Book review: An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obiama The cries of all the wounded, oppressed, downtrodden, the enslaved, the wrongfully imprisoned, are raised as if in an orchestra. An orchestra of minorities. It is this identification with the powerless that pulses through the heart of Chigozie Obioma’s magnificent novel. It is an Homeric struggle,…
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Category: Reviews
Statements: Held back by homage
Two naked lovers on stage involved in the meanderings of post-coital conversation is riqué even as dusk falls on the 2010s. How risqué it was in 1972, when Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality Act was first staged at The Space in Cape Town, most of us can only guess. What is certain is…
Becoming: Gil Hockman breaks through the loops
Solo musos on guitar, synthesiser and feedback loop. They pop up at weird festivals in rural towns, like the olive festival in Riebeeck-Kasteel, or the pumpkin festival in Heidelberg. They’re ubiquitous and they all sound like Jeremy Loops. Actually they all might be Jeremy Loops. Not that there’s anything wrong with Jloo, thousands adore him,…
Whatever: Sex, drugs, and Cape Town’s elite
Book review By Matilda Tullie The daughter of eccentric artist parents and the granddaughter of DRUM founder Jim Bailey, Saskia Bailey grows up in an extraordinary home where a train station of wildly interesting guests formed the wallpaper of her childhood. Earlier this year 21-year-old Saskia Bailey weighted South Africa’s book shelves with the release…
The Old Man and the Sea: Sailing safe waters
Machismo is so passe. Activities such as bullfighting, drinking, arm wrestling, fishing are no longer to be revered, or be written about except in terms of irony or disapproval. It’s only natural. There has been too much blood and killing, conquest and destruction in a world teetering on the edge of annihilation. Too much of…