Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - October 31, 2004
THE announcement of Publishers' Choice always kick-starts the local book world's festive season. It is an event we look forward to: publishers fly in and featured authors are prised away from their keyboards to gossip with booksellers and journalists.
This year Exclusive Books added the allure of hearing Nadine Gordimer speak, an all-too-rare event these days. Her diminutive stature is in inverse proportion to her outrage about the HIV/Aids epidemic, what she calls "this medieval plague of the millennium", and the failure of writers to tackle it collectively.
Gordimer has marched into battle in a way that she is uniquely qualified to do: she decided to edit a collection of short stories called Telling Tales, and to donate the proceeds to the Treatment Action Campaign in SA and other Aids charities internationally. She was casual about having "contacted some writers" to contribute a story for no fee, and noted their "enthusiastic" response.
Who could refuse the Nobel laureate? Not John Updike, Salman Rushdie or Chinua Achebe. Not Woody Allen, Arthur Miller and Margaret Atwood, nor four other Nobel winners, Gabriel Garcia M rquez, G nther Grass, Kenzaburo Oe and Jose Saramago. Add other names like Susan Sontag and Es'kia Mphahlele, and you have an admirable roll call of major contemporary writers.
Aids is not the subject of the stories, Gordimer said. Rather, they touch on the tragic, comic, satirical and dramatic, and by reading them one is taught "as only fiction can" about others and oneself.
Another title in Publishers' Choice is Great South Africans, the book of the TV show which the SABC prematurely put out of its misery. There is sympathy all round for Alison Lowry of Penguin who published it but, despite the show being a farce, the book is an excellent reference work and a reminder of how much South Africans have achieved.
Lowry could not help but perk up last week at her launch of a marvelous new book. Take 40 Fresh Crayfish, invites the title, and then continues "and plunge into very little water. When cooked - toss aside. You have the beginnings of the stock". It's an irresistible hook - as irresistible as the author himself. John Coulton is a true epicure, a restless sybarite who has written a memoir with recipes.
At Ma Passion in Greenside, we settled down to superb food and were regaled with Coulton's scalding wit and delirious anecdotes. His tales of owning a restaurant in Franschhoek - a chapter of their own in the book - are priceless, what with lunatic chefs and the Mafia now lurking in the vineyards.
It was certainly one of the best bookie nights of the year, and one of my best books, too.
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