Special Report | Talking about books - Mail & Guardian Online

Mail & Guardian

Click here

Special Report: Talking about books; From debates from the world of publishing, to talking to SA authors, the M&G brings you the latest literary news.

Latest

Publish and be damned: Reviewers stand accused of being sycophantic about local books. Well, that is going to change.
Looking for shapes in the clouds: Competing metaphors for literary production are like competing discourses. For a healthy industry, we need more of them.
Lauren Beukes: 'Ideas for novels develop like a Polaroid': Lauren Beukes is the author of Moxyland and Zoo City, both novels that look at SA society through a futuristic, dystopian lens.
Scholarly writing a lonely road: If Leon de Kock compares the state of literary publishing in South Africa to a busy urban highway, then scholarly publishing is more like a back road.
Romance bodice-ripper novels get SA flavour: Hate and passion flares in rural SA when Thuli meets Jake in a locally flavoured romance novel with a feisty black heroine and hunky Zulu man.
SA press takes a hard look in the mirror: The Press Council is reviewing its own system in the light of criticism and hearing submissions from far and wide.
Why rage is inevitable: Publishing is like a busy highway on which there are so many different types of drivers and crashes are common .
What every critic should know: A local publisher outlines various challenges and defends local editing and writers.
Our literature needs incisive criticism, yes, but on exactly whose values will it be based?: The recent response to criticism by writers and performers from two very different sectors of literature (spoken-word poetry and genre fiction) is not
Make SA books matter: Novelists and reviewers can shape the industry by producing work for mass appeal as well as the serious-minded, argues Chris Thurman.

Dignity in la-la land: Why anybody can’t paint anybody’s penis by author

Chinese and Russian co-operation now crucial in ending the violence in Syria by author

Tackling President Zuma by author

Prim Lizzy could teach thin-skinned Zuma a thing or two by author

Realising the potential of electricity by author

Dear Africa by author

The economic week in review: More troubling signs by author

Zuma painting: Spearing the psyche and esteem of a nation by author

“A better life for all”: The case for a youth wage subsidy by author

How can we see from this high horse? by author

For more visit Thought Leader here

Click here

The SA Book Debate

Readers and reviewers, writers and academics, on the pages of the Mail & Guardian, on blogs and other forums are questioning all aspects of South Africa’s literature.

The debates, robust and raucous, sometimes avuncular and good-natured, often highbrow and haughty, have captivated the nation.

In the inaugural instalment, our books editor, Darryl Accone, wrote that South Africa has “a plethora of fiction and non-fiction that appears sometimes to have been rushed to the presses and on to the shelves”.

Accone’s other gripe was that South Africa seems to have "so many writers, so little writing". There’s an excess of he called “chatter and conversation about being a writer, the "writerly life".

These statements have inspired a broad range of responses, and debate is bound to continue. Festivals like Time of the Writer, and the Franschoek Literary Festival that happens in May, will also give authors and publishers a chance to air their views.

Anything to add? Send your ideas here.

For more opinion and debate, also see the Book SA website.

Join the debate on Twitter by using #SAbooks

All material © Mail & Guardian Online. Material may not be published or reproduced in any form without prior written permission.

Digital Media and Marketing Association - DMMA