Archive for January, 2010
January 28th, 2010 by Amanda
Umuzi is delighted to announce that Jassy Mackenzie’s latest thriller, My Brother’s Keeper, is a finalist in the category for “Best Paperback” at the 2010 International Thriller Writers (ITW) conference, known as ThrillerFest V.
This is Jassy’s second nomination from ITW. In 2008, she was a semi-finalist in the category for “Best First Novel” with Random Violence.
ITW is an organization for thriller writers and hosts the largest community of thriller writers in the world. ThrillerFest V is ITW’s annual celebration of the thriller world. It will take place from 7 – 10 July 2010 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City, where the winners will be announced. Special guests will include Ken Follett, David Morrell, Harlan Coben, Gayle Lynds, Lisa Scottoline, Mark Bowden, and Brad Meltzer.
My Brother’s Keeper tells the story of Nick Kenyon – a Joburg paramedic who unintentionally gets caught up with a gang of cold-blooded robbers who are planning their biggest-ever heist. However, what Nick doesn’t know is that his own brother, Paul, is the gang leader and has an old score to settle… The countdown to the heist begins, and the Kenyon brothers are pitted against each other in a deadly battle where there can be only one survivor.
Best of luck to Jassy!
Book details
Cats: Awards,
Crime,
Fiction,
South Africa Tags: Awards,
Best Paperback,
Crime,
Fiction,
International Thriller Writers,
ITW,
Jassy Mackenzie,
My Brother's Keeper,
South Africa,
ThrillerFest,
ThrillerFest V,
Umuzi
January 25th, 2010 by Jani
Intrepid traveler Sihle Khumalo has been all over Africa (you can read about his meanderings in Heart of Africa and Dark Continent My Black Arse) and can say with some confidence that he’s well-acquainted with the continent’s many different transport systems. Except, that is, for those of his native country – South Africa.
Always eager to experience things for himself Khumalo recently undertook a journey from Soweto to Sandton by way of Johannesburg’s newly-minted Bus Rapid Transit network, ReaVaya. How did BRT fare? Here’s Khumalo’s on his maiden journey:
Having travelled by public transport in more than 10 other African countries, it was only natural that I explore my own backyard using taxis and the newly launched Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) System – better known as ReaVaya. Amongst other things I wanted to see how our public transport system compares with the rest of Mama Africa.
My plan was pretty straightforward: take ReaVaya from Soweto to the centre of Johannesburg and then a taxi to Sandton. On a Friday afternoon, a day before my trip, I decided to walk from my office – which is in downtown Johannesburg – to buy myself a ReaVaya ticket.
In Gandhi Square, at the Metrobus ticket kiosk, I was told by a gum-chewing lady that she only sold tickets for Metrobus and not ReaVaya.
Book details
Image courtesy New Mobility Agenda
Cats: Non-fiction,
South Africa,
Travel Tags: BRT,
Bus Rapid Transit,
Dark Continent My Black Arse,
Heart of Africa,
Johannesburg,
New Mobility Agenda,
Non-fiction,
ReaVaya,
Sihle Khumalo,
South Africa,
Transport,
Travel,
Umuzi
January 20th, 2010 by Amanda
Random House Struik and Umuzi are delighted to announce that We Are All Zimbabweans Now by James Kilgore (Umuzi, 2009) has been shortlisted for potential screen adaptation at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The work is one of 10 pre-selected novels chosen by Books at Berlinale, the co-production arm of the festival, taking place this February. Each novel will be pitched to international arthouse producers by the representatives holding the film rights.
We Are All Zimbabweans Now occupies an important place amongst the fictional chronicles of post-independence Zimbabwe. It is an accomplished and compelling novel and deftly analyzes the complex struggles for power in post-independence Africa.
The Berlin International Film Festival is one of the world’s top international film events, where approximately 20,000 filmmakers, industry professionals and film buffs from over 100 countries, come together for 11 days in February. With more than 270,000 tickets sold to the public, the ‘Berlinale’ is the largest audience festival in the world.
“Books at Berlinale” was introduced in 2006 in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair with the goal of bringing the book and film worlds closer together. The programme also includes an information session for publishers and literary agents into the “film producing and financing world” as well as a case study on a literary adaptation screening.
About the Author
James Kilgore first made news in South Africa when he was arrested in Cape Town in 2002. He had been living under the alias Dr. John Pape and had become a respected academic at the University of Cape Town. US authorities extradited him to California where he served six and a half years in prison for his involvement in political activities in the volatile San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s. He was released on the 10th of May 2009.
Book details
Image courtesy Screen Australia.
Cats: Crime,
Fiction,
News,
South Africa,
Zimbabwe Tags: Adaptations,
Berlin International Film Festival,
Books at Berlinale,
Crime,
Fiction,
James Kilgore,
News,
Publisher,
Screenplays,
South Africa,
Subtitle,
Umuzi,
We are All Zimbabweans Now,
Zimbabwe
January 19th, 2010 by Amanda
Umuzi congratulates renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt, who has received the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, “a prize to stimulate a photographer’s creativity by offering the opportunity to carry out a project that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.”
Goldblatt was honoured for his latest project, “TJ”, as collected in a forthcoming book, TJ: The Various Names of Johannesburg. As with his earlier work, Some Afrikaners Revisited, which featured contributions from, among others, Antjie Krog, Goldblatt has again teamed up with a writer, in this case Ivan Vladislavic, whose new novel, Double Negative, forms part of the book.
More from Art South Africa:
David Goldblatt has been awarded the prestigious Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (2009), for his project “TJ”, . The award is intended for a photographer of exceptional ability who has an established career and has completed a significant body of work. This award will be followed by an exhibition of David Goldblatt’s essay of Johannesburg photographs at the Henri Cartier-Bresson in 2010.
Goldblatt has been photographing and documenting South African society for over 50 years. Born in Randfontein in 1930 to parents who came to South Africa to escape the persecution of Lithuanian Jews in 1890, he was simultaneously part of privileged white society and a victim of religious persecution and alienation. Motivated by his contradictory position in South African society, Goldblatt began photographing this society, and in 1963 decided to devote all of his time to photography.
Book details
- TJ: The Various Names of Johannesburg by David Goldblatt (incorporating Double Negative by Ivan Vladislavic)
EAN: 9788869652189
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Cats: Art,
Awards,
Fiction,
Misc,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Art,
Art South Africa,
Awards,
Contrasto,
David Goldblatt,
Double Negative,
English,
Fiction,
Henri Cartier-Bresson Award,
Ivan Vladislavic,
Lesley Lawson,
Misc,
Non-fiction,
Phaidon Press,
Random House Struik,
Some Afrikaners Revisited,
South Africa,
The Various Names of Johannesburg,
TJ,
Umuzi
January 18th, 2010 by Amanda
Umuzi is delighted to announce the return of Mike Nicol – and Mace Bishop – in this riveting sequel to the critically-acclaimed crime novel, Payback.
Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso offer guarding services to the rich in Cape Town, but they want out: tired of the egos and of being shot at, they invest dirty money in a property deal. Obed Chocho is their ruthless opposing bidder and his lawyer, Sheemina February, is as manipulative as he.
Part of her agenda concerns her past with Mace. In this mix is Judge Telman Visser, the head of a commission of inquiry into an arms deal scandal, and a son worried that his aging parents aren’t safe on their farm.
Mace is hired to protect them, taking his daughter along for the ride. But Chocho and February send a hitman, Spitz, to take out Visser’s parents. In the second part of the novel Mace and Pylon, well used to taking matters into their own hands, try to track down the killer and play judge and executioner in an attempt to right wrongs. But they have not factored into the intrigue the role of Sheemina February. Or her wrath.
It’s a Killer Country Mace and Pylon live in. Will they survive?
Book details
January 13th, 2010 by Amanda
Sihle Khumalo has done something many dream of but few have the heart to do – he’s traveled right through Africa.
He discusses his trips and the surprising discoveries he made in Dark Continent My Black Arse and his latest – Heart of Africa. Though there may be many reasons for not undertaking such a trip, the construction of a key section of the Cape-to-Cairo highway means fewer excuses.
An Egyptian and a Sudanese company signed an agreement on Tuesday to build a key section of the Cape-to-Cairo highway, an Egyptian official said.The road has been a dream since the late 19th century, when British officials planned a road to connect their colonies in Africa. Under the agreement, a 400-km (250-mile) stretch of highway will be built between Aswan in Egypt and Dongola in Sudan at a cost of $500 million, Osama Saleh, chairman of the General Authority for Investment, told reporters.
Book details
January 11th, 2010 by Amanda
Over the weekend, Sunday Times columnist Fred Khumalo published a piece that compared his first visit to a Greek restaurant – which left him shaken, as plates flew all around – to journalist Narissa Subramoney’s haste to conclude that president Jacob Zuma had accidentally fallen at his recent wedding. Subramoney, it seems, doesn’t know her Zulu customs too well. Ask before you assume! is Khumalo’s lesson:
Back in the ’80s when darkies dining in white suburbia were still a rarity, one of the magazines I was freelancing for commissioned me to do a review of a Greek restaurant in Durban.
It will probably sound silly to the born-frees who don’t know what it was like then, but it took a lot of agonising on my part to agree to the assignment: I just couldn’t see myself dining at a restaurant owned and patronised by white people.
Book details
Cats: Biography,
Feature,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Biography,
Fall,
Feature,
Fred Khumalo,
Greek Restaurants,
Jacob Zuma,
Marriage,
Narissa Subramoney,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
Touch My Blood,
Umuzi,
Wedding
January 4th, 2010 by Amanda
Apartheid offered rich soil for many evils to grow in – one being the almost absolute power of the South African Police, as personified by the “general” in Alan D Elsdon’s new novel, The Tall Assassin, based on the life of one Hendrik van den Berg.
In the following article, lessons are inferred from the book by a Weekend Post columnist, with a caution given against National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele’s recent exhortations to “shoot to kill”, as well as his plans to introduce a military-style rank system within his forces:
MEMBERS of the South African Police (SAP) in the apartheid era had ranks, and generals in particular seemed to take them sinfully seriously.
This gave them some weird powers and enabled them to decide the fate of the helpless individuals.
I was reminded of this when National Police Commissioner Bheki “Shoot to kill” Cele made the fearsome pronouncement that the South African Police Service would return to military style ranks. It set my mind racing back to the malicious performances of some SAP generals of the apartheid era
Book details
Cats: Feature,
Fiction,
South Africa Tags: Afrikaans,
Alan D Elsdon,
Apartheid,
Bheki Cele,
BOSS,
Buro vir Staatsveiligheid,
Die duisterste politieke sluipmoorde van die ou Suid-Afrika,
Die lan generaal,
Die lang generaal,
Feature,
Fiction,
Hendrik van den Berg,
Hendrik van den Bergh,
Military Rank,
Shoot to Kill,
South Africa,
The darkest political murders of the old South Africa,
The Tall Assassin,
Umuzi,
Weekend Post
