A new book examines how a charismatic church is brainwashing poor and gullible South Africans with the idea that God can be bought
Religion has been left to bridge the inequality divide created by corrupt political elites, writes Catholic priest Anthony Egan.
Zake Mda’s many interests are reflected in this mix of integrity, vanity, irony and satire.
David Robbins’s latest is a reminder about the value of writing and how it can be used as a balm against rigid and reactionary ideas.
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/ 18 November 2010
A journalist with first-hand knowledge spins a tale that would do justice to a Grisham novel.
It is not surprising that crime is a common subject in contemporary South African writing, fact and fiction.
As with a good recipe, the latest contributions to ‘living a good life’ draw on varied ingredients to offer memorable dishes.
Anthony Egan doesn’t believe in ghosts. But once, one night on a remote Philippine island, something strange happened …
At the request of a cross-party group of members of Parliament, the Jesuit Institute of SA has been emailing daily meditations to parliamentarians.
Amid apparent tensions between church and state over a number of moral and political issues, there is sustained and reasoned dialogue.
Could crime fiction be the new direction the "political novel" is taking in contemporary South Africa?
Irish sexual mores are notoriously conservative because of religious constraints, but a new book interrogates a more sordid side of the country’s past
We were not close friends — but his tragic death vividly brought to mind my last memory of him as a fine theologian.
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/ 11 December 2009
At 285 pages one cannot really call this a short book, and as that it purports to be a world history, it could be argued that this is all too short.
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/ 6 November 2009
Andrew Brown is a crime novelist admirably conscious of race and class, and his latest works illustrate this perfectly.
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/ 6 November 2009
Nick Heller returns in Joseph Finder’s new thriller, <i>Vanished</i>, in which he investigates the disappearance of his brother Roger.
The <i>Guardian</i> was something of a legend in the anti-apartheid struggle. James Zug admirably brings out its complexity in his well-written and highly engaging book <i>The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper</i> (Unisa Press and Michigan State University Press).
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/ 16 November 2007
Anthony Egan reviews Bill Nasson’s <i>Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914-1918 </i>.
Ordinary people, given the right motivation and circumstances, can easily make the jump to suicide bomber, writes Anthony Egan.
On August 9 1956, a crowd of about 20 000 South African women of all races flocked to Pretoria’s Union Buildings and their leaders delivered petitions to the government. This year, 50 years on, South Africans celebrate the massive women’s march.
Historian Jeremy Krikler provides an in-depth account of the white miners’ revolt and subsequent racial killings in 1922, writes Anthony Egan.
In his debut novel, <i>The Native Commissioner </i>, Shaun Johnson shows us the corrosive and evil side of apartheid, but without bashing us over the head with the obvious, writes Anthony Egan.
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/ 3 February 2006
Jeff Guy delves into the 1906 Zulu uprising and the murder of two colonials in his new novel, <i>The Maphumulo Uprising: War, Law and Ritual in the Zulu Rebellion</i>. Anthony Egan reports.
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/ 13 December 2005
Anthony Egan reviews two new books, which go a considerable way to helping us see the new South African Police Service (SAPS) more fairly.
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/ 9 December 2005
Although the subject matter is grim and a sense of outrage at the neglect of sick people frequently surfaces, Johan Steyn’s first novel, <i>Father Michael’s Lottery</i>, is not an angry novel, writes Anthony Egan.
Israeli Jew Susan Nathan’s decision to move into an Israeli Arab village in 2002 – and to write about it – might be considered a revolutionary act and it was certainly a radical step, writes Anthony Egan.
Does South Africa really need nuclear power to meet its energy needs? David Fig’s short book, <i>Questioning South Africa’s Nuclear Direction </i> is a systematic plea against the extension of nuclear energy in South Africa. Anthony Egan reports.
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/ 29 September 2005
The book <i>SOUTH AFRICA’S 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities</i> deserves wide attention, both as a contribution to the study of a largely overlooked period of our history or the very high quality of its scholarship, writes Anthony Egan.
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/ 29 September 2005
In <i>Indaba: Interviews with African Writers</i> Stephen Gray speaks to the various practitioners of African literature such as the revered Nadine Gordimer, Anthony Egan reports.
"I found myself asking, if I had been called up in the terrible 1980s, what would I have done?" This drew him to write <i>The Persistence of Memory</i>. Tony Eprile’s first novel deals with the experience of war veterans. He spoke to Anthony Egan.
Luli Callinicos’s biography on Oliver Tambo fills a much-needed void in the examinations of the lives of South Africa’s struggle icons.
Anthony Egan reviews <i>Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains</i>.