Shaun De Waal

Shaun de Waal has worked at the Mail & Guardian since 1989. He was literary editor from 1991 to 2006 and chief film critic for 15 years. He is now editor-at-large. Recent publications include Exposure: Queer Fiction, 25 Years of the Mail & Guardian and Not the Movie of the Week.

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/ 2 September 2005

The power of X

”You have the power of X!” That’s the message to the youth in the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) new advertising campaign in the run-up to the local-government elections. The campaign is perhaps the poppiest yet to be run by the IEC, but it also takes its tone from the idea of ”ordinary people speaking to ordinary people” more than previously.

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/ 2 September 2005

Skin flick

<b>MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> Gregg Araki’s new film <i>Mysterious Skin</i> may lack the sense of nihilism often present in his earlier films, but it’s about youthful sexuality and abuse and how different people deal with such things, writes Shaun de Waal.

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/ 22 August 2005

Grudge match

NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Between the moments of violence and the over-played caricatures there is the occasional laugh in Adam Sandler’s new movie The Longest Yard, writes Shaun de Waal.

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/ 9 August 2005

Fiction

Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grand‒father by Gao Xingjian (Harper Perennial) In the title story, the author, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, longs for his childhood village, now asphalted over, and his grandfather, who made fishing rods of bamboo. It is one of six stories written between 1989 and 1996, […]

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/ 24 June 2005

Fact or fiction?

NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK:
In My Country, based on Antjie Krog’s novel on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, falls short of the intense inwardness and self-scrutiny of Krog’s book, writes Shaun de Waal.

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/ 17 June 2005

Shape-shifters

VILLA AT 90 edited by Karel Nel, Elizabeth Burroughs, Amalie von Maltitz (Jonathan Ball/Shelf) WILLEM BOSHOFF by Ivan Vladislavic (David Krut Taxi) Two sculptors who couldn’t be more different: Eduardo Villa and Willem Boshoff. Yet, reading a book on each, looking at them together, casts fascinating light both ways. Villa is an adoptive South African, […]

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/ 17 June 2005

Winter Books

It’s that time of year when there’s nothing better than to curl up somewhere warm with a book … Here is the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s handy guide to new books on the shelves this winter.