You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness is a re-examination of the life and thoughts of Jan Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary readership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. The author, a former editor of The Star, argues that Smut's role in the creation of modern South Africa should never be forgotten, not least because of his lifetime of devoted service to this country. The book draws a parallel between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both architects of a new South Africa, much lionised abroad yet often distrusted at home. This highly readable account of Smut's eventful life blends fact, anecdote and opinion in an examination of his complex character,...
Part-essay and part-memoir, 'This Little Art' is a manifesto for the practice of literary translation.
Jan Geldenhuys was called up in October 1899 to serve in the Kroonstad Commando on the Western Front and deployed for the Siege of Kimberley. He fought at the Battles of Belmont, Graspan, Twee- Reviere (Modder River), Magersfontein and several other skirmishes. After Bloemfontein was occupied, he teamed up with Braam Preller, his father-in-law, and adopted 'fight and flight' tactics. His home was burnt down and wife interned in the Kroonstad Concentration Camp, where his new-born daughter died. He was captured in April 1902 and banished as a prisoner of war to Umballa, India, where his experiences till Thursday 20th November 1902 were documented. He shared a tent with his father-in-law and later met up with his father and brother who were POW's at Bhimtal. His diaries are lodged with the Anglo-Boer War museum in Bloemfontein. The author's grandmother, Lizzie Preller, having published her "Oorlogsherinneringe" (memoirs), provided the inspiration to add this addition to African history.
"Tales of South Africa" by H. A. Bryden. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
Principled reformer or duplicitous exploiter? The contested legacy of Harry Oppenheimer reflects the tensions involved in dealing with South Africa’s complex past. The head of a sprawling global business empire, Oppenheimer played an influential role in twentieth-century South Africa – a role celebrated by some and condemned by others. This book investigates his political thinking over half a century, and considers the nature of his opposition to apartheid as well as his contribution to the democratic age ushered in by Tambo and Mandela. A Man of Africa presents Oppenheimer’s views on liberalism, apartheid, socialism, sanctions, trade unions, education, geopolitics and the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes. Each topic is explored via extracts from his speeches, and is followed by an assessment by prominent South Africans such as Kgalema Motlanthe, Albie Sachs, Clem Sunter, Denis Beckett, Bobby Godsell, Jonathan Jansen and Xolela Mangcu. Fascinating and insightful, A Man of Africa shines new light on one of South Africa’s most powerful and multifaceted figures, and reflects on the role of principled business in a political economy.
Suicide cannot be read as simply another novel—it is, in a sense, the author’s own oblique, public suicide note, a unique meditation on this most extreme of refusals. Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life.
The Avant-Postman explores a broad range of innovative postwar writing in France, Britain, and the United States. Taking James Joyce’s "revolution of the word" in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as a joint starting point, David Vichnar draws genealogical lines through the work of more than fifty writers up to the present, including Alain Robbe-Grillet, B. S. Johnson, William Burroughs, Christine Brooke-Rose, Georges Perec, Kathy Acker, Iain Sinclair, Hélène Cixous, Alan Moore, David Foster Wallace, and many others. Centering the exploration around five writing strategies employed by Joyce—narrative parallax, stylistic metempsychosis, concrete writing, forgery, and neologising the logos—the book reveals the striking continuities and developments from Joyce’s day to our own.
This collection draws from scholars across different languages to address and assess the scholarly achievements of Tawada Yōko. Yōko, born in Japan (1960) and based in Germany, writes and presents in both German and Japanese. The contributors of this volume recognize her as one of the most important contemporary international writers. Her published books alone number more than fifty volumes, with roughly the same number in German and Japanese. Tawada’s writing unfolds at the intersections of borders, whether of language, identity, nationality, or gender. Her characters are all travelers of some sort, often foreigners and outsiders, caught in surreal in-between spaces, such as between lan...