Does ‘SA Literature’ matter?

JM Coetzee

By Leon de Kock

“Now, 10 years after JM Coetzee left the country … South African literature in English does not matter very much any more.”
This sweeping – and to many, potentially devastating – comment, was uttered just a few weeks ago by veteran UCT-based critic Ian Glenn during his public spat with Imraan Coovadia.
In the context of his intra-UCT wrangle with Coovadia, Glenn’s judgement serves to diminish Coovadia’s importance as a South African author, but in a more general sense the statement deserves wider consideration.
Is it true that South African literature doesn’t matter “very much any more”?
A few years ago, I published an academic article under the title, Does South African Literature Still Exist? In that piece, I asked whether the anti-apartheid imperative of “landlocked”, special-case struggle literature had not fatally overdetermined what we used to call “SA Lit”.
Not only did the symbolic and legislative conditions for such a literature disappear after 1990 (though not the material ones), but the world also became “post-national”. It is a globalising world in which success as a writer increasingly demands readership – and content – beyond determinate borders.
Simply put, “national” struggles such as apartheid – and national “exceptionalism” – no longer capture the world’s attention. As a writer, you now need to speak to larger issues, breaching terrestrial boundaries.

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SA’s Van Schaik and Exclusive Books up for sale

 | By Benedicte Page

South Africa’s Times Media Group has announced its decision to sell its book retail chains, Exclusive Books and Van Schaik.

The media company’s c.e.o. Andrew Bonamour said: “We are in the process of focusing the group around its core media businesses and while both book retail businesses hold a strong position in their respective trade book and academic book markets, they are not aligned with out future strategic direction.”

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Pan Mac signs Pistorius title

| By Joshua Farrington

Pan Macmillan South Africa has acquired world rights to a book which investigates the trial of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, with Pan Macmillan UK sublicensing rights.

Behind The Door: The Oscar and Reeva Story will be written by South African journalist and author Mandy Wiener alongside reporter Barry Batemam, one of the first journalists on the scene following the shooting which left model Steenkamp dead.

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Saved from a pulp affliction – ‘book artist’ Keri Muller

Africa Reinvented

By lauricetb

It’s a map of Africa but not as you would usually know it. From a distance it resembles the texture of oyster mushrooms, their delicate fluted forms cast into whorls of soft colour. Up close you can make out the words that have combined to create the map, and the pages of books that have been delicately folded and glued together to create it.

This artwork “Africa Reinvented” has earned Keri Muller her title as the “book artist” or as Google’s search terms locate her, “Cape Town’s origami expert”. Muller didn’t get to her art by a conventional path and she describes herself more as a “maker” of stuff. It sounds like  trendy nomenclature but it’s a fitting description as her work ranges from folding paper to designing with found objects, graphic design, illustration and even jewellery-making.

Muller studied interior design but managed to last for only a year working in that field. “I found everyone to be terribly hung up on scatter cushions,” she says, a fixation she just didn’t share. She went off traveling and fell in love with tourism, coming back to work in marketing and product development for tour operators representing East Africa. Then three years ago she moved to Mozambique, and she says she came back with “a much bigger appreciation of the fact that every moment of one’s life does count and you can’t fritter it away being 60 percent content.” That’s when she started making stuff. “Because I couldn’t bear to go back to office life, it became my major motivation for wanting to work for myself”, she says. Her efforts snowballed into a new business.

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And Other Stories signs Ivan Vladislavić

 | By Katie Allen

And Other Stories has acquired the new novel by prize-winning South African author Ivan Vladislavić.

World English language Rights (excluding South Africa) in Double Negative were acquired from Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann.

The novel focuses on apartheid-era university dropout Neville Lister whose life is changed when he is sent to meet photographer Saul Auerbach.

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A sip of Mampoer — for a small price

By Nick Hedley

MAMPOER.co.za, an experimental website run by some of South Africa’s big names in publishing, is set to shift African journalism “into new territory”.

Describing its long-form in-depth articles as mini-books — “shorter than a novel, longer than a magazine” — the site is named after “a small drink that packs a giant kick”.

The website began selling articles of between 5,000 and 15,000 words to readers for $2.99 each about a week ago, and co-founder Anton Harber says the site is seeing “a steady stream of visitors, and sales are picking up nicely”.

Mampoer’s creation resonates with a continuing shift to digital publishing.

US news magazine Newsweek recently said it would stop its print edition and focus entirely on digital publishing.

Analysts have expressed cautious optimism that Mampoer will address a gap in the South African market.

But they warn that attracting readers willing to pay for content will be difficult when free content is still widely available.

 

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Century snaps up two from South African author

Charlie Human

| By Charlotte Williams

Century has pre-empted two books by South African author Charlie Human, likening his writing to Neil Gaiman, China Mieville and Terry Pratchett.

Editorial director Jack Fogg bought UK and Commonwealth rights to Apocalypse Now Now and as yet untitled second book from John Berlyne at the Zeno agency. Random House Struik bought South African rights in a separate deal.

Apocalypse Now Now tells the story of 16-year-old Baxter Zevcenko who runs a schoolyard gang at his Cape Town high school. When his girlfriend, Esme, gets kidnapped, he is launched into the world of the Cape Town supernatural underworld.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Crime writer gets better with each book

WHY WRITE?: Deon Meyer says the greatest part about being a writer is being read. Picture: MARTIN RHODES

Deon Meyer is passionate about SA and its people and says it’s a fantastic setting for his crime fiction, writes Lauren de Beer.

FOR an international publisher, the decision to take on any author, let alone a South African, is a risk, a leap of faith. In the case of Cape Town-based crime novelist Deon Meyer, the gamble to publish a “totally unknown guy from the bottom end of the Dark Continent” is one that has more than paid dividends for both parties, with the awards his writing has garnered marginally outnumbered only by his sales figures around the world.

The news that his book Thirteen Hours was the top download on Kindle for a week was just reward for an author who gets better with every outing. Trackers (Hodder & Stoughton) is Meyer’s seventh novel and uses, as with his previous works , a South African landscape alive with colour and contrast as its setting. And, as usual, the original was written in Afrikaans (titled Spoor) and translated by Laura Seegers.

“Laura is brilliant and I don’t think she gets enough credit for what she does,” says Meyer. “What she manages to do so well is not to lose the South African flavour, and I think that’s a real art.”

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SA producer wins Zoo City film rights

Buy This

The highly sought-after film rights to Zoo City – the 2011 Arthur C Clarke award-winning science fiction/cyberpunk/urban fantasy thriller penned by South African author, scriptwriter and journalist Lauren Beukes – have gone to Helena Spring, widely regarded as one of SA’s most accomplished motion picture producers.

Beukes (@laurenbeukes) told Bizcommunity.com, “I’m thrilled Helena optioned it. She’s got a fantastic reputation and a ton of experience. We’ve already started working on the script and it’s great to see how her mind works. She asks all the right questions, really gets structure, the rigours of adaptation and is pushing this to be the best thing it can be, while maintaining its distinctive Joburg flavour.

“It’s just the first step”

“It’s just the first step, of course. Movies take a long time to make (that pesky raising-millions-of-dollars thing) but I think it’s in fantastic hands and it’s a privilege to be able to work on the script. Most novelists don’t get to do that (or don’t want to).”

Spring will soon be putting the project out to a select party of directors, while Beukes has first look as screenwriter to adapt her novel for the screen.

“Lauren is perfectly placed to do this; the characters are alive inside her,” says Spring, whose career in the entertainment industry spans nearly three decades, during which time she has produced over 20 motion pictures. This includes the first-ever SA film to receive recognition at the Academy Awards; in 2004, Darrell Roodt’s Yesterday earned a Best Foreign Picture nomination. She has also worked with some of the foremost filmmakers in the world, such as Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy and (The Bourne Ultimatum), and Academy Award-winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech).

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Nawaal Sadaawi and Nadine Gordimer on South Africa, Egypt and the search for democracy

 

Nadine Gordimer

It was not the most opportune time for a literature festival in Johannesburg. In an act of daring cunning that never fails to raise the ire of motorists, cyclists had commandeered this city’s roads while in a restive enclave of Illovo, a group of men battled for ascendancy in a game of cricket. While the more uncultured of the city’s booklovers were in raptures at the cinema, the pretentious snobs among the literary class were robbed of an opportunity to listen to some of literature’s living greats reflect on the shifting position of women in African literature.

By KHADIJA PATEL

The second African Women Writers’ Symposium hosted by the Department of Arts and Culture in partnership with the Windybrow Theatre and the School of Languages and Literature at Wits University may have been poorly attended but certainly not a waste of tax revenue. The symposium was a well intentioned attempt by government to breathe fresh life into a tired publishing industry in South Africa.

Minister of Arts and Culture Paul Mashatile, says about the symposium, “In addition to affording African women a platform to tell their stories through the written word, the symposium is also aimed at creating opportunities for African women’s meaningful participation in the R3.2 billion per annum book publishing industry. The meaningful participation of African women in the book publishing industry and other economic opportunities within the cultural and creative industries are at the core of the Department of Arts and Culture’s Mzansi Golden economy strategy.

“The African Women Writers’ Symposium forms part of our ongoing efforts to raise the voices of African women in the literary world. It is also part of our ongoing efforts to promote a culture of reading and writing in our country and throughout the Continent,” Mashatile says.

Few African women’s voices have been raised higher than Nadine Gordimer and Nawaal Sadaawi.

As the resident matriarch of South African literature, Gordimer celebrated her 88th birthday at the symposium on Sunday. Author, scriptwriter, Nobel prize winner and a one-time ANC member, Gordimer is soon to release her 15th novel. She showed none of the vulnerability old age portends, and it was fitting that Sadaawi spoke animatedly of a need to overcome the fear of death and loneliness. “We have to fight against fear,” Sadaawi said.

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