Fulbright Scholar with a master’s degree in comparative literature from the City University of New York, and has a PhD in English literature from the University of East Anglia. She is an honorary fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and was also an executive board member of PEN International.

This memoir opens in London, where Orford finds a small home overlooking Hampstead Heath, a refuge after the collapse of her marriage, and three “vagrant years” after she fled Cape Town.

She is thoroughly depressed, and says for months she had been trying to write a suicide note “…but my writing, which I regard as separate from me – something life and death-giving, beneficient and tyrannical as the Furies… – vetoed me”.

She casts about, she says for a way to leave life that would not disturb anyone.

And then she goes for a wintry walk on the heath, comes home, tears out all the pages of the “to whom it may concern” death notes, and is ready “for the shy night creatures of the mind to slip out of their shadows so I could befriend them”.

And she adds: “This book kept me alive; I will give it that.”

James, by Percival Everett (Doubleday)

I don’t know how much of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn you remember, but it’s set in the 1850s or so and is about a barely educated teenager who fakes his own death to get away from a drunken, abusive father.

He teams up with a runaway slave, and the pair set off on a raft down the Mississippi River, having a variety of life and death adventures on the way. It was first published in 1884.

In this novel Percival Everett, a Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA, rewrites Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim, and gives us a unique insight into the strategies a literate and intelligent slave had to use not to stand out from the crowd.

Everett, whose novel Erasure was adapted to become the film American Fiction, uses different dialects to indicate when Jim is speaking in his own voice, and in that of an uneducated slave when he is talking to whites: “Lak I say, I furst found my hat up on dat nail. I ain’t put dat dere… How dat hat git dere?”

The American writer Ann Patchett describes James as “funny and horrifying, brilliant and riveting… a powerful, necessary corrective to both literature and history… Who should read this book? Every single person in the country.”

The Excitements, by CJ Wray (Orion)

“Revenge is a dish best served old” is the subtitle of this fictional romp starring two very old ladies, the Williamson sisters, who are Britain’s most treasured World War II veterans.

Because they represent a literally dying breed, they are in demand at commemorative events, and always give their money’s worth. They are adored and watched over by their great-nephew Archie, who accompanies them on a trip to Paris to receive the Legion d’Honneur.

Archie knows some of their wartime history in the Wrens and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (risibly known as Fany), but it turns out not as much as he thought. As the cover points out, there’s a reason sweet Auntie Penny can dispatch a would-be mugger with her umbrella.

Now the sisters are in Paris, probably for the last time, to have some excitements, settle some scores and avenge lost friends.

One reviewer says: “Not all heroes wear capes, some wear M&S cardigans! A triumph!”

The Excitements looks delightful.

How to Stop a Train – The story of how Mohandas Gandhi became the Mahatma, by Stephanie Ebert and Kathryn Pillay, illustrated by Paddy Bouma (Pan Macmillan Children’s Books)

I don’t usually review children’s books but I thought this story, which is of course set in SA, would be interesting. How do you convey what was a pivotal moment in Gandhi’s life, a deeply political act, in a way that’s meaningful to children?

Gandhi’s ejection from a train because he refused, as an Indian, to move from first class to third class, where the South African Railways thought he belonged, marked the beginning of a journey, “a journey to teach everyone that you can change the world without using violence. A journey to make the world a better place. A long journey that begins with one small word: No.”

Besides simply telling this story, the authors provide context, describing the SA of the time, notes for parents and a glossary of terms such as civil rights and indentured labourers.

It’s an inspiring story which tells youthful readers that across the world Gandhi’s ideas helped people to stand together, put their bodies in the way of danger, stare down injustice and say one little word: “No. You may not treat people this way.”

Hunting with the Hawks – Untold crime stories from the elite SA crime-fighting unit, by Graham Coetzer (Tafelberg)

Graham Coetzer has spent 13 years working on Carte Blanche programmes, doing what he says he loves best: “exposing the people who scam, exploit, bully and otherwise do harm to ordinary South Africans”.

In the preface he says this volume is not masquerading as a PR exercise for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the body founded in 2008 to target organised crime, economic crime and corruption.

He was inspired to write the book since the nature of the Hawks’ work means most of us never get to hear first-hand accounts of their stories. “Despite often risking their lives for us, they get very little recognition.”

So here’s a behind the scenes glimpse of some of the work they do.

I’ve read only one of the case histories, that involving a trafficking and racketeering operation run, originally in Blouberg in 2017, and headed by a woman, Shantel Reyneke-Bridger.

She ran brothels, sold drugs, and was involved in extorting money from her male clients, who were terrified of being exposed. She also employed many young women, some of them under age, ensured they became drug addicts, and kept them in thrall with the help of violent heavies.

She and her two major partners, her husband and her boyfriend, who all lived together, made a lot of money, yet their brothels were dirty and squalid. Where did all the money go, Coetzer wondered. To casinos, it turned out – all three had serious gambling problems.

Now all three are serving 20-year sentences.

Not a comfortable book to read, I suspect, but ultimately showing that crime can be tackled.

The Invincible Miss Cust – A novel, by Penny Haw (Sourcebooks)

About two weeks ago I reviewed a new book by Penny Haw, The Woman at the Wheel, about the wife of Carl Benz, who invented the first “horseless carriage”. Bertha Benz was a staunch supporter of her husband and I found the book extremely interesting.

The Invincible Miss Cust is about another determined woman, and I think of the two books possibly even more readable. It is relatively new, published in 2022, and I got it from my book club.

Aleen Cust was the first woman veterinary surgeon in Britain and Ireland. Despite completing the practical and course work to become a vet set by the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh in 1897, she was denied registration by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons because of her gender. It was to be more than 20 years before the college relented and admitted her, in 1922.

This meant despite having better marks than many of her fellow (male) students in the final exams, she had to sit at the back of the graduation hall and watch her classmates graduate.

But she did not let this set her back – she found work with an Irish vet in Roscommon and worked alongside him for years. Penny Haw speculates in this, her first historical novel, that Cust and the Irish vet had an intense relationship, although there is no proof of this.

But even the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suspects it was so.

My only criticism of Miss Cust, and it’s not really a fair one, is that since it is published by a US publisher, all the spellings are American despite the fact author Penny Haw is South African and Miss Cust was Anglo-Irish.

I found this a really enjoyable and inspiring read.

 

Bedside Table March

These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first four are from Exclusive Books’s top reads for March. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Near North, by Ivan Vladislavic (Picador Africa)

Ivan Vladislavic has the extraordinary ability to write about everyday subjects and make them interesting. This new account of life in Johannesburg, by the man who wrote the brilliant Portrait with Keys, opens with a description of the lights going out during an episode of load-shedding.

“In a moment, every room breathed its last: the resigned sighs of electronic devices shutting down.”

There’s a search for candles, but all Vladislavic’s partner can find are tea lights. They’re hungry, but everything in the fridge needs cooking. “Looks like it’s either cornflakes or a restaurant.”

So they go out looking for an open restaurant, but like Riviera, the streets of Rosebank and Saxonwold are dark.

In a blackout, Vladislavic muses, those who can afford such things worry about electric fences, security cameras and burglar alarms that aren’t working; those who can’t worry about walking down unlit streets or having to unlock doors in the dark, or the neighbour knocking over a candle.

Parkview turns out to be on a different grid and the lights are on, but it’s a Monday night and most of the restaurants are closed.

Finally they find a small Italian diner where they and a group of strangers eat, chatty and happy to have also discovered a place that’s open and offering hospitality.

And that’s it, the first chapter in this volume. Nothing much, but we all been there  – and will be again.

The Near North is described as a vivid account of the old mining city in times of crisis, “finding meaning in the everyday and incidental”.

Vladislavic is an award-winning writer of novels, stories and essays, and is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Wits.

The Hidden, by Fiona Snyckers (Macmillan)

It’s been the worst terror attack in the US since 9/11, and the FBI are under enormous pressure to find and arrest the ringleaders. But these people are survivalists, with the ability to lie low in the dense forests of the Pacific North West.

This is the US in a post-Trump world, with a woman president, and domestic terrorism declared a federal crime.

Becca Abrahamson has a secret. While she may seem just another suburban housewife, she has deep ties with survivalist communities, and the FBI believes she is involved in the attack.

Fiona Snyckers, who is based in Johannesburg, has published eight novels, one of which, Lacuna, won the SA Literary Award for best novel in 2020.

SA writer Gus Silber says of The Hidden: “A propulsive and nerve-wracking tale of terror in the American heartland. The Hidden hits home with the urgency of a breaking news bulletin.”

The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder, by C L Miller (Pan Macmillan)

Exclusive Books says this murder novel falls into a similar category to those of Richard Osman’s popular Thursday Murder Club series. Novels about what they call “cosy” crime rarely focus on harsh realities, profanity or violence.

“The murders take place off stage, and are often relatively bloodless (eg poisoning), while sexual activity (if any) between characters is only ever gently implied and never directly addressed.”

A former antiques hunter investigates a suspicious death at an isolated English manor, which sees her back in the ruthless world of tracking down stolen treasures.

In a foreword author C L Miller reveals that before starting to write, she consulted her mother, Judith Miller, a regular expert on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, until her death last year. Miller senior told her daughter that what made antiques valuable was not necessarily their intrinsic value but their provenance, in other words their stories.

And Miller junior said once she had thought about that, this novel began to form in her mind.

Publisher’s Weekly says of this debut novel: “Miller’s winning debut exposes the dark underbelly of the antiques trade. Miller nails the pace and mood of a good mystery on her first try…”

Bounce – How to raise resilient kids and teens, by Naomi Holdt (Macmillan)

KZN-based psychologist and mother Naomi Holdt says there never was a time when rotten lemons weren’t tossed at people. We’ll all be knocked down by foreseen circumstances from time to time, and however much we try to protect them, so will our children.

So the question she sets out to answer in this book is how, despite “these lemon-drenched sucker punches”, can we ensure our kids get back up again?

It can be done, but it starts with the parents (doesn’t everything?). “The little things that you say and do have the power to completely change the trajectory of your child’s life.”

A parent’s role is not to prevent your children from falling, but to let them fall, knowing you are there to support them while they get up again. Because it’s in the struggle that we learn we can.

Bounce is not an academic book full of stats and data – it’s intended to be a workbook. One section lists 20 attributes of parents of resilient children, which points out that these parents tend to be resilient themselves, prioritise themselves and their partnerships, put consistent boundaries in place, prioritise play and fun, can let go, allow their kids to mess up, and are able to say sorry.

It also provides advice for anxious parents, gives tips on childhood depression and resilience, has advice for grieving children, tips for divorced parents and a “how to” guide on boundaries and discipline.

She says it’s impossible to get stuff right all the time, but if parents focus on the relationship first and always, the rest somehow falls into place.

Back Up – Why back pain treatments aren’t working and the new science offering hope, by Liam Mannix (New South/ University of New South Wales Press)

University of Sydney professor Chris Maher says in a foreword to this volume that low back pain is the number one cause of disability, affecting an estimated 540 million people at any point in time. In Australia the problem costs the health system A$4.8 billion annually and is the most common reason why middle-aged Australians retire early.

In this book Australian science journalist Liam Mannix, who, like his father was a chronic back pain sufferer, describes the new science of pain and how we think about it, and says recovery from back pain is within our own control.

The book is the result of years of interviewng experts on back and chronic pain. As many as one in five Australians have chronic pain, ranging from headaches to arthritis and endometriosis.

He looks at the back itself, whether we’re built “wrong”, at common beliefs about our backs that turn out to be plain incorrect (“good posture is important, strengthen your core, lift with a straight back…”) and he talks to people who’ve suffered and experienced the “old science” of back pain.

The second half of the book focuses on the new science, how neuroscience has revolutionised the way scientists think about pain and what that can tell us about sore backs.

 

 

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk in February. The first three are from Exclusive Books’s top reads of the month. Some of the books will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Water, by John Boyne (Doubleday)

I have a weakness for islands, and so the premise of Water appeals. Vanessa Carvin, who is in her 50s, leaves Dublin for a small island off the Irish coast in a form of self-imposed exile.

About the first thing she does is change her name to Willow Hale, her middle name and maiden surname. Then she shaves off most of her hair. She is glad there is no wi-fi or television in her bare little cottage, and after switching the radio on she switches it off a minute later. It’s a rare privilege to be so wilfully ignorant of the world and all its nonsense, she muses.

We learn early on that Willow has a past, one that was often discussed on talk radio. Was she in on it, listeners wonder. Like attracts like, they mutter.

While Willow may have taken herself away, it’s harder to shuck her past, and the “scandals that follow like hunting dogs”. She has to try to figure out if her former husband was really the monster everyone says he is.

And whether she was complicit.

One reviewer says of Water: “…Boyne tells us a story we thought we knew, but strips away the ideology to present a new way of seeing.”

The Women, by Kristin Hannah (Macmillan)

It is California 1966 and Finley McGrath is off to Vietnam, the latest in a line of fighting McGraths. His younger sister Frankie is going to miss him very much.

One day Finely’s friend points out there are no pictures of women heroes on the wall of her father’s study, and tells Frankie women can be heroes too. This has never occurred to Frankie.

She is doing nursing training, and she realises they’re going to need nurses in Vietnam. She could join Finley.

Things don’t work out quite as she’d expected.

The Women is dedicated to “the courageous women who served in Vietnam”, most of them nurses. Author Kristin Hannah says after the war was over, in many instances they went home to a world that didn’t care about their service and or want to hear about their experiences.

“I am proud to have this opportunity to shine a light on their strength, resilience, and grit.”

Fool Me Once, by Harlan Coben (Penguin Books)

Maya Burkett is with her husband Joe in Central Park on a pleasant evening when two men approach and shoot him. Calling for help, Maya flees.

Afterwards, she blames herself. She was, until recently, an army captain with service in Iraq, a markswoman and a helicopter pilot. She is strong and tough, how come she didn’t or couldn’t protect Joe?

After the funeral, Maya’s friend Eileen gives her what she calls a nanny cam. Seeing there is no Joe around any more, and Maya works full time giving flying lessons, Eileen thinks it might be helpful to keep an eye on how the nanny looks after toddler Lily. (Is that even legal?)

And then, one morning, shortly before Joe’s will is read, Maya is idly watching yesterday’s footage while reading Dr Seuss to Lily, when a man appears in the frame – and it’s a man both Maya and Lily know very well: Joe.

That’s as far as I’ve got. But Harlan Coben is a master of the thriller, and other reviews promise that the story only gets better.

The title was first published in 2016 but has been republished to coincide with a 2024 eight-part British TV series made for Netflix and starring Joanna Lumley among others.

Mrs Winterbottom Takes a Gap Year, by Joanna Nell (Hodder & Stoughton/ Jonathan Ball)

Dr and Dr Winterbottom have retired from their practice in an English village after more than 40 years. On the first morning of the rest of their lives, they eat breakfast at the mossy patio table – mossy because largely unused – under a heavy grey sky.

Alan has broken with his tradition of marmalade toast and cooked himself a couple of kippers, nauseating Heather, who settles for muesli. So what are they going to do?

Heather knows the way to get Alan to do what she wants is to present him with a couple of alternatives, one of which will not appeal. “We could get fit,” she says. Pilates, yoga…

Or… go to Greece on holiday.

Alan says he’s done Greece. He spent a month or two in his gap year drinking beer and shagging his way around the Greek archipelago. There’s no rush, they could go next year, he says.

Alan has a better plan. He wants to grow a vegetable garden. Heather points out he hates gardening. Only mowing the lawn and weeding, he counters.

Heather contemplates watching home improvement programmes on the telly every afternoon, “the passage of hours marked only in the boiling and cooling of the kettle”.

This is not going well. After a few ups and downs, Heather comes to a conclusion. She’s going to take a year off, alone, in Greece, a la Shirley Valentine.

Of course, things don’t go quite the way she’s planned.

The Last Trial, by Scott Turow (Macmillan)

Legendary American defence lawyer Sandy Stern is 85 and not well, but he has been persuaded to take on his last criminal trial in defence of his old friend – old in both senses of the word – Kiril Pafko, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, and a man who has now been charged in a federal racketeering indictment with murder, fraud and insider trading.

Can the charges possibly be based on fact, Stern wonders as the trial progresses. And will Stern ever really know the truth, even if he wins in court?

We are told Stern’s belief in his friend and his belief in the justice system face a terrible test in the courtroom, “where evidence and reality are sometimes worlds apart”.

The Observer said of Scott Turow’s writing: “Grisham might do it more often, but Turow does it much better.” Turow has written 11 bestselling novels, including Presumed Innocent, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

The Last Trial was published in 2020, but I’ve just got my hands on it.

Held, by Anne Michaels (Bloomsbury/ Jonathan Ball)

It is 1917 and after a blast John lies on a battlefield. He supposes he’s seriously injured as he can’t feel his legs, and his mind drifts between the present and the past.

Snow is falling thickly, but he doesn’t feel cold, which puzzles him. He wonders if he will know the moment of his death or will it be like night falling?

But John doesn’t die, and three years later he is home, but not whole. He is reunited with Helen, his lover and an artist, and reopens his photography business.

But he discovers the past is very much with him, and ghosts start to appear in his pictures.

This is a story that spans four generations, but it is a slight novel, not a tome, often written in short sections. The writing is beautiful.

Anne Michaels is the author of Fugitive Pieces, which was described by John Berger of the Observer as “the most important book I have read for 40 years”. She has also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Power and Faith – How evangelical churches are quietly shaping our democracy, by Pontsho Pilane (Tafelberg)

In her introduction to this title, Pontsho Pilane says she has always been uncomfortable with the level of dependence the SA government and civil society place on faith-based organisations as conduits into communities and the delivery of social service.

She understands that is because so many people are religious and belong to an institutional faith structure, “but it is particularly worrying in SA because our constitution includes many policies that are contrary to conservative interpretations of the Bible and other religious beliefs”.

The aim of her book is to unpack structural and systemic issues of  Christian evangelism in SA and the “sociopolitical implications that they have and will have on the state of health, human rights and other aspects of our everyday lives as South Africans”.

The book is for the young women who fall prey to evangelical religion, for those “trapped in the clutches of evangelicalism and cannot see a way out… this book is for… churches unaware of how they are tainting our democracy”.

Power and Faith has been declared “Book of the Month” by News24.

 

 

 

 

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk this first month of 2024. The first four are from Exclusive Books’s top reads. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Normal Women – 900 years of making history, by Philippa Gregory (William Collins)

The Bayeux Tapestry, embroidered to embellish the newly built cathedral in Bayeux in 1077, tells the story of the conquest of England by William I, the French Duke of Normandy. It is 70m long and depicts an invasion force of 632 men, along with almost 200 horses, 55 dogs, 500 other animals and birds, and just five women – all of them threatened or suffering violence. In fact, points out author Philippa Gregory, there are more penises in the tapestry than women.

This indicates the way that women have been largely ignored by historians over the centuries. The only women of interest to male record keepers – mostly men of the church – were mothers, queens, taxpayers and criminals.

William Churchill’s magisterial A History of the English -Speaking Peoples, published in the 20^th century, “is a description not of the ‘peoples’ but of English-speaking men, 1 413 named men, and just 98 named women. What we read as a history of [Britain] is a history of men, as viewed by men, as recorded by men”.

Gregory, an admired writer of historical novels, notably The Other Boleyn Girl, was originally inspired to write this (equally magisterial) book by the life of Mary Boleyn, sister to the unfortunate Anne. Mary “made her own remarkable life but enters history only as the sister to the more famous Anne. She made me think of all the other women whose names and stories are lost…”

Gregory says what she wanted to write was “a huge book about women – those engaged in unusual practices and those living uneventful lives…”

They were there, in history, brides and queens, nuns, witches and soldiers, “all part of women’s history… even though they lived and died without a man noticing them for long enough to write down their names”.

I think this book looks brilliant.

A Memoir of My Former Self – A life in writing, by Hilary Mantel (John Murray)

Hilary Mantel was the prize-winning author of the brilliant Wolf Hall trilogy, for which she won the Booker Prize twice, along with other novels and two works of non-fiction, Giving Up the Ghost and Mantel Pieces.

Now, following her death in 2022, her book editor for 20 years, Nicholas Pearson, has compiled a collection of her writing for newspapers and periodicals in which, he says, her wicked sense of humour often comes shining through.

The pieces reveal “a full and exhilarating self-portrait… she isn’t afraid to lay herself bare”. While Mantel Pieces was a collection of writing from the London Review of Books, this collection is drawn from wider sources.

She wrote for the Guardian for years, the New York Review of Books and The Spectator, as well as delivering the BBC Reith Lectures in 2017, which were meditations on how people interpret the past. Pearson says these lectures “are perhaps the finest distillation we have of the art of the historical novelist”.

In one piece, dated 2007, she refers to a remark by Martin Amis, who said he thought of journalism and criticism as writing left-handed, “where the connection isn’t to the part of me that novels come from”.

She says, being contrary and literal-minded, she decided to write a paragraph with her left hand, and this is what emerged:

“It’s so slow, so uncontrolled… the least flourish slides all over the paper… ‘W’ I find is the very devil… tension transmits to your whole body, as if you were trying to write with your legs. No wonder it was so tiring to be at infant school. Noon, and you were done for.”

I think this title looks great too.

Killers of the Flower Moon – Oil, money, murder and the birth of the FBI, by David Grann (Simon & Schuster)

This is an extraordinary story of indigenous people – Native Americans – who in the 1870s were kicked off their productive and traditional lands in Kansas to a barren reservation in Oklahoma, which turned out, several decades later, to be on top of some of some of the richest oil deposits in the US.

To access the oil, prospectors had to pay the Osage people for leases, rights and royalties, and by the early 1920s, the Osage were believed to be the wealthiest people per capita in the world.

At the centre of the story is Mollie Burkhart, a member of the Osage tribe, and her white husband, Ernest. In 1921 Osage people began to disappear, including Mollie’s older sister Anna, whose body was found a week or so later with a bullet wound to the top of the head.

The blurb on the back of this book says, “as the death toll climbed, the [fledgling] FBI took up the case and with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history”.

David Grann’s book, based on years of research, was first published in the US in 2017, but has now been rereleased to coincide with a Martin Scorsese feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro and Lily Gladstone.

I’ve watched the film’s trailer and read the first couple of chapters of the book, and it looks like a cracker.

The Secret Life of John le Carré, by Adam Sisman (Profile Books)

In his epigraph at the start of this volume, Adam Sisman quotes from John le Carré’s novel A Perfect Spy: “All his life he’s been inventing versions of himself that are untrue.” It appears that’s what Le Carré did too.

In 2015 Sisman published a biography of Le Carré, writing that it was the truth “insofar as I was able t ascertain it, but not the whole truth. While [Le Carré ] was alive, I was obliged to suppress some of what I knew.”

When the biography appeared, a reviewer wrote: “It’s hard not to feel there is a great deal we’re not being told.” He was right.

Among the information Sisman suppressed was the fact Le Carré had been a serial adulterer, with his pursuit of women apparently the key to unlocking his fiction.

In a letter to Sisman, Le Carré wrote: “My infidelities produced in my life a duality & tension that became almost a necessary drug for my writing, a dangerous edge of some kind… They are not therefore a ‘dark part’ of my life, separate from the ‘high calling’, so to speak, but, alas, integral to it, & inseparable.”

Sisman says without much effort he identified 11 women with whom Le Carré had had affairs in the first 30 years of his marriage, and he knew there were plenty more. Some were recognisable as characters in the novels.

Despite this, he forbade Sisman to write about them in his lifetime. Le Carré died in late 2020, and his wife Jane just a few weeks later.

This volume, then, is not a reworked biography but a supplement to the biography, containing material Sisman says he omitted then as well as information that has emerged since. “It might be described as What Was Left Out.”

How’s that for a teaser?

How to Fight a War, by Mike Martin (DeltaBooks/ Jonathan Ball)

With wars raging in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, geopolitical tensions  over China, Taiwan and the South China sea, “the world has not looked this chaotic for decades”.

Apparently there are ways to fight wars and ways not, and the current problem is that often those waging wars don’t have much grasp of the tried and tested ways to succeed.

A former British Army officer with military experience in Afghanistan, Mike Martin has a PhD in war studies, and is a senior visiting research fellow in the department of war studies at King’s College, London.

In his introduction he says at the core of How to Fight a War is the notion that winning wars “is about understanding and following basic principles… wars are almost always lost due to the same simple ideas being misapplied or ignored”.

“When war leaders fail in their aims, it is usually because they have ignored warfare’s simple ideas, thinking that, for instnance, logistics matter less to them than to their adversaries. This ‘wishing away’ happens because of three fallacies: overconfidence; being bewitched by a new technology that will ‘solve’ their problems; or misunderstanding the enemy and their perspective.”

The book is intended as a reference guide for the commander in chief of a nation’s military, because leaders need the strategic, operational and tactical skills to wage war successfully.

Martin has chapters on strategy, tactics, morale, training, the environment in which fighting takes place, the necessary land, sea and air forces, information and cyber operations, and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

He is nothing if not blunt.  Part three of the book, he says, “brings it all together and shows you how to orchestrate lethal violence to achieve your political goals. In other words, how to change your enemy’s mind, or kill them.”

The book has a foreword by Professor Abel Esterhuyse, chair of the department of strategic studies at Stellenbosch University’s faculty of military science.

Words Words Words, by David Crystal (Oxford University Press)

David Crystal OBE is a British academic who works on the linguistics of the English language. Linguistics is a highly technical and philosophical field, but Crystal’s brilliance – to my mind – is how he can make the subject fascinating to the lay person. He is the author of many readable books on the subject, including this one.

It is not a new book (it was first published in 2006) – but it is new to me; I spotted it on the Exclusive Books’ shelves at UCT’s summer school, and snapped it up.

He says while all the world’s 6 000 or so languages have fascinated him, English is his favourite, “probably because of its literature”. It is also his home language, which helps.

Everyone has some interest in words, whether in dialect words, or the way small children put words together, or the history of a word’s meaning.

So how many words are there in English? This is an impossible question, but we can get a hint from the Oxford English Dictionary which had over half a million words in its 1992 edition, or The Third New Webster International, the biggest American dictionary, which had 450 000 entries in 1961. Both dictionaries have grown since.

He writes about the development of language in children, saying most utter their first word around the age of 12 months, starting off with individual words, but some launch directly into simple sentences.

Lord Macaulay, the historian, was said to have been a late talker who began speaking in full sentences at three. There is a story, which Crystal is pretty sceptical about, that when he was asked, at three, why he started talking so late, Macaulay is said to have replied: “Hitherto, nothing of sufficient significance has warranted my verbal attention.”

This is a little book, but a delight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vivien Horler

With temperatures up in the 30s, blue skies and inviting beaches, summer is finally here, along with festive plans and hopefully some time off.

Many people will be thinking of Christmas gifts, while others who may have been lucky enough to get an end-of-year bonus, are planning to spoil themselves a little.

So what to get? With malls and shops full to overflowing, one-stop gift buying is good, and bookshops offer something for all.

As Exclusive Books points out in its Christmas Catalogue, books are the only presents you get to open twice.

The 130 titles featured in Exclusive’s Christmas Catalogue cover all fields, from fiction, history and current affairs to business, biography, natural science, cookery, sport, faith, travel, humour, reference, travel and of course stuff to read for children, teens and young adults.

The catalogue is compiled by Exclusive’s 45 store managers, based on their familiarity with what their customers want to read.

So here’s a list of great reads, some of them my top choices over the past year, some that have arrived this month, and some from the EB catalogue.

I haven’t finished all the books on this list, but I’ve had fun startingthem. Enjoy.

I’ll start with some fascinating-looking non-fiction.

Lawrence of Arabia, by Ranulph Fiennes (Michael Joseph)

Ranulph Fiennes is a British adventurer and explorer – he’s actually named by the Guinness Book of Records as “the world’s greatest living explorer” – and is of course also a writer, with biographies like Captain Scott and Shackleton behind him, as well as books about his adventures.

A note on the cover of Lawrence of Arabia says: “You don’t have to have led a desert army into battle to tell [T E Lawrence’s] story, but it helps.” During Fiennes’s military career in the British Army in the 1960s, he was seconded to the army of the Sultan of Oman, seeing active service in the Dhofar Rebellion, and being decorated for bravery.

In his introduction to this biography, Fiennes writes: “Like T E Lawrence, I led an Arab platoon in a fight for their country. Also, like Lawrence, it was an experience that would take me to the edge. Before my adventures in Oman I already counted him as one of my heroes…

“While there are some interesting parallels between us, I’ve often found that he is a man without equal. His adventures in the desert were enough to stir the blood, but the complexity of his character also held me in his grip. There have been few like him, before or since.”

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

Emperor of Rome, by Mary Beard (Profile Books)

This title is proclaimed as “a new way of seeing the Roman Empire”, and has had some splendid reviews overseas. Mary Beard is Professor Emerita of Classics at Cambridge University, and the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

Previous books include the prize-winning Pompeii.

In her “Welcome”, Beard says her book explores the fact and fiction of the rulers of ancient Rome, looking at what they did, why they did it, and why their stories have been told in sometimes lurid ways.

“It looks at the big questions, of power, corruption and conspiracy. But it also looks at the day-to-day practicalities of their lives. What, and where, did they eat? Who did they sleep with? How did they travel?”

She says there are fewer psychopaths in her book than the reader might expect, although the Roman world was, in our terms, “an almost unimaginably cruel place of premature death… murder was the ultimate way of resolving disputes, political and otherwise. The corridors of power, as well as many other humbler corridors in Rome, were always bloodstained.”

It’s beginning to sound like parts of South Africa – and the wider world – today.

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

The Race to the Future – the adventure that accelerated the 20^th century, by Kassia St Clair (John Murray/ Jonathan Ball)

Remember that hilarious film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines? This book celebrates something similar – a car race from Peking to Paris in 1907. Motoring was pretty new, roads were designed for horses rather than cars, cars were started with crank handles and fuel stations were few and far between.

Bearing in mind that the first car to be shown off in SA was a Benz Velo  before President Paul Kruger in Pretoria in January 1897, all of 20 years previously, 1907 was early days for a race of that magnitude.

In a journey that would take the competitors through the Gobi Desert, over the Urals and across two continents on the verge of revolution and war, the band of five cars set off – a Contal Mototri (6hp), two De Dion-Boutons (10hp), a Spyker (15hp), and an Itala with a massive 34-45hp engine.

In her preface, British writer Kassia St Clair says the race excited such public attention that between 500 000 and 600 000 people were on the wet streets of Paris to see the winner enter the city.

At the time, motoring magazines carried lists of the tools, lubricants, spare tyres and parts that people were advised to carry, even on short journeys.  Yet here was a journey where “roads” were often donkey tracks, fuel needed to be cached, or transported by camel, and drivers and their crew occasionally needed to make their own tracks, using pickaxes, axes and shovels.

“The Peking-Paris race was a decisive moment. It put the utility and practical significance of the automobile beyond doubt. Afterwards, even the most hardened sceptics could not ignore its potential as a rival to the railway or its applications in both civilian and military life… In practical terms, driving across two continents was the sternest test the technology had faced.”

The race, she says, is a parable about a world teetering on the edge of the most consequential century in human history.

Normal Women – 900 years of making history, by Philippa Gregory

According to the EB Christmas Catalogue, “Reframing British history from 1066 to modern times, this title highlights the diverse roles and contributions of women throughout nine centuries of social and cultural transitions. Sharing the stories of countless ‘normal women’ who shaped society as soldiers, traders, campaigners, inventors and more, this landmark work celebrates the agency of women while acknowledging that true gender equality still awaits”.

Author Philippa Gregory, probably best known for her wonderful historical novel The Other Boleyn Girl, about Ann Boleyn’s older sister Mary, said of Normal Women: “What I wanted to write was a huge book about women – those engaged in unusual practices and those living uneventful lives, up against their society and gliding along the top of it, the few we have heard of and the millions that we have not.”

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

Coloured – How classification became culture, by Tessa Dooms & Lynsey Ebony Chutel (Jonathan Ball)

In 1958, when he was 16, Solly Dooms was taken, with his school class – no parents or family present – to an Office for Race Categorisation. Living in a Northern Cape village he spoke Setswana, Afrikaans and English and considered himself to be a Motswana boy.

After telling the registration officer his name was Lesole Dooms, he was classified “Native” and accordingly issued with a dompas. At home later that day he discovered there was a problem – all the rest of his family were classified “Coloured”. Technically he was not even allowed to live with them.

So it was back to the Office for Race Registration where Lesole relinquished his name and emerged as a coloured boy called Elliot. Eventually Elliot moved to Eldorado Park in what is now Gauteng, a formerly coloured area, and the place where his daughter, author Tessa Dooms, grew up.

She writes: “Elliot would be safe in Eldorado Park, as long as he forgot about Lesole. That name does not appear in his contemporary SA identity document, but is invoked as a term of endearment by family members who to this day call him Solly – a contraction of Lesole.”

This is just one of the stories in this insightful book on coloured identity and culture, written by Dooms, a sociologist and political analyst, and Lynsey Ebony Chutel, a journalist and writer.

In their introduction they say: “We offer this book, then, as a mirror to reflect Coloured life – and a projection to show this life to people who too often think they know us. It is a book for Coloured people, by Coloured people, a book of Coloured and colourful stories from varied corners of the SA vista, past, present and future.”

The very term “Coloured” is controversial. Some see it as a slur, a burden, others see it as a unifier.

“Who are Coloured people? Are they San or Khoe, Malay or mixed, and where in SA do they fit in? And then the enduring, but also insulting question: do Coloured people even have a culture?”

This title aims to provide some answers.

Bush Brothers – Life and death across the Border, by Steve de Witt (Tafelberg)

This looks like a slightly different memoir from the many that have been published over the years since 1990. Thirty-five years after leaving the army Steve de Witt had a drink in Cape Town with a former platoon mate. The mate was in touch with another mate, and this eventually led to a two-day reunion of seven of them.

They had all been fresh out of high school when they met, going through formative experiences together – often involving life and death, and relying on each other implicitly. They had gone on to have different lives, but once they got together for their reunion in Johannesburg in 2016, they realised the old bonds were still strong.

De Witt then founded a veterans’ association, Bush Brothers Reunited, and now they get together every year, with more “makkers” joining all the time. “In some ways we’re now closer now than before, guiding one another through life’s trials into old age.”

The 1980s pictures in the book show lean young men in their browns, but pictures of the guys at the reunions area bit different. One of the captions reads: “One joker commented, ‘Put bandoliers around your chests and you could be Boers in the Anglo-Boer War.”

At one of the reunions the guys suggested De Witt write their Border War story, and here it is.

He says: “I didn’t want to write just another memoir filled with dry, sequential facts. Instead I wanted to evoke the drama, humour and complexity of our service – those things fellow conscripts can relate to…”

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

2024 Sky Guide Southern Africa – An astronomical handbook, by Auke Slotegraaf and Ian Glass (Astronomical Society of Southern Africa with Struik Nature)

The Fighting Dragons of Ara sounds like something out of Tolkein, but they are a region of star formation “consisting of emission, reflection and dark nebulae sculpted and lit by powerful radiation from young stars”.

This is the impressive 79^th edition of the handbook, and is aimed at anyone with an interest in the night skies of Southern Africa, from the beginner to the professional.

It highlights the cosmic events for each month of the year, including planetary movements, eclipses and meteor showers.

It starts with highlights of the 2024 astronomical calendar (“Jan 24: Venus near Lagoon Neula; Jan 27: Mercury near Mars”), and itemises the planets visible before and after sunset.

It lists all the full moons of the year – including four Supermoons and two Micromoons, and charmingly gives them names: “Jan 25: Mantis Moon; Feb 24: Dassie Moon, Micromoon; Mar 25: Harvest Moon, Micromoon, eclipse…”

Then it launches into detailed monthly thrills in the celestial almanac, each one accompanied by fabulous full-page pictures.

It contains a wealth of information about the Sun, Moon, comets and bright stars, all accompanied by diagrams, charts and images.

This would seem to be a must for all stargazers.

Capture in the Court – In defence of judges and the constitution, by Dan Mafora (Tafelberg)

Our constitution was signed at Sharpeville on December 10, 1996, and at the signing ceremony President Nelson Mandela said he was honoured to be signing into law a text that “embodies our nation’s highest aspirations… let us join hands for peace and prosperity. In doing so we will redeem the faith which fired those whose blood drenched the soil of Sharpeville and elsewhere in our country and beyond.”

Yet here we are today, with Mandela accused of being a sell-out. Populist leaders see the Constitution as an obstacle to freedom. “Sophisticated disinformation campaigns, using bots and fake social media accounts, are used to sway public opinion.”

Dan Mafura is the senior researcher at the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution, and worked at the Constitutional Court as a law clerk.

He writes that this book is not about state capture, but about “a new, more insidious, form of capture. It is about the ascendant anti-constitutionalism of our present moment. Rhetoric that the Constitution has failed or is an obstacle to freedom, economic or otherwise, is flowering everywhere.”

There are dangers in this talk, and Mafura proposes ways we can change course, before it is too late.

Hugh Corder, UCT Professor Emeritus of Public Law, has described this title as “a challenging, provocative and highly accessible account of some of the most urgent constitutional and ideological questions besetting SA currently”.

Fiction:

The Book of Fire, by Christy Lefteri (Manilla Press)

Christy Lefteri, author of the best-selling and prize-winning The Beekeeper of Aleppo, has written a new book about a family in a small village in Greece.

Irini is British, her husband Tasso Greek, and they live simply and happily with their young daughter Chara until a wealthy man, who lives in splendid isolation in a mansion up the hill, sets fire to the land out of greed and indifference.

The family, and scores of others, flee the flames, with Irini and Chara spending hours in the sea before they are rescued.

Afterwards, Tasso’s father is dead, Tasso is badly injured and Chara has burn scars on her back.

Then one day, six months later, Irini comes across the rich man sitting under a tree in what are left of the woods. Irini says: “He did something terrible, but then, so did I. I left him. I left him, and now he may be dead.”

The first two chapters had me hooked.

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

Lefteri grew up in London, the child of Cypriot refugees.

Still Breathing, by Marita van der Vyver (Tafelberg)

There’s an old colour snap of a group of friends, posing together, babies in their laps. And now it’s 25 years later and the group, scattered all over the world, have come back to the West Coast to celebrate Adriaan’s 70^th birthday in his beach house.

Children, now grown, and grandchildren join them as they look back over the years with wine and flowers, and record who is missing, who have changed partners, and the age that is beckoning them.

This looks like a lovely warm story, but I was a bit dismayed by the cast of characters, and then the first chapter, describing who is who in the old photograph. I think it will be a fun read, once I’ve figured out who they all are, who was who, who was/is married to whom, and whose children all those kids are.

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

The Little Liar, by Mitch Alboom (Sphere)

This book, by the author of the bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie, is about truth and lies set in the Holocaust.

The Germans are loading the Jews of Salonika on to trains whose final destination is Auschwitz. Most know 11-year-old Nico Krispis as a child who never lies, and are tempted to believe him when he tells them, at the behest of a German officer, that the trains are taking them “north” to new jobs and safety.

Nico has no reason not to believe the officer, particularly when he tells the child he can protect his own family by encouraging the neighbours. But the day he sees his own family loaded on to the train, he realises he’s been had.

Nico escapes, but never tells the truth again. Interspersed with Nico’s story is that of his brother Sebastian, a school friend, and the German officer.

The blurb tells us this is Mitch Alboom “at his very best, a timeless tale of the harm we inflict with our deceits, and the power of love to redeem us”.

Day, by Michael Cunningham (4^th Estate)

It’s April 2019 and a New York family who love each other but recognise cracks approaching in their relationships, have a typical early morning send-off to work and school.

A year later they are in lockdown, driving each other nuts and missing Robbie, the children’s uncle, who went on a trip to Iceland, and is now trapped overseas.

A year after that the family get together again, drawn by tragedy to seek each other’s comfort. All is changed, and yet the love lives on.

Day will be reviewed on Sunday, December December 17.

• This title is included in the Exclusive Books Christmas Catalogue.

The Fraud, by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton/Jonathan Ball)

This is a dazzling yet complicated depiction of Victorian England, and its attitude to sugar, slavery, women’s rights and literature. It also provides an account of one of the longest trials ever to be heard in Britain.

It was reviewed on The Books Page on Sunday December 10.

To see the review: A dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England

Other books to feature in The Books Page which are included in Exclusive Books’ Christmas Catalogue:

The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese (Grove Press UK)

This novel was reviewed by Vivien Horler on The  Books Page on August 27, 2023.

To see the review: A great, sprawling triumph of a novel

 

 

Winnie & Nelson – Portrait of a marriage, by Jonny Steinberg (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

This title was reviewed by Vivien Horler on The Books Page on June 19, 2023.

To see the review: A riveting history of our recent past, through the prism of a marriage

 

 

Truth to Power – My years inside Eskom, by Andre de Ruyter (Penguin Books)

This title was reviewed by Vivien Horler on The Books Page on July 9, 2023.

To see the review: De Ruyter tells his shocking inside story of Eskom

 

 

Harry Oppenheimer – Diamonds, gold and dynasty (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

This title was reviewed by Archie Henderson on The Books Page on July 23, 2023.

To see the review: Dismissed by a new generation, Oppenheimer played major role in 20th century SA

 

 

 

These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. Some will be reviewed in full later. All the Broken Pieces by John Boyne, Paperless by Buntu Siwisa and The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks, are among Exclusive Books’ top reads for the month. – Vivien Horler

The Seventh Son, by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Talissa Adam is a post-doc based in Manhattan who finds she has no clear career path ahead. Her field is the distant but recoverable past. She has been offered a post-doctoral research position by a new and admired institute, but a condition is that she will have to provide her own funding for the first year – an amount in the region of $70 000.

So she looks elsewhere. An English institute involved in genomics has proposed a study into the role of surrogate mothers in IVF. She would have to go to London and become a surrogate mother, hopefully being paid enough to fund the post-doc position she has been offered in the US.

It emerges that the head of the English institute wants to make a substitution – one man’s sperm for another’s in a bid for a human hybrid.

It’s not clear at the outset if Talissa is aware of dubious ethics of this plan; she goes ahead and gives birth to baby Seth, whose parents are delighted. But as he grows it becomes obvious he is not quite the same as his peers, and he begins to attract attention.

According to th cover notes, The Seventh Son asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Intriguing.

All the Broken Pieces by John Boyne (Penguin Books)

Gretel Fernsby is an elderly woman who has lived in her posh Mayfair flat for more than 60 years. She keeps herself to herself, and is rather proper and formal, as this sentence on the first page of the book illustrates: “Mr Richardson and I had enjoyed the perfect neighbourly relationship in that we had not exchanged a single word since 2008.”

Gretel is of the generation which did not let it all hang out; consequently she rarely talks about – or tries not even to think about – her past growing up in Germany before and during World War 2, with a father who was eventually hanged for war crimes, and a brother who died young.

But now Mr Richardson downstairs has died, and the flat has been sold to a young family whose young son, Harry, brings back painful memories. She finds herself in a position where she can help save a young boy for the second time in her life, but what will this mean for her self-contained life?

This is a self-standing but sort of sequel to Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

I’ve just started it and I’m already absorbed.

Paperless – a novel, by Buntu Siwisa (Jacana Media)

Mostly set in Oxford, this novel looks at the experiences of African, undocumented and displaced characters living in the ancient British university town.

The novel opens with Luzuko Gobo, doing his doctorate at Oxford, on his way to hear a talk by Rhodesia’s Ian Smith in the Oxford Union on the topic: “Do African leaders govern for, or against, the interests of their people?”

But we all knew, says Luzuko, the Oxford Union was gunning for “the old boogeyman… His Excellency President Robert Gabriel Mugabe”, and all the black people in Oxford were going to hear Smith.

Siwisa’s first book was Rugby, Resistance and Politics: How Dan Qeqe helped shape the history of Port Elizabeth.

Paperless was shortlisted for the James Currey Prize for African Literature. I’ve read only a few pages and the writing seems pretty prolix – maybe he settles down or maybe I’ll get my eye in.

Soul Mandate – the extraordinary life of a property maverick, by Lew Geffen (Melinda Ferguson)

Judging by the photographs in this autobiography, real estate tycoon Lew Geffen has had a good life.

After a somewhat shaky early start, including a failure to get matric, he has gone on to socialise with celebrities, including holding his 60^th birthday on Nicholas Cage’s yacht in the Med, golfing with Rafael Nadal in Mallorca, and selling homes for both Nelson Mandela and Gary Player.

He’s also athletic, climbing Table Mountain, running the Comrades, and being in the swimming team at school in Joburg. His career included a stint in the Israeli army, being a hawker, going into the construction business, being fired by his mother, the estate agent Aïda, and dealing with the fall-out of a murder at Lew Geffen Estates’ annual convention at Spier wine farm.

Over the years people told him he should write a book, and the lockdown provided the opportunity. So at 75 he says he is grateful to be healthy and in love, retired from his company but still chairman of Lew Geffen Estates.

He finishes this account: “If the question were to be asked, ‘Did you have a full and fulfilled life, taking into account all the highs and troughs?’ the answer would be: ‘Geffenitely yes!’ ”

Winning the Property Game – letters from an executive property mentor, by Koketso Sylvia Milosevic (Tafelberberg)

Koketso Sylvia Milosevic has the sort of name that was concocted by a prominent PR firm to spread fake news in SA during the State Capture years. But it’s genuinely hers.

She writes: “Who is this black woman with an Eastern European surname… I ask myself, what is a girl who grew up in Ga-Rankuwa in Bophuthatswana doing running a global business, travelling the world, and managing a property empire?”

In her foreword, transformational coach Lisa Nicols says she has helped a lot of people make the often-challenging journey from where they are in life to where they want to be.

“So I was thrilled to discover this book, which is pure rocket fuel for that crucial trip…”

She adds that anyone, no matter how challenging their circumstances, can rise above anything. How? “By being determined, by developing certain skills and by adopting useful attitudes – in short – by believing what Sylvia always says: ‘Success is your birth right’.”

Buy your First Home – SA’s ultimate property guide for newbies by Zamantungwa Khumalo (Tafelberg)

In her preface Zamantungwa Khumalo says she bought herself two properties for her 27^th birthday.

“I took uMa to see them, and while we were at one of them, she said uGogo (her mom and my maternal grandmother) had been a domestic worker in that area. In that moment it hit me that we millennials really are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

She says at the outset buying property – and the fear of taking on a whopping R350 000 to R500 000 debt – was crippling.

Google was not much help. She looked up how to buy a house, how home loans worked, what interest rates are , what questions she should  an estate agent, and how long it took to buy a house.

The trouble was the answers came up for people living in the West, with almost no resources catering for South Africans.

So she learnt, and is now sharing the fruits of her research. Chapters include preparing yourself financially, what you can afford, the costs of homeownership, buying off-plan or by auction, First Home Finance, joint homeloans and being married in community of property.

Clear, straightforward and full of useful information, this little book will be handy for anyone contemplating buying their first home.