The 2014 shortlists
‘The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.’ ’The winner should present the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity.’
The judges have read, deliberated and debated, and now present the shortlists for the 2014 Sunday Times Literary Awards, in association with Exclusive Books. Five novels are in contention to win the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and five works of literary non-fiction vie for the Alan Paton Award, which marks its 25th anniversary this year. The winning authors, announced in June, will each receive R75 000.
The Shining Girls
Lauren Beukes (Umuzi, R180) Set in Chicago, a strange house gives serial-killer Harper the power to travel through time; to hunt and kill his “shining girls”. They’re bright young women full of spark — until he cuts it out of them, leaving clues from different times behind to taunt fate. Kirby, the ’90s girl, survives his attack and turns the hunt around. Tracing Harper’s bloody trail of victims — from a glowing dancer in the ’30s to a tough welder in the ’40s and a bombshell architect in the ’50s — Kirby is running out of time trying to solve an impossible mystery. And Harper is heading towards her once again.
False River
Dominique Botha (Umuzi, R230) When Paul and Dominique are sent to boarding schools in Natal, their idyllic childhood on a Free State farm is over. Their parents’ leftist politics have made life impossible in the local dorp school. Angry schoolboy Paul is a promising poet, his sister his confidante. But his literary awakening turns into a descent. He flees the oppression of South Africa, only to meet his death in London. Botha’s poignant debut is an elegy to a rural existence and her brother — both now forever lost. The novel is based on true events.
Penumbra
Songeziwe Mahlangu (Kwela Books, R195) Mangaliso Zolo is a hapless recent graduate living in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. He has an office job at a large insurance company, but is overlooked in this vast bureaucracy. Penumbra charts Manga’s daily struggles with mental illness and the pull from his many friends and acquaintances between a reckless drugfuelled lifestyle and charismatic Christianity. The novel brings an alternative experience of Cape Town to life.
The Spiral House
Claire Robertson (Umuzi, R200) The year is 1794 and Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker’s apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. On Vogelzang, the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love. Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer — an Englishman and suspected Communist — who collects and studies insects. In Robertson’s majestic debut novel, two stories echo across centuries to expose that which binds us and sets us free.
Wolf, Wolf
Eben Venter (Tafelberg, R240) Mattheus Duiker, the only son of Benjamin Duiker, the former owner of Duiker’s Motors, opens the gate of their Cape Town mansion to his lover, Jack. Disguised as a wolf, Jack invades the intimate darkness in which Matt is waiting for his father to die and for his own life to take off. Shiny-eyed at the prospect, the two young men sneak past the study where the old blind man, dwelling on melancholy attachments and sombre suspicions, sits listening for the footfall of death. Venter’s novel is an unsparing investigation into the relationship between a father and his son, into the disenfranchisement of a man who can glean scant wisdom from the past to equip him for life in a rapidly changing world.
A Rumour of Spring: South Africa after 20 Years of Democracy
Max du Preez (Zebra Press, R230) Du Preez investigates and analyses the progress — and lack of progress — the country has made during the past 20 years. He looks at the legacies of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and examines Jacob Zuma’s presidency to better understand where we are. In the context of blatant corruption, populism and tragedies such as the Marikana massacre, the book considers the current state of the ruling party and the opposition, and dissects the big issues afflicting our society. And then, du Preez dares to look to the future.
My Second Initiation: The Memoir of Vusi Pikoli
Vusi Pikoli & Mandy Wiener (Picador Africa, R220) Advocate Pikoli walks you through his life, from his first initiation in the hills of the Eastern Cape, to his second initiation in the corridors of power in government. As the National Director of Public Prosecutions, he pursued some ambitious cases against high-profile South Africans. Some he won, like that against Jackie Selebi (which ultimately cost Pikoli his job) and some he lost, like the case against Jacob Zuma. In his brutally honest account, co-written with Mandy Wiener, Pikoli also reflects on what has become of his beloved ANC.
Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope 1717-1795
Karel Schoeman (Protea Boekhuis, R600) The available information on Cape slavery during the 18th century is placed in the wider context of Dutch colonial society. As Schoeman says in his preface: “The survey begins in 1717, immediately after it was admitted at the Cape that the colony could no longer do without slave labour, and extends until 1795, when the regime of the VOC came to an end with the occupation of the Cape by the British.” The result is probably the most detailed survey of the subject to date.
The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History
Elizabeth van Heyningen (Jacana Media, R280) This is the first general history of the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer or South African War in over 50 years — and the first to use, in depth, the official documents in South African and British archives. It provides a fresh perspective on a topic that has aroused much emotion due to the great numbers of Afrikaners, especially women and children, who died in the camps. This fascinating social history overturns many previously held assumptions and conclusions on all sides. Rather than viewing the camps simply as the product of the scorched-earth policies of the war, the author sets them in the larger context of colonialism at the end of the 19th century. This is a book that is sure to stimulate debate.
Richard Rive: a Partial Biography
Shaun Viljoen (Wits University Press, R250) The author, a former colleague of Richard Rive, recreates the composite qualities of a man who was committed to the struggle against racial oppression but was also variously described as irascible, pompous and arrogant. Beneath these public personae lurked Rive’s constant and troubled awareness of his dark skin, as well as his homosexuality. Viljoen draws on his and others’ memories of Rive and examines Rive’s writing to bring this complex author to life with sensitivity and empathy.