When Federico Andahazi wrote a novel about the clitoris, Argentines were scandalised – and women rushed to buy it for their husbands. Maya Jaggi reports Every discovery is arrogant, says Federico Andahazi, and possibly none more so than that charted in his remarkable novel The Anatomist. At its heart is a real Renaissance scientist from […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sardinia | Thursday 7.30pm. A FEISTY Mistral forced the cancellation of the first day of racing at the Sardinia Cup regatta in the Mediterranean this week and South African yachtsman Geoff Meek only managed a fifth place on the second day’s 80-mile offshore race in continuing 35-knot winds. Meek is one of five […]

Andrew Benson : Grand Prix Gustav Brunner quit his job as a designer at Ferrari’s Formula One team this year to become technical director of back-of-the- grid Minardi, but the 47-year-old Austrian still passes the Ferrari factory in Maranello on his way back to his apartment. “They are working very hard at Ferrari these days,” […]

Ferial Haffajee Emigration lawyer Hilliard Kassel is laughing all the way to the bank. He jokes that the only reason he stays in South Africa is because his skill in helping people to leave is in such demand. Based in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the bespectacled lawyer is at the cutting edge of the migratory wave […]

Gouglas Rushkoff : Online Is the Internet a source of psychological problems, or does it provide a cure? For every book or article I read about the detrimental effects of spending time online, I see another listing sites where people can turn for psychological counselling. I receive many letters from psychologists asking about the effect […]

Ian Whittell The TV stations are the hardware, the sports teams the software. That is the cynical but realistic jargon in an American sports world in which media companies are taking hold. “The long tentacles of media conglomerates are something we have to watch very carefully,” said Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball. And […]

Ann Eveleth Six northern KwaZulu-Natal police officers received jail sentences this week for torturing an African National Congress- aligned community activist and his relatives. Magistrate Amanda Venter handed down the ruling in a tiny civil courtroom in the Empangeni Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, nearly two-and-a-half years after members of the Mtubatuba-based public order policing unit […]

David Conn : English Soccer English football has been transformed so rapidly in the last few years, from a game millions paid cheaply to watch on ramshackle terracing, to an activity which can make 100-million for one man like Martin Edwards, that it is difficult at times to make articulate sense of isolated developments. So […]

Alex Dodd : CD of the week If, like me, you’re the kind of person who likes drifting into the realm of nod to strains of sweet music conjuring images of women in fuschia muslin and marble palaces on Indian lakes, Deepak Ram is the maestro you’ve been looking for. A pupil of the great […]

Fiona Macleod Criminal charges will soon be laid against animal dealer Riccardo Ghiazza, who recently kidnapped 30 baby elephants from the Tuli bushlands in southern Botswana. Ghiazza is holding the elephants near Hartebeespoort Dam, with the intention of selling them to zoos and animal trainers. Rick Allen, manager of the wildlife unit of the National […]