Probably because South Africa is still a new democracy, and yes, twenty-three years makes us still new, political correctness stalks the land. It gets in the way of novelists, movie makers, visual artists, in fact talented people of every kind who think for themselves. In some company, if you are
All of my Yudel Gordon novels take place at least partly in government offices, the early ones in offices of the Apartheid government and the latter ones offices of the democratic government. Creating a convincing picture of either can be a challenge. When writing about government and what takes place
South Africa has landscapes of every type. For a medium sized country the variety of settings for a novel is astonishing. In romantic stories and rural epics the landscape often plays an important role. We have all seen Gerald O’Hara looking across his cotton fields and telling us that “Land
For decades serious South African writers wrote largely about the ways Apartheid affected themselves and their countrymen. It was such a singular system, it contained so many aspects and such powerful material emerged from it, that it was impossible to ignore. Then came 1994 and for all of us everything
Which are the Top 10 Books of the 20th Century, and do they measure up to the top books of all time? The answer is largely a matter of taste. There will never be agreement even of the criteria you should use in judging them. And judging itself is a