Chelsea Haith: Promoting his book A Bantu in my Bathroom Eusebius McKaiser spoke to an audience at Rhodes University on 3 May about the topics he tackles, the idea of living the authentic life and his fears surrounding Rhodes students’ lack of critical engagement with political and social issues.
An old Rhodian himself, McKaiser explained that he has thus far chosen not to promote his book in Grahamstown, his hometown, reasoning that he perceives critical disengagement and apathy as being particularly prevalent amongst Rhodes students for the issues he address in his book.
Mfuneko Toyana: Liesel Jobson writes with an intense, explicit sense of self-awareness that almost overpowers the reader who picks up her book – if not the author herself.
She admitted as much to the audience in a reading of her latest collection of short stories, Ride the Tortise, at the Wartenweiler Library’s Writing Center on Wednesday evening.
Asked why she had not yet ventured into the longer novel form, the author, musician, and photographer thought carefully before explaining the mental process of her writing:
Ray Mahlaka: ACADEMICS and students gathered on Friday at Wits University to remember the life and times of the late Nigerian writer Professor Chinua Achebe. Achebe known for his popular and successful novel Things Fall Apart died last month at the age of 82. Achebe also wrote poems, essays, short stories and novels.
Chinua Achebe’s work has been flooding African schools, in the form of setwork, for decades. As the father of modern African literature, much of Achebe’s success has been due to his effective communication of Africa’s particular social, historical, and cultural situation to the outside world.
In addition, every one of us has interacted with Achebe’s work (on some level) and will probably start appreciating him even more, now that he has passed.
Aisha Abdool Karim: A new novel is innovating the Zulu language.
Everything you say or hear in your everyday life from ‘awesome’ to ‘pandemonium’ is constructed from the same 26 letters. These letters can be arranged in numerous different ways to create countless new words with new definitions. English, for example, has evolved to the point where words from a hundred years ago are no longer in existence. Zulu is now following suit with a new novel which introduces 450 new Zulu words – but not without a little controversy.
DITSHEGO MADOPI: Consider all the futuristic movies you have seen. Common elements feature in most of them, such as air-borne cars, robots and voice-controlled technological gadgets. Have you ever seen a book being read in any of these movies? Not likely. Could this be a foretelling of what will eventually happen to reading and interest in literature?
Launched in the beginning of February 2013 by Van Schaik, and using Ingram’s VitalSource Bookshelf platform, the electronic academic textbook – known as the e-Textbook – is a direct response to students’ evolving needs and is selling beyond the business’s expectations.
Van Schaik felt a prudent need to ensure that they have e-Textbook alternatives to the “dead-tree” printed textbook.
What will be the next page turner to sell millions of copies? Here’s as good a guess as any…
New-millennium readers are hard to please. But once you get them hooked, you’ve got them hooked for good. Think JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and EL James. Of course, magic, vampires and sexual horrification are so over by now. While the literary world recovers from Fifty Shades, readers are awaiting the next big thing. But what will it be?
