The only pull-quote on the front cover of this book: “Zakes Mda may have a more central place in South Africa’s literary and political spheres than any other novelist today.” — The New York Times High praise but not surprising, considering his latest novel, Little Suns, had just won the Barry Ronge Prize for Fiction and was featured in every bookstore when I visited Cape Town. A quick Google search confirmed for me that it’s as impressive as it sounds — the country’s biggest prize […]
The weirdest afterschool special I’ve never seen
This book was an impulse purchase on a long airport layover a few years ago. I’d heard good things about China Miéville and wanted to give him a shot, and I figured a quick kids’ book read would be a good place to start, and then — classic me — I let it sit on the shelf for nearly two years before getting to it. Un Lun Dun has a lot going for it. The protagonists, Zanna and Deeba, pre-teen girls and best friends, have […]
Earth below us, drifting, falling
I had yet to read any Paul Auster when I saw 4 3 2 1 on the 2017 Man Booker shortlist, and I didn’t jump on it right away, mostly because of its sheer size, this brick of a book at 1,070 pages. I don’t read a lot of long books because I’m not a fast reader and can be easily distracted, so I figured this was a pass, but then I read a synopsis and found myself intrigued by the structural conceit of telling […]
“These are the frail, imperfect ways of ordinary human beings in the teeth of a great epidemic”
I finished reading this book a week ago today, and I’m still not sure how to write about it. I found it deeply moving, but it may still be too soon to put my thoughts and feelings into words, and anything I write here can only scratch the surface. Jonny Steinberg has packed so much into the 326 pages of Three-Letter Plague (published in the U.S. under the title Sizwe’s Test). He writes about his own literal and figurative journey to try to learn how […]