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Moffie
Nicholas van der Swart has always known he is different. Unable to live up to the expectations his family, his heritage and his culture have of him, he grows increasingly diffident and introverted. When, at the age of 19, he is conscripted into the South African army, he enters a world that is utterly at odds with his every sensibility. Here, he will face the scorn and violence of his tormenters, but will also find the strength to survive. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa has gone a long way toward exposing and exorcising some of the atrocities committed in the name of Apartheid, very little has been revealed about the adversities faced by gays under the regime. Set in “Ward 22” during the Angola Bush War that raged from 1966 to 1989 in South-west Africa, Moffie transports the reader into the world of a young gay conscript with evocative realism. At turns heart wrenching and humorous, told with great sensitivity and infused with hope, Moffie is a long overdue account of a vital subject, place and time.
Moffie
Nicholas van der Swart has always known he is different. Unable to live up to the expectations his family, his heritage and his culture have of him, he grows increasingly diffident and introverted. When, at the age of 19, he is conscripted into the South African army, he enters a world that is utterly at odds with his every sensibility. Here, he will face the scorn and violence of his tormenters, but will also find the strength to survive. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa has gone a long way toward exposing and exorcising some of the atrocities committed in the name of Apartheid, very little has been revealed about the adversities faced by gays under the regime. Set in "Ward 22" during the Angola Bush War that raged from 1966 to 1989 in South-west Africa, Moffie transports the reader into the world of a young gay conscript with evocative realism. At turns heart wrenching and humorous, told with great sensitivity and infused with hope, Moffie is a long overdue account of a vital subject, place and time.
Moffie
A gay South African endures military conscription during the Angola Bush War in this autobiographical novel of persecution and hope— An “electrifying debut” (Shelf Awareness). Nicholas van der Swart always knew he was different, but to avoid the violent punishments that come with being gay in Apartheid South Africa, he has carefully kept his true self a secret. By the standards of his brutal father and the machismo culture of Afrikaners, “moffies” like him deserve nothing but scorn. Then, at nineteen years old, Nicholas is drafted into the South African army. He soon finds himself caught in a world entirely at odds with his identity, forced to fight for a cause he doesn’t believe in. Here, he will face the hatred and violence of his tormenters, but will also experience his first glimmers of love, and finally find the strength to survive. A long overdue account of Apartheid South Africa’s criminalization of homosexuality, André Carl van der Merwe’s acclaimed debut novel is the basis for the critically acclaimed film Moffie, directed by Oliver Hermanus.
Country Of My Skull
The first free elections in South Africa's history were held in 1994. Within a year legislation was drafted to create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission to establish a picture of the gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1993. It was to seek the truth and make it known to the public and to prevent these brutal events ever happening again. From 1996 and over the following two years South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about their traumatic past. Antije Krog's full account of the Commission's work using the testimonies of the oppressed and oppressors alike is a harrowing and haunting book in which the voices of ordinary people shape the course of history. WINNER OF SOUTH AFRICA'S SUNDAY TIMES ALAN PATON AWARD
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 13
The proceedings of the 2000 Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Conference.The annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) is the flagship conference on neural computation. The conference is interdisciplinary, with contributions in algorithms, learning theory, cognitive science, neuroscience, vision, speech and signal processing, reinforcement learning and control, implementations, and diverse applications. Only about 30 percent of the papers submitted are accepted for presentation at NIPS, so the quality is exceptionally high. These proceedings contain all of the papers that were presented at the 2000 conference.
Just Pretending
A debut short story collection from one of Canada's most exciting new Aboriginal voices. "In our family, it was Trish who was Going To Be Trouble; I was Such a Good Girl." At times haunting, at times hilarious, Just Pretending explores the moments in life that send us down pathways predetermined and not-yet-forged. These are the liminal, defining moments that mark irreversible transitions n girl to mother, confinement to freedom, wife to murderer. They are the melodramatic car-crash moments n the outcomes both horrific and too fascinating to tear our eyes from. And they are the unnoticed, infinitely tiny moments, seemingly insignificant (even ridiculous) yet holding the power to alter, to transform, to make strange. What links these stories is a sense of characters working n both with success and without, through action or reaction n to separate reality from perception and to make these moments into their lives' new truths.
Lacuna
The traumatized central character of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is provocatively reimagined in this “surprising, subtle, and deeply challenging” novel (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Two years ago, Lucy Lurie was the victim of an act of sexual violence that devastated her life. Afterwards, she becomes obsessed with the author John Coetzee, whose acclaimed novel turned her brutal assault into a literary metaphor. Withdrawn and fearful of crowds, Lucy nonetheless makes occasional forays into the world of men in her search for Coetzee himself. She means to confront him. The Lucy in his novel, Disgrace, is passive and almost entirely lacking agency. Lucy means to right the record, for she is the lacuna that Coetzee left in his novel—the missing piece of the puzzle. Lucy plans to put herself back in the story, to assert her agency and identity. For Lucy Lurie will be no man’s lacuna. Lacuna is both a powerful feminist reply to the book considered to be Coetzee’s masterwork, and the moving story of one woman’s attempt to reclaim her identity after trauma. Winner of the Sala Novel Award Winner of the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for the Novel
The Promise
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A modern family saga written in gorgeous prose by three-time Booker Prize-shortlisted author Damon Galgut. Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—one of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history, sure to please current fans and attract many new ones. “Simply: you must read it.”—Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine
Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture
This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts – The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus – this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approac...
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 12
The annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) is the flagship conference on neural computation. It draws preeminent academic researchers from around the world and is widely considered to be a showcase conference for new developments in network algorithms and architectures. The broad range of interdisciplinary research areas represented includes computer science, neuroscience, statistics, physics, cognitive science, and many branches of engineering, including signal processing and control theory. Only about 30 percent of the papers submitted are accepted for presentation at NIPS, so the quality is exceptionally high. These proceedings contain all of the papers that were presented.
