Adam Mars-Jones FREEDOM SONG by Amit Chaudhuri (Picador) Amit Chaudhuri’s writing comes as a mild therapeutic shock to those who visualise India as either benightedly rural or bustlingly urban: his characters may live in Calcutta, but they live at a private angle to their city. The cast of Freedom Song is large and tenuously related. […]

Anthony Browne: SHARE WORLD As the financial whirlwind that started in Thailand 15 months ago engulfs the rest of the world, it is difficult not to be pessimistic. A quarter of the world is in recession, the United States and the United Kingdom may well follow, Brazil and China are struggling, while the Indonesian economy […]

Mark Rozzo THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE by Simon Winchester (Viking) In 1879, James Murray, an expert on the dialects of his native Scotland and the recently appointed editor of The New Dictionary on Historical Principles, called for volunteers from Britain, the United States and the colonies to help create the first complete dictionary of the […]

Alan Gray has spilled the beans on Mpumalanga’s elaborate network of shady empowerment companies. Justin Arenstein reports Political infighting in Mpumalanga has revealed a shadowy network of black empowerment companies set up in 1996 to channel funds into the African National Congress’s election coffers. The “empowerment” network includes casino ventures, security, aviation, medical rescue, travel, […]

Renowned cultural writer Mark Gevisser talks to Matthew Krouse about his journey to the essence of one of Johannesburg’s unique forgotten heroes In the city of Johannesburg, overrun with live chickens and minibus taxis, Anstey’s building retains its stark majesty. Not only because it’s a well maintained survivor of the city’s New York age, but […]

identity Our audencies are yes men and our media are filled with nepotism, favour and laziness, argues Nathan Zeno I was at a Honeymoon Suites gig recently and the strangest thing happened. This guy asked me if I could “please not dance so much – you’re stepping on my feet all the time”. I looked […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 10.30am. PRESIDENT of the World Boxing Council Dr Jose Sulaiman said on Wednesday that he will ask boxing promoter Don King to stage the heavyweight unification title bout between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield in South Africa. Sulaiman said on his arrival in Johannesburg ahead of the world sanctioning body’s […]

Keith Devlin For about R5-million you can buy the earliest known account of the idea that inspired Archimedes to run naked down the street shouting “Eureka”. On October 29, Christie’s New York auction house will sell the manuscript that is the only source for Archimedes’s treatise, On the Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the only […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni An independent mediator is to be appointed to intervene in the ongoing conflict at the troubled University of the Western Cape (UWC), amid fears that final examinations may not take place. Final examinations have already been postponed for two weeks, and the administration has not yet set a new date for […]

A new film on Cape Town’s homeless people takes the viewer on ‘a moral obstacle race’. Lauren Shantal reports ‘My name is Yvonne and I drink wine. And I like to smoke dagga.” When the mic is wrested from the compere and the evening begins with an assertion like this, you know that decorum and […]