Writer Harry Mulisch dies

Harry Mulisch has died at the age of 83 on the 30th of October 2010. It was only last year that I was introduced to this celebrated Dutch author when I read The Assault (De Aanslag). It is a beautiful and complex story set in WWII, a period Mulisch often revisited in his novels. De Aanslag, very much like Bernard Schlink's The Reader, highlights the ethical grey areas of war. It is a perfectly scripted crime puzzle of a young Dutch boy who witnesses the demise of his whole family by the hand of the Germans. The family is mistakenly believed to be responsible for the shooting of a much hated Dutch fascists/German informer. The boy survives and grows up to become an anaesthetist later in life but it is rather he who in turn becomes numbed by this traumatic event from his childhood and throughout his life becomes indifferent towards the mystery of why it was his family that had to pay the unfair price, but the answers come to find him and seek him out through life events and the solution to the puzzle is most riveting and unexpected. I loved every second of this book and the end haunted me for months. I walked with the answer and I felt incomplete with its resolve, not from a literary perspective but from an inherent human one who seeks justifiable black and-white finger pointing answers. It is a novel so rich in perspective and as with the Dutch language, beautifully descriptive and I wish I had been introduced to Mulisch sooner. De Aanslag was made into a movie which won best foreign film award at both the Golden Globes and Oscars. Mulisch was also thought by many to be a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. His book The Discovery of Heaven (De ontdekking van de Hemel) was named Best Dutch Book Ever in 2007.

Man Booker shortlist announced

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize has been announced and here they are:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)
Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)



This is the one I am dying to read, C by Tom McCarthy which also has one of the best covers of the year. It opens in England at the turn of the twentieth century, and is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world.

After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he’s recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful—and perhaps fateful—climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb . . .

I have to get my hands on it.
The winner will be announced on the 12th of October.

See pictures and information on the nominees on The Guardian's website as well their review of C

(image; The Man Booker Prize)

African Booker

Olufemi Terry was announced as the winner of this year's Caine prize for African Fiction , aka the African Booker, for his short story titled Stickfighting Days. Terry was born in Sierra Leone and currently resides in Cape Town.

Click here to read his remarkable short story Stickfighting Days

(image: Caineprize.com)

Adaptation

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099512790

RRP: R126.95

What is it about Ian McEwan’s novels that lure and invite film makers to translate them into films? I could write an essay’s worth of reasons but won’t bore you with my personal groupie like tendencies towards his oeuvre. Whatever the case may be it has been reported that McEwan’s On Chesil Beach is going to be his third book that will be adapted for the big screen. The Daily Mail writes that non other than the amazing Carey Mulligan (who appears to have great taste in authors, next up on her list Never let me go) has been cast for the female lead and that Sam Mendes will be sitting in the director's seat for this highly anticipated version of the brilliant novella. I could hardly contain my excitement when I first read this. Sam Mendes did an astounding job at bringing to life Richard Yates hauntingly troubled tale about a young couple’s desperate actions against conformity in 1950’s America in Revolutionary Road. His direction brought out some of Kate Winslet’s and Leonardo Dicaprio’s finest performances in a story that was driven by tension filled dialogue and the on screen effectiveness of a lack thereof.


On Chesil Beach in its turn tells of a couple in England who’s relationship and wedding night, in 1962, carries the weight of their inability to communicate their sexual fears, insecurities and expectations. It is a story rife with underlying tension of which Sam Mendes and Ian McEwan are undoubtedly the masters of portraying. McEwan has adapted On Chesil Beach himself. And seeing that the novella is a mere 166 pages long, hopefully they will be able to add every possible detail of the unfolding events into the film version, a critical point which die hard fans are always keen to judge on.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099481249
RRP: R145

Both Enduring Love (2004) and Atonement (2007) have been turned into successful movies although the former did not receive as much wide spread and critical attention as the latter. Even though the film version of Enduring Love made some criticised changes to original novel it remained a vivid, scary and beautiful portrayal that managed to capture the spirit of the original and was undoubtedly filled with all the trademarks of a McEwan creation and was incredibly well acted. The powerful use of colour in Enduring Love was very effective and as within his books left vital moments, important to the story development, forever imprinted in my mind.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099429791
RRP: R145

For me personally, in both film and novel one of the most beautifully written scenes in English literature has to be the ‘fountain’ scene in Atonement. Watching it play out on film left me without a doubt that McEwan was indeed deeply involved in its adaptation. It was the scene which McEwan has revealed was written before he had written one word of the rest of the novel and from this scene sprung the inspiration for rest of Atonement as we know it. Filming Atonement was always going to be an epic attempt and the complex thought process and musings of Briony Tallis, one of McEwan's most interesting and thought provoking characters, was itself going to be the film's hardest obstacle to translate due to the genre’s inherent limitations where the story is primarily narrated by the camera. Nonetheless the film in its own right turned out an acclaimed and worthy success.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978009946968

RRP: R126

It leaves me wondering if Saturday will be soon to follow, I can almost imagine within my minds eye how powerful the ‘forced poetry reading’ scene could be on screen...

(image: Carey Mulligan via zimbio.com)

Orange Prize for Fiction

The winner of the Orange prize for fiction for 2010 has been awarded to acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver for her latest book titled The Lacuna.



Publisher: Faber And Faber
ISBN: 9780571252640
Publication date: November 2009
RRP: R219.95

The Orange prize for fiction is awarded each year to a female writer from any nationality for the best novel written in English. The prize money is £30 000

This looks like another stellar epic from Kingsolver which must be added to my 'must read' list. I love the exotic cover. If anyone has read it please send me you thoughts or a review on it.

Sandton, Soccer Fever and the Sunday Times Literary Awards

Image via Beeld

World Cup fever has taken our minds,bodies, streets and country hostage (rightfully so) and will continue to do so for the next month. After the scenes from yesterday’s procession in Sandton and gatherings around the country, my heart beats yellow and green with a new sense of patriotism. It made me think that when on the precipice of crisis we retreat in a state of passiveness but when presented with the opportunity to unite and fire up spirits rather than arms we charge with new found purpose and for some brief moments declare ours a state of greatness. I hope that every visitor and even the mzanzi’s will indulge in all things home grown and brewed that our wonderful country has to offer. And perhaps some of them will pop into a bookshop and take home a new literary discovery.

The shortlist for the Sunday Times Literary awards is not a bad place to start looking for that treasure. They were announced this last weekend and feature some our finest writers who will compete for our most prestigious English literary prize. They are as follow:

Shortlist for Alan Paton (non-fiction) Award


Ways of Staying by Kevin Bloom (Picador Africa)

A Fork in the Road by André Brink (Harvill Secker)

Begging to be Black by Antjie Krog (Random House Struik)

The Honour to Serve by James Ngculu (David Phillip)

The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law by Albie Sachs (Oxford University Press).

Shortlist for the Fiction Prize


Summertime by JM Coetzee (Harvill Secker)

High Low In-between by Imraan Coovadia (Umuzi)

Saracen at the Gates by Zinaid Meeran (Jacana)

The Book of the Dead by Kgebetli Moele (Kwela Books)

Small Moving Parts by Sally-Ann Murray (Kwela Books).

The winners will be announced on the 24th of July

Friday Forecast

The SA weather service is predicting some cold weather coming our way this weekend and as murphy would have it I am going hiking in the Free State during this cold onslaught. This is probably going to be the first of many as winter is officially due within a couple of days. If I am to survive this weekend I am particularly excited about snuggling up with some of my favourite men and their long awaited novels during the next couple of months. So winter do your worst as I come armed with some serious (and not so serious) recommendations not only to wither the cold but to make you a winter to remember not only as the time when the Soccer World Cup came to South Africa

Solar by Ian McEwan


Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
ISBN: 9780224090506
RRP: R220

Solar by Ian McEwan.
Solar has just won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. Not bad for a first time venture into comedy but then again this is Ian McEwan we are talking about, the same Man Booker winner who has decided to try his hand at writing an opera based in his novel Atonement. I was skeptical when this master of contemporary fiction announced that his latest novel would be a comedic effort centered around climate change but halfway through it I have discovered that the author who has an uncanny knack for stripping a human being to only his darkest impulses is equally talented when it comes to comedic timing. His Nobel prize winning protagonist has managed to make me laugh out loud at his antics at the same time as he has brought about the impulse to throttle him. A book about the warming earth should indeed be acquired for the forthcoming cooler days.

Another Man Booker prize winner as well as a former shortlisted finalist got me equally excited about their latest releases

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel


Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781847677662
RRP R190

'Fate takes many forms. When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey - named Beatrice and Virgil - and the epic journey they undertake together. With all the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so treasured, this brilliant new novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. On the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.'

via Penguin. Click on the Penguin link for the chance to win a signed copy of the long awaited new novel from Yann Martel who brought us the unforgettable Life of Pi

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell


Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 9780340921579
RRP 190

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by enigmatic David Mitchell adds to what is already an amazing collection of titles that never seize to excite his readers and it would seem critics alike. He is the darling of British postmodern fiction and his latest novel tells the story of a turning point in history on a tiny island attached to mainland Japan, David Mitchell’s tale of power, passion and integrity transports us to a world that is at once exotic and familiar: an extraordinary place and an era when news from abroad took months to arrive, yet when people behaved as they always do - loving, lusting and yearning, cheating, fighting and killing.

'Bringing to vivid life a tectonic shift between East and West, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is dramatic, funny, heartbreaking, enlightening and thought-provoking. Reading it is an unforgettable experience'. Amazon.co.uk

Happy reading this winter and keep me informed of your winter literary finds, pleasures , wish list as well as your reviews on the above mentioned titles. And as a final tip I would reccommend that a bottle of good homegrown South African red would be a perfect companion to these international men and their writing, as indulging in their brilliance is sure to fire up the coldest of winter days.

Mantel scoops the Booker

After months of waiting and debating, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize has been announced. From a strong shortlist of six contenders, bookies’ favourite Hilary Mantel has won the award for her novel about Thomas Cromwell titled Wolf Hall. Congratulations!

Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd / ISBN: 9780007230181 / Price: R296.00

Much has been written about the Tudors and the reign of King Henry VIII, both in the realm of fiction and non-fiction, and in recent years public interest in the subject has grown overwhelmingly. Mantel, who is no stranger to literary awards, knew that, because of this, writing her account of the era would be "difficult". "I had to interest the historians, I had to amuse the jaded palate of the critical establishment and most of all I had to capture the imagination of the general reader," she said in her acceptance speech last night.

She appears to have succeeded. Chairman of the judging panel, James Naughtie, lauded the book for its "sheer bigness", which he attributed to the "boldness of its narrative" and "its scene setting". He went on to describe it as an "extraordinary piece of story-telling", an echo of the justification for last year’s winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which gives some idea of what the judges look for in a winner. Among the unsuccessful contenders for this year’s award were JM Coetzee for his novel Summertime and AS Byatt for The Children’s Book.

Sunday Times Literary Awards winners

We at The Paperhouse Review would like to congratulate the winners of this year’s Sunday Times Literary Awards: the Alan Paton Award and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Peter Harris received the Alan Paton Award for In a Different Time. The book is the true, harrowing and gripping story of the Delmas Four, as told by their attorney. The award is given each year to the author of a South African work of non-fiction, and has been running for 20 years this year.

Publisher: Umuzi / ISBN: 9781415200490 / Price: R185.00


Anne Landsman is the winner of this year’s Sunday Times Fiction Prize for The Rowing Lesson. The novel begins when pregnant Betsy Klein is summoned from New York to her father’s bedside. As she watches him, she imagines his life as a young Jewish man on the plattelande and weaves a story that traverses both their lives.

Publisher: Kwela / ISBN: 9780795702624 / Price: R175.00

New in the pile

There are days when being a reader seems like an overwhelming affliction – there is simply too much to read and too little time in which to do it. It’s almost enough to make me want to abandon the exercise entirely sometimes, leaving it for some other dutiful reader to tackle. Almost. Here are some of the newest releases which have made it onto the tops of our ‘To Read’ lists.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon grasped the imaginations of the authors of this blog firmly between its talons with its combination of detective mystery and literary ramble. Ruiz’s latest novel, The Angel’s Game, was released on the first of July. It sports a blue cover that, while it is consistent with the previous cover, may not grab the attentions of readers not familiar with the previous work.

Zafon says of the two novels, "if Shadow of the Wind is the nice, good girl in the family, The Angel’s Game would be the wicked gothic stepsister." Set again in Barcelona and described by some as a prequel to its predecessor, The Angel’s Game follows successful writer David Martin as he is made the offer of a lifetime: to write a book unlike any other in exchange for a handsome fortune.

But before I dip my literary toes into The Angel’s Game, I look forward to reading A.S. Byatt’s newest, The Children’s Book, which beat Ruiz to the honorary top of the pile by being released first. It has been described by those in the know as her best work since Possession (which in turn is arguably one of the best novels ever written) and ‘the most moving book I have read in thirty years’. This one is also about a writer, named Olive Wellwood, and is too a mystery of sorts.

And there is South African Alexandra Fuller’s The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, about which much has been written in the local press. Like her previous books (which have also been much praised and beg for their own readings), The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is as much an exploration of the boundaries of the genre of biography as it is the tale of a captivating young man who symbolises a nation’s greed. Fuller’s previous works are Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Scribbling the Cat.

PS: Although this one deserves an inclusion in this literary line-up, it is only due out later this year and so there is not much information available about it. Titled Her Fearful Symmetry, author Audrey Niffenegger of The Time Traveler’s Wife fame says her second novel is about two identical twins who test the boundaries of their bond. "Things get out of control, as you might imagine," she concludes.