Hope’s favourite reads

FOR ESME — WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR by JD Salinger: These funny, sad and scary stories linger in the mind, and I never tire of them. SELECTED POEMS by Roy Campbell: Despite ending up as a noisy neo-fascist, Campbell was a terrific poet.

CHERI by Colette: A bitter-sweet story of love gone wrong.

A VERY STRANGE SOCIETY by Allen Drury: Published in the ’60s and immediately banned, it is still a devastating portrait of familiar South African lunacies.

MAFEKING ROAD by Herman Charles Bosman: He was, and is, the greatest South African satirist. He gets us right. CARRY ON, JEEVES by PG Wodehouse:

His sense of the ridiculous always cheers me. SPEAK MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov:

A beautiful memoir about exile, politics and home.

BANDIET by Hugh Lewin: I read this from time to time to be reminded of the price some unique individuals paid for fighting apartheid. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by VS Naipaul: This story of a man trying to break free from the shackles of colonial thinking is not just brilliant, it’s very funny.

A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway on Paris — the two make an unbeatable combination.

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L