China Mieville’s 2010 <em>Kraken</em> is likewise a vehicle for satirising war, the Cold War’s successor — the West’s new crusades.
The authors’ sensitive approach on foreign terrain is gripping and incisive, writes <b>Gwen Ansell</b>.
The Joy of Jazz festival is one of the South Africa’s biggest music events, but its curation isn’t as well thought-out as it should be.
Anybody who knows South African jazz knows the words to Hugh Masekela’s 1974 <em>Stimela/Coal Train</em>.
Musicians are different. Share space with one and you’ll learn.
Prolific fantasy writer Robin Hobb has described her two most recent novels as her return "after a rather long vacation".
Composer Steve Dyer is definitely on a high. He’s concluding rehearsals for the world premiere of his large-scale work, <i>Rebirth</i>.
Checked your solido album lately? Depressing, isn’t it, how old you’re looking: almost like some gnarled outworlder.
<em>Gwen Ansell</em> speaks to two veterans of the apartheid era who dazzled the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Schizophrenia is the name of the game on the Johannesburg jazz scene, says trumpeter Marcus Wyatt.
Jazz aficionado Gwen Ansell reports on the Cape Town International Jazz Festival’s headline attractions.
Loyal fans of her Roman private eye Falco who pick up Lindsey Davis’s latest novel, <em>Rebels and Traitors</em>, may be disappointed.
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/ 22 February 2010
Gwen Ansell looks at the latest fantasy novels to hit the shelves.
Gwen Ansell applauds English absurdism, silly names and genuinely stylish use of language
in the further saga of Arthur Dent.
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/ 22 January 2010
Songs of Migration contains the best stage representation of the textured influences of migrant communities in South African cities.
There is magic in <i>Black Diamond</i>, Zakes Mda’s gritty tale of class and crime, writes Gwen Ansell.
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/ 20 November 2009
Fantasy — by definition — deals in improbable transitions. One bite and you’re a vampire; one wave of the wand and you’re a dragon.
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/ 8 September 2009
From an intellectually gripping tale to a new character who’s likened to Harry Potter, there seems to be a breath of fresh air in Sci-fi writing.
The reporter surveys a summer of science fiction and fantasy reading.
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/ 26 November 2008
Gwen Ansell reviews <i>Anathem</i> by Neal Stephenson.
There’s a growing volume of scholarship around South African music.
South Africa’s musical gems, from old-timers to the new generation, are given voice in two new books, writes Gwen Ansell.
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/ 29 February 2008
Gwen Ansell reviews <i>Red Mandarin Dress</i>, the fifth of the Inspector Chen novels.
Gwen Ansell reviews Meg Samuelson’s <i>Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women? Stories of the South African Transition </i> and Siphiwo Mahala’s <i>When A Man Cries</i>.
<b>Gwen Ansell</b> disovers a rainbow reading experience in a crop of new fantasy novels.
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/ 29 September 2006
Gwen Ansell reviews Morabo Morojele’s latest offering, <i>How We Buried Puso</i>.
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/ 27 September 2002
Accomplished jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin returns to her creative roots. Gwen Ansell reports.
Jazz at the Grahamstown festival might have been a pedestrian affair, but Gwen Ansell predicts, the Joy of Jazz festival will be anything but.