Julie Burchill
For me there was only one book this year and=20that was Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words. The transcripts of the tapes she made are heart-breaking; hearty Sloane clich=E9s interspersed with cries of agony like something out of Samuel Beckett. The first paragraph of the first tape — “My first memory is really the smell of the inside of my pram. It was plastic and the smell of the hood. Vivid memory. I was born at home not in hospital. The biggest disruption was when Mummy decided to let it” — is like something from JD Salinger, and other parts make you think of Kafka and even Nabokov. The whole thing is done so brilliantly that it really made me despair of the fiction I read this year. I think Andrew Morton will go down in history as a far more important writer than Martin Amis. I don’t understand what has happened to English novels: a few years ago you had all these brilliant books like The Remains of the Day and Ambition, and now everyone really seems to be performing way below par. Though I know for a fact that both my ex-husbands are writing novels, so I’ll probably be in them, which should liven things up a bit.
John Fowles
I’m quite sure anyone concerned with the novel genre, professionally or academically, should make an effort to read Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon … and it does need an effort, being written, not least in some of its demands on the reader, at very near the limits of imaginative power.
Athol Fugard
Looking back over my reading in 1997, there is one book that stands head and shoulders above all the others — Timebends, Arthur Miller’s magisterial and deeply moving autobiography. Essential reading for anyone interested in the work of this great playwright and the story of theatre in the second half of this century.
William Kentridge
Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Any book by Kapuscinski is worth waiting for, and this one gives a real sense of the Soviet Union — a far better overall picture than anything offered in any other collection or journalism. A close second for my favourite book of the year would be Boyhood by JM Coetzee.
Hanif Kureishi
Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral could hardly be described as a return to form, as his previous one, Sabbath’s Theatre, was magnificent. But with American Pastoral, Roth has tackled the deepest and broadest questions: the United States since the war, and the relation of a conventional parent to a dissident child. John Forrester’s Dispatches from the Freud Wars is a fascinating discussion of why Freud, unlike Marx — at the moment — won’t leave us alone and how much of our thinking is impossible without his ideas.
William Makgoba
Seeing a Colour-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race, this year’s BBC Reith Lectures by Patricia J Williams. This paper bridges a gap in the discussion around racism and subliminal racism which we are beginning to deal with here and which is one of the biggest problems faced by our society. It’s a very illuminating read — complex, and detailed with personal experiences.
Zakes Mda
I spent the whole year writing books, and didn’t get a chance to read any, although I bought Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, JM Coetzee’s Boyhood and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things — and can’t wait to read them in the new year.
Ben Okri
Spent the year rediscovering old favourites. Read new translations of =C0 la Recherche du Temps Perdu, The Brothers Karamazov and the Odyssey; fresh and invigorating acts of restoration. And much enjoyed Thomas Hoving’s Greatest Works of Art: this is a curator’s dream and mine — to travel the world and see again all the works of art that revitalise the imagination and the heart.
Ken Owen
Heavyweather Sailing by Adlard Coles. We’re hoping to go sailing in the new year, and this is the best available standard volume on sailing yachts.
Harold Pinter
Global Spin by Sharon Beder examines the systematic stifling of independent critical thought by multinational corporations — in alliance with the media and government. Beder’s analysis is comprehensive, steely and clinical. An Embarrassment of Tyrannies: 25 Years of Index on Censorship: so many ways to censor and repress. This anthology covers the field; from blatant state terrorism to subtle but equally effective modes of operation in the “free world”. It’s an impressive collection, with outstanding contributions from Eduardo Galeano, Yasar Kemal and a searing piece by Mumia Abu-Jamal, 15 years on Pennsylvania’s death row.
E Annie Proulx
A handful of favourites from the last year or so would include Australian novelist David Foster’s brilliant The Glade within the Grove, Ciaran Carson’s Last Night’s Fun, on the pleasures of kitchen music, and Dermot Healy’s fine memoir, The Bend for Home. From the United States, it’s Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman, Junot Diaz’s short stories, Drown, and Maria Flook’s powerful and disturbing memoir, My Sister Life.
Govin Reddy
This year’s been such a hectic year at the SABC that there hasn’t been much time for reading, but the summer holidays are going to be taken up with Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Comrades in Business by Heribert Adam, Kogila Moodley and Van Zyl Slabbert.
Joanna Trollope
As in most not-very-exciting years for fiction in English, there are some quiet little gems. One such, for me, is Candia McWilliam’s terrific collection of short stories, Wait Till I Tell You — some sentences and images you just want to read over and over. As for non-fiction, I much enjoyed Pamela Neville-Sington’s excellent Fanny Trollope.
Jann Turner
Fugitives by Anne Michaels is a densely and beautifully written novel, filled with extraordinary resonances for our own experiences around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Shado Twala
Even though I haven’t finished it yet, I know Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker by Ross Russell — a biography of the saxophonist — is the best book I will have read this year. I’m really getting into the unusual style in which it is written, which is different from other musical biographies.
Naomi Woolf
My book of the year is Doris Lessing’s Walking in the Shade, the second volume of her autobiography. Her life summarises some of the main currents of the 20th century and her lucid self-consciousness lets us understand these currents more fully than less personal analyses can.