LitNet: Nuwe Boeke / New Books

New from Penguin

Click on book covers to buy book from kalahari.net!

Poet John Carson lives in a crumbling seaside house with his sister and niece. Winter is upon him, and he writes feverishly to the woman who has abandoned him as a lover, yet kept him as a correspondent. Theresa: beautiful, generous… and married. The occasional fleeting, yet passionate encounter between the two lovers fuel John the writer, but leave John the man close to despair. Theresa’s business and the ever watchful eye of her husband don’t allow much opportunity either for stolen moments. But John’s home life keeps him from misery and despair. The ever-baffling chores of domesticity, his niece’s mysterious eating disorder and the menu that he’s attempting to write in rhyming couplets save him from himself, most of the time. There’s also the mad old woman who lives in their garden cottage and the poetry journal that John has just been appointed to edit. Between the anguish of love and the quirks of everyday life, will John and Theresa find a way to come together, or is a state of permanent longing, in fact, what poets need? About the author: Finuala Dowling was born in Cape Town. She has taught English at Unisa, and has since then worked freelance as an educational materials developer, writer and lecturer. She won the Ingrid Jonker Prize for her first volume of poetry, I Flying, and in 2003, was co-winner of the Sanlam Award for poetry. Finuala resides in Kalk Bay with her family. *Click here or on the book cover to purchase your copy of What Poets Need* from kalahari.net**	What Poets Need Finuala Dowling R100.00 ISBN: 014302468X Published: 2005 Format: Paperback
Writing an obituary is an exacting art. It takes great skill to examine a person’s life, very often 70 years or more, and to capture his or her essence within a single newspaper column. Chris Barron is South Africa’s leading obituarist who has been doing exactly this for a number of years in the pages of the Sunday Times. Here, for the first time, is a collection of obituaries of South Africans who made their mark in politics, academia, business, religion, sport, on the stage, as artists, writers and eccentrics. Chris Barron pays tribute to their unique skills, talents, victories and even the notorious scandals that dogged the lives of some. The list of names includes Chris Barnard, Walter Sisulu, Aggrey Klaaste, Beyers Naude and Francesco the Clown. About the author: Chris Barron began his career as a journalist, after graduating from the University of Cape Town in 1979. He took a few years off to study the violin and roam overseas before returning to journalism at the end of the 1980s. He worked on the Sunday Star and the Sunday Times. Five years ago he began freelancing and writing obituaries. Collected South African Obituaries is not yet available, e-mail Thandi Sindane for more information	Collected South African Obituaries Chris Barron R100.00 ISBN: 0143024698 Published: March 2005 Format: Paperback
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy’s sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy and a Nazi officer. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother’s life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother-daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the burden of those memories we leave unspoken. About the author: Jenna Blum lived in London and Minneapolis before settling in Boston, where she now teaches at Boston University. She is of German and Jewish descent and worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation for four years, interviewing Holocaust survivors. *Click here to purchase your copy of Those who save us* from kalahari.net**	Those who save us Jenna Blum R150.00 ISBN: 1841955841 Published: 2005 Format: Trade Paperback
Author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women, campaigner, wife and mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) was the first of a new kind of being, a new genus. At each stage of this remarkable woman’s life – as teacher, writer, traveller, and mother – Mary Wollstonecraft was an original. Her attitudes to sexual relationships, single motherhood and family responsibilities, working life, domestic affections, and the importance of friendship now look astonishingly modern. Yet from the time of her death in 1797 until now she has acquired a reputation as unstable and loose, a wild woman doomed to extinction. Lyndall Gordon’s biography probes these myths and vindicates her life in accord with her own values of experimentation and resilience. This book covers Wollstonecraft’s period as a governess to the aristocracy in Ireland; as self-supporting writer in London; as on-the-scene observer of the French Revolution; and as a daring traveller to Scandinavia on the trail of an unsolved crime: the disappearance of a cargo of Bourbon silver. From a biographer of brilliant repute, this is a remarkable story of Mary Wollstonecraft and her particular genius. About the author: Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of biographies Eliot's Early Years, Eliot's New Life and Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Gordon received her doctorate from Columbia University and is a fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford. Gordon's previous work includes Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life, and A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art. *Click here to purchase your copy of Mary Wollstonecraft - A new genus* from kalahari.net**	Mary Wollstonecraft - A new genus Lyndall Gordon R350.00 ISBN: 0316728667 Biography 2005 Format: Hardback
Danny Leigh’s new novel brings together two disparate characters: Wilson Velez, a gang lord in solitary confinement, slowly losing his mind, and Lizbeth Greene, a celebrated crime novelist, whose inspiration is beginning to run dry. When Lizbeth decides that writing a book about Velez could revivify her ailing career, she begins to visit him in prison. Gradually, she becomes drawn into Wilson’s dark world and the pair engage in a complex dance of attraction and rejection: Lizbeth needs Wilson to kick-start her career; Wilson needs Lizbeth to get out of solitary confinement. Woven through the story, meanwhile, is a children's book titled The Monsters of Gramercy Park, that mirrors the increasingly intimate and dangerous relationship between Lizbeth and Velez. This enthralling new novel from the award-winning author of The Greatest Gift is another immensely original and high-concept work of fiction. About the author: Danny Leigh was born in 1972. He has worked as a musician and a journalist. The Monsters of Gramercy Park is his second novel. The Greatest Gift was his first. Danny Leigh lives in London. Praise for the author: “Danny Leigh weaves an almost gothic story of mutual need, attraction and rejection. That it frequently flies close to brilliance is down to the perfectly drawn intimacy and danger that lurk on every page” - Arena *Click here to purchase your copy of The Monsters of Gramercy Park* from kalahari.net**	The Monsters of Gramercy Park Danny Leigh R192.95 ISBN: 0571220878 Published: 2005 Format: Paperback

Read our ricochet interview with Penguin author, Barabara Erasmus

LitNet: 14 March 2005

Have your say! Read any good books lately? Have you read any of these authors or new books? Tell us about it by sending an email to Sharon@litnet.co.za. Or write to webvoet@litnet.co.za and become a part of our interactive opinion page.

to the top / boontoe