Just Unpacked ! Memorandum : a story of painting by Marlene van Niekerk & Adriaan van Zyl

We have just unpacked copies of Memorandum : a story with paintings by Marlene van Niekerk & Adriaan van Zyl.

In this unique book, the text and visual images offer parallel narratives that resonate poignantly with each other. Adriaan van Zyl's series of more than 20 paintings portrays a patient's experience from waiting room to ward giving a quietly disturbing view of the soullessness of hospitals in general. Marlene van Niekerk's accompanying story is a narrative by JP Wiid, a lonely man who is diagnosed with cancer of the liver just before his retirement. The night before a scheduled operation he starts writing a "memorandum" about an experience he had during his first stay at the hospital - sharing a ward with two enigmatic men in a state of postnarcotic euphoria, he overheard their strange conversation, one which was to have a profound effect on his life. He writes how, in the ensuing four months, he becomes a regular visitor to the library, anxious to learn more about the diverse concepts he had been exposed to for the first time. Everything new which Wiid learns about the world comforts him and helps him to accept his fate. Most importantly he makes a friend for the first time - an eccentric but very helpful librarian. While writing the memorandum, Wiid makes a life-changing decision - not to have the operation the next day. He chooses instead to make the rest of his life worth living by filling it with knowledge about cultures, structures, histories, literature and music. In the process he discovers his true self - and his true vocation.

Hardcover, 136 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-7981-4730-9 published November 2006, by Human & Rousseau.

Published Price : ZAR 265.00

TALL STORIES PRICE : ZAR 165.00 (approximately Euros 13. 00)

Who is Marlene van Niekerk ?

Marlene van Niekerk is a South African author who is best known for her award-winning novels Triomf and Agaat. Her graphic and controversial descriptions of a poor Afrikaner family in Johannesburg brought her to the forefront of a post-apartheid society, still struggling to come to terms with all the changes in South Africa.

She was born on 10 November 1954, on the farm Tygerhoek near Caledon in the Western Cape, South Africa. She studied Languages and Philosophy at Stellenbosch University where she obtained an MA. In 1979 she moved to Germany and from 1980 - 1985 she continued her studies of philosophy in the Netherlands where she obtained a Doctorate. She is now professor at the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, at the University of Stellenbosch.

Triomf (translated by Leon de Kock) was a New York Times Notable Book, 2004, won the CNA Literary Award, and M-Net Prize in South Africa and the prestigious Noma Award, the first Afrikaans novel to do so. The film adaptation, directed by Michael Raeburn, won the Best South African Film Award at the Durban International Film Festival, 2008. The equally well-awarded Agaat ( Sunday Times Prize Literary Prize 2007 and Hertzog Prize 2007) was translated as The Way of the Women by Michiel Heyns, who won the Sol Plaatje Award for his translation.

Sources :

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/

http://www.wikipedia.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/BOOKVideoSA

Robert Littell, at large

There is no shame in admitting that I like books about spies, set in the Cold War. There is no shame because some of those books are so well written that they put some so-called literary authors to shame. I have long had a particular fondness for the books of John Le Carré. His plots are invariably intricate, interesting, involved and involving, and his characters real, well-drawn and convincing, so much so that I find they linger, chattering away in my head, long after I have finished the book. He accurately captures speech and speech patterns, accents and idiosyncrasies, regional- and caste dialect so that you are fair deafened by the ring of truth. His characters also move and act in totally convincing manner, and most important of all (and that goes for all novelists, from Rushdie to Cartland) he makes you turn the page. You want to know what happens next, you have to turn the page to find out what happens. He makes you rush from one paragraph to the next, careen from sentence to sentence, devour word after word, gathering speed as the tension mounts.
Robert Littell is such an author too, and writes spy stories. The former Newsweek journalist, and author of 16 books, beguiles with wonderful words, plots and characters. More recently he wrote The Company, a novel of the CIA, a large tome that has been turned into a 6 part mini-series with none other than Ridley Scott as executive producer.
I have just finished reading Mother Russia, published in 1978, now reissued along with his entire back catalogue. Its protagonist is Robespierre Isayevich Pravdin, a wild-haired Russian- Jewish hustler, trapped in a dangerous, schizophrenic world only half –understood and apprehended, trying to do the right thing even though he knows that no good deed goes unpunished. And the right thing that he is trying to do is unmask plagiarism. I.F. Frolov stole the manuscript of a Cossack novel called The Deep Don and published it under his own name. It made him famous, and a respected Soviet author with all the privileges and accolades that entails. As a result of his heinous deed, his shameful theft and plagiarism, he becomes, in short, an Honored Artist of the Soviet Union.
I really enjoyed the book, and the enigmatic characters that inhabit it. Not only that, I enjoyed the synchronicity of it all. Of course the perspicacious among you will have recognized that the plot is based on the saga of Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows The Don. It has been persistently rumoured that Sholokhov acquired the manuscript from a Cossack he interrogated during the Russian Civil War. Many were suspicious that this writing, this novel, was so much better than what he produced before and after that. But for all that he was honoured as a great Soviet writer. How am I aware of all this? Well, I’m glad you asked. Way back, when I was a student, I worked in a second-hand bookshop in Rocky Street, Yeoville. As a lowly employee, over-exploited and underpaid, I had to work the unpopular night shifts. On one such night, perched behind the counter, trying to ignore the mayhem of night- time Yeoville raging just beyond the window, a man came into the shop. He was large, barrel-chested, with red cheeks and sandy red hair disheveled as though he did not care for such mundane things as appearances, and sported a large moustache. He steamed into the shop at a rate of knots, greeted me, then stopped short when he saw the copy of And Quiet Flows the Don I had just bought and was reading.
“Why are you reading that rubbish?” he demanded in a thick Russian accent.
“It’s a good book,” I countered, somewhat startled.
“He’s a charlatan,” he snorted. “Stole the whole thing. Quite despicable.” Then he turned and stalked off, mumbling in Russian. I do not speak or understand Russian, but formed the distinct impression that he was not saying nice things about gospodin Sholokov.
But back to Robert Littell. Tell me this does not blow your socks off:
“It dawns on me I never told you very much (… ) about the house in which I live. It is the (excuse the expression) cul of an L-shaped cul-de-sac. The structure as far as I can judge through my bifocals has no straight lines, no sharp edges, only worn angles and soft sexy shadows. The windows, some of which have eucalyptus branches on the sills, stare out at the alleyway like bruised eyes, which is not unreasonable considering the house has seen more than most. In winter it leans into the winds that cut through the cul-de-sac. In summer it leans into winds that aren’t blowing. Inside it smells of sandalwood and peeling wallpaper and fireplaces that don’t draw. I mustn’t forget to mention the floors creak under foot. The stairs too.”
Mother Russia
Robert Littell still writes, and I still read him, looking forward to the next book.