John McGahern, widely praised as Ireland’s greatest living novelist, who specialised in semi-autobiographical portraits of rural life, died on Thursday in a Dublin hospital after a long battle with cancer, his family and friends said. He was 71. McGahern published six novels, four collections of short stories and, last year, his non-fiction Memoir.
The chairperson of the Sudanese rebel Justice and Equality Movement, Khalil Mohammed, on Wednesday dismissed the ongoing Abuja peace talks on the conflict in Darfur as ”a waste of time, energy and resources of stakeholders.” He said the peace talks would not achieve any meaningful result as they were ”merely going in circles.” Mohammed, however, expressed the hope that a peace agreement would be signed before the end of April.
Renaye D Menasseh speaks to Spike Lee about his new film and its top-notch cast.
The Cape Town Book Fair provides the ideal platform for getting South Africa’s new writing and publishing out there, but it is being launched with performance, not hype, in mind. Karen Rutter reports.
An American Muslim convicted of joining al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate United States President George Bush was sentenced to 30 years behind bars by a judge who compared him to ”American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 25-year-old US citizen who was born to a Jordanian father and raised in Virginia.
The Kenyan government said on Thursday it had suspended the country’s central-bank governor, who last week was charged with four counts of abuse of office in a corruption scandal. Government spokesperson Alfred Mutua said Central Bank of Kenya chief Andrew Mullei had been formally suspended by President Mwai Kibaki on Wednesday pending his trial.
NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK: John Madden’s latest feature, Proof, starring Anthony Hopkins and Gwyneth Paltrow, just doesn’t add up, writes Peter Bradshaw.
Since its inception in 2000, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival has included a world-class photographic exhibition as part of the visual arts mix. This year’s exhibitors include Peter Magubane, Fanie Jason and Mike Mzileni. Magubane began a distinguished photographic career for Drum magazine in 1955. At the Rand Daily Mail in the Sixties, he […]
The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) did not gather information about the Democratic Alliance, Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils said in a statement on Thursday. Kasrils said many concerns have been raised following the report of the inspector general of intelligence into certain unauthorised activities by the NIA.
Photographer Zanele Muholi’s new exhibition — Only Half the Picture — is an honest and raw depiction of sexuality, sex and femaleness, writes Hazel Friedman.