Pan Macmillan

It was a mixed book- and theatre-loving crowd at the launch of Craig Higginson’s third novel, Last Summer, at the newly refurbished Mandela Square Exclusive Books on Wednesday, 3 March.

With luminaries such as Malcolm Purkey and Michael Titlestad participating in the launch, and theatre notables such as Nicky Rebelo and Irene Stephanou in the audience, the event was quite a treat. Higginson is a novelist, playwright, theatre director, editor and university lecturer, and Purkey opened by mentioning that, having worked Higginson at the Market Theatre for the last five years, it was a pleasure to witness “a very important voice emerge” – one that will continue to grow and develop over the next decade. Calling Higginson a “remarkable person”, Purkey prompted the crowd to “watch this space”.

Michael Titlestad engaged Higginson in conversation about Last Summer and how he sees the work fitting into a South African context. Titlestad noted how he has been seeing a change on the South African literary scene, where it is “no longer necessary to write about a prescribed set of themes” – including politics. He said the way has been opened for authors to write about the “possible and imagined”, which created an “exciting opportunity not to inhabit the familiar”.

Titlestad feels these changes also allow South African writers a chance to find their voices anew. Echoing these thoughts, Higginson commented that he views himself as a “citizen of the world, writing about whatever I want to write about”. Higginson spoke about literally “writing what we like”; about “not worrying about the local thing – if what we’re making is of relevance to people, they will read it”.

Last Summer is a novel set in Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK. It deals with a cast of characters involved with a Royal Shakespeare production of The Tempest. The book is dedicated to theatre man Barney Simon, and Higginson attributed much of his Harry character’s make-up to Simon, although he says parts of himself are present, too. The ultimate theme of the book is success: “What is success and what is not? Who do we think is great and what values make them great?”

Titlestad and Higginson also engaged with the challenges of launching a book in South Africa, saying it is a “fragile process”. The conversation explored the need to look for “spaces and opportunities” in a market that is caught up in present-day non-fiction writing, such as the Jake White biography.

This launch provided food for thought on the changing writing landscape that South African authors inhabit, and how the books emerging from this landscape are changing the local book-buying market.

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Book details

• Last Summer by Craig Higginson
  EAN: 9781770101814
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

In ‘Last Summer’ the elegies of love are sung in measured and ironic tones. Higginson’s narrative poise, his understated and restrained emotional charge, are like cool air in our hot literary landscape.

– Leon de Kock

Pan Macmillan and Exclusive Books invite you to join author Craig Higginson for the launch of his new novel, Last Summer.

Hilarious and deeply affecting by turn, Thomas’s account is compelling in its lyricism, eccentricity and energetic attachment to life. Through him, we get to meet a colourful cast of characters and live through the gripping events of an ill-fated summer in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 03 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Exclusive Books, Mandela Square, Shop 111, Upper Level
  Sandton City | Map
• Refreshments: or add your own
• RSVP: thesquare@exclusivebooks.co.za, 011 784 5416

About the author

Craig Higginson is a novelist, playwright and theatre director. Currently he is the Literary Manager of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and teaches writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the course of ten years spent in England, he worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Last Summer is his third novel.

Book Details

• Last Summer by Craig Higginson
  EAN: 9781770101814
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Pan Macmillan is delighted to invite you to the launch of international bestselling author Peter James’ Dead Tomorrow, a Roy Grace novel. James will be in conversation with SA krimi queen Margie Orford.

Don’t miss what will surely be a riveting discussion of the dark and mysterious world of crime thriller fiction. We’ll see you there!

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 03 March 2010
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland
  cnr Buitenkant
  Cape Town | Map
• Guest Speaker: Margie Orford
• RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425

Book Details

• Dead Tomorrow by Peter James
  EAN: 9780230710849
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Photo courtesy sanderus

Coming out at the tail end of this summer!

“In Last Summer the elegies of love are sung in measured and ironic tones. Higginson’s narrative poise, his understated and restrained emotional charge, are like cool air in our hot literary landscape.”
– Leon de Kock

It is summer in Stratford-upon-Avon. Thomas is a young theatre director at the Royal Shakespeare Company who is desperately in love with Lucy, the leading actress in a production of The Tempest. Their experiences are woven into the life of a theatre presided over by Harry, an ageing South African exile who becomes caught up in a history he sought to escape.

Hilarious and deeply affecting by turn, Thomas’s account is compelling in its lyricism, eccentricity and energetic attachment to life. Through him, we get to meet a colourful cast of characters and live through the gripping events of an ill-fated summer in Stratford.

“Writing believably about theatre folk is hard to pull off, given the slippery slope of their own fictional allegiances, but in Last Summer Craig Higginson manages with some panache a multi-layered love story filled with warmth and lyricism. I was captivated.”
– Janet Suzman, Actress

About the author

Craig Higginson is a novelist, playwright and theatre director. Currently he is the Literary Manager of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and teaches writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the course of ten years spent in England, he worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Last Summer is his third novel.

Book details

• Last Summer by Craig Higginson
  EAN: 9781770101814
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The popular Mail & Guardian series catches up with the author of Lost Colours of the Chameleon:

Describe yourself in a sentence.
I’m a man who wants to understand all that I should know to sustain me during this lifetime.

Describe your ideal reader.
My ideal reader is someone open to the unexpected.

What are you working on?
I’m writing a detective novel that has its origin in the MK camps in Angola.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• The Lost Colours of the Chameleon by Mandla Langa
  EAN: 9781770100848
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Posed by the Mail & Guardian:

Which book, if any, changed your life?

I hate this question because the instant I’ve finished writing this, I’ll remember countless important books that escape me right now. I’ve always felt perhaps I ought to make up some obscure, deeply intellectual tome to make myself sound clever.

The first book that touched me deeply as a child was a collection of Oscar Wilde’s children’s stories. I wept inconsolably when The Nightingale and the Rose was read to me.

But I do remember being struck by the beauty of the words. I learnt the stories off by heart and pretended to read them to my classmates. I had to fake the reading thing because I was dyslexic. That book saved me an awful lot of teasing and torment.

When I did learn, books became a refuge. My parents had a wonderful store of books and I developed passions — reading my way through their Kiplings, Jane Austen, all my mother’s Georgette Heyers and even an old volume of Balzac. In adolescence it was DH Lawrence, Scott Fitzgerald and JD Salinger.

Changed my life? Well, I spent years searching for Joshua Shapiro from Mordechai Richler’s Joshua Then and Now, whom I was convinced would be the great love of my life. Then I thought myself in love with Stingo from Sophie’s Choice.

It’s quite telling that all my literary loves were writers. I think I was somehow searching for the writer in me.

Of course the novel that literally changed my life was my own first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken. Everything changed from the moment it was accepted — if not externally, then certainly within me. I became a writer.

• Complete article in the M&G

Book details

• My Brother’s Book by Jo-Anne Richards
  EAN: 9781770100770
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Describe yourself in a sentence.
I’m a cigar-smoking, hard-thinking, tough-acting, cowardly person who’s occasionally sweet and usually quiet sanguine.

Describe your ideal reader.
Smart, progressive and open-minded.

What are you working on?
I’m working on another crime thriller, the working title of which is: “The Black Widow Spider Society.” As the title suggests, it’s about a bunch of wealthy women who form a society that assists them to dispose of their husbands once the first blush of love subsides and turns into its nastier cousins: infidelity, jealousy or some such malaise.

• Complete article in the Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Red Ink by Angela Makholwa
  EAN: 9781770100688
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The Citizen and Macmillan South Africa are proud to announce the winner of the Citizen Book Prize 2009 – the only book prize decided by the reading public.

The Wewelsburg Covenant by Johan Broens is a gripping World War 2-to-present-day account of one man’s conflict against his Nazi upbringing.

Swayed by an unintentional and undeniable love affair, James Trevellian’s choices will eventually decide the fate of the world.

• Read The Wewelsburg Covenant synopsis

There were almost 1 000 votes across all the titles in the final week, with The Wewelsburg Covenant receiving a record number of votes for this competition.

Macmillan have taken the decision to not publish the manuscript in its current form (a right detailed in the Prize conditions), but Johan Broens still receives a R10 000 cash prize and a writing course sponsored by Macmillan.

Broens looked back on the process he’s been through. “I wrote the novel, since it had been my ambition for nearly 10 years to do so. “I resigned my position at a consultancy to wholly spend my time devoted to the novel. I could not foresee any other way of writing it,” he says.

“I wrote on a fulltime basis, every day of the week, for four to eight hours per day, for seven weeks. Although I was confident of my writing abilities, I was even amazed at how readily the words flowed from my mind,” Broens says.

“Writing, to me, came naturally, most probably due to my passion for writing, my fertile imagination and very wide general knowledge. I have reached a stage in my life where I want to be creative. What could be more creative than writing a novel?” Broens says.

“It is my absolute ambition to be an author for the rest of my life.”

The Wewelsburg Covenant should find a large audience.

“My intended audience would be the same as those targeted through novels by authors such as Frederick Forsyth, Wilbur Smith, Tom Clancy, Harry Patterson, etc,” says Broens.

“The novel, I believe, would appeal to a wide variety of people, as it contains much intrigue and is closely associated with historical fact,” he says.

“Most importantly,“It is a novel which is believable. It has an authentic ring to it, making the reader believe that such events could have happened.

“It also, on a personal level, addresses an issue that many people face in today’s world, namely prejudice,” Broens says.

“And people generally enjoy reading books about secret organisations and novels that span over generations.”

Watch The Citizen’s CitiVibe for a full interview with Johan Broens and more news about The Wewelsburg Covenant.

The voting for the 2009 Citizen Book Prize has closed! Thanks to all who voted – we received huge numbers in the final week. We’re tallying the votes and will be in touch with the winner soon. Good luck to everyone who entered!

The voting for the 2009 Citizen Book Prize has almost come to an end. Now that you’ve seen all the synopses, here’s your chance to pick the winner! Please vote for your favourite synopsis using the poll below.

A recap of the eight eligible synopses (note that Living with My X by Stephen Semaj has been withdrawn from the competition):

• Turning Point by Amanda Coetzee
• Opening the Knot by Etienne L Smit
• The Wewelsburg Covenant by Johan Broens
• Bad Blood by Amanda Coetzee
• Mrs T and the Rex by Domenico Pisanti
• Onion Tears by Shubnum Khan
• Babette’s African Christmas Feast by Christy Mulco
• The Year of Thrills and Chills by Reen Collett

Now make your “X” for your favourite synopsis!

Citizen Book Prize final poll

2009 Citizen Book Prize Final Poll – All Synopses(online surveys)