Interesting website: African Review of Books

Posted on Mar 2, 2006

WOW – a website all about African authors… the site starts off with “Read extracts from Africa’s 100 Best books before you buy them”.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL LIST:
So we went to see how many we know in the top 100…
Here are the South African’s that made it – they’re in alphabetical order. We’re not sure who the ‘international …
panel’ is that decided or what the criteria are but this list does have a very “setwork” feel to it????:

“This list of 100 books has been decided by an international panel of highly respected figures from books published over the past century. Nominations were submitted from around the world, the criteria being a book that is written by an African on a subject matter relevant to Africa, with an African defined as “someone who was born in Africa or who became a citizen of an African country.”

*Brink, Andrý – A Dry White Season
*Coetzee, J. M. – Life and Times of Michael K
*Fugard, Athol – The Blood Knot: A Play in Seven Scenes
*Gordimer, Nadine – Burger’s Daughter
*Head, Bessie – A Question of Power
*Jordan, Archibald Campbell – Ingqumbo Yeminyanya [The Wrath of the Ancestors]
*Joubert, Elsa – Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena [The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena]
*Krog, Antjie – Country of My Skull
*Magona, Sindiwe – Living, Loving and Lying Awake at Night
*??Mandela Nelson – Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela?
*Marais, Eugýne – Die Siel van die Mier [The Soul of the White Ant]
*Mphahlele, Ezekiel – Down Second Avenue
*Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo – Indaba, My Children
*Nyembezi, Sibusiso – Inkinsela yaseMgungundlovu
*Paton, Alan – Cry, the Beloved Country
*Plaatje, Sol T. – Native Life in South Africa
*Serote, Mongane Wally – Third World Express
*Van Onselen, Charles – The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985
*Vilakazi, Benedict – Amal’ezulu

Anyway, onto more contemporary writers, there is a review on a book by Author David Cohen called People Who Have Stolen From Me – all about people living in and around Jules Street in Malvern… here is a peep, click here for the full review and to explore the site a bit more:

I still own a house in Malvern, even though I live on the other side of the world. For two reasons. It’s a beautiful Edwardian-era working-class house with most of the original fixtures in place, like the bay windows made of wood with lead inlay glass, the high, pressed ceilings and bright oregon pine floors. The other reason I still own it is that the sudden demographic changes in the area after the death of apartheid mean I still owe more on the house than I could hope to sell it for. This is perhaps a good thing, because now the emotional attachment to the property, and the area where our children grew up, does not have to be used as justification for not selling. It’s all about economics, not emotion.

That house is just a few blocks away from Jules Street Furnishers, a shop in the suburb of Malvern which journalist David Cohen has used as a microcosm of the new South Africa where “crime has …become the country’s biggest growth industry.” Unlike my attachment to Malvern, Cohen’s study is less about economics and more about emotions.

People who have Stolen From Me is a true story, reportage, of the people whose lives revolve around one shop at the end of what was once Johannesburg’s longest straight street – Jules Street. Harry Sher and Jack Rubin, owners of the business which has a number of stores in the city, have witnessed the transformation of Jules Street, which links Johannesburg to the eastern suburb of Germiston. Cohen tells two intertwined, almost related stories through the lives of the Harry and Jack and their employees. The one story is biographical, of the people who earn their living, honestly, through Jules Street Furnishers. The other story is that of how this furniture business and its people are perpetual victims of crime. “The business of debt collecting in the new South Africa takes on an almost comic twist”