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Skilful revelations

Despite its numerous sad revelations, Anne Schuster’s <i>Foolish Delusions</i>, is an absorbing read and a fine, multi-faceted achievement, writes Shirley Kossick.

Wave forms

<i>Souvenir</i> — Jane Rosenthal’s second novel for adults — is set in the Karoo in the late 21st-century, and contains striking descriptions of tidal waves that devour the…

A woman of intrigue

Remembered most, perhaps, for her stormy affair with the artist Modigliani, Beatrice Hastings is "A treasure house … researched with true scholarly passion." Shirley Kossick…

An adventurous life

A tribute to a mother’s influence, Kate Turkington’s <i>Doing it with Doris</i> is a collection of tales about the journeys, adventures and encounters inspired by inspired by her…

Love and mystery

In her debut novel, Barbara Adair imaginatively recreates a compelling portrayal of the lives of literary figures Paul and Jane Bowles. Shirley Kossick reviews "this fine book…

Fragments of a life best forgotten

Trezza Azzopardi’s first book, <i>The Hiding Place</i>, was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize and is a first-person account of a Maltese child growing up in Tiger Bay,…

Postcards of the past

These 12 stories were originally published in Toronto during Rayda Jacobs’s 27-year exile from her own country (<i>The Middle Children</i>, 1994). As she mentions in the…

A moving and perceptive novel

Rosamund Haden is another of the talented young South African writers who has emerged with flying colours from the University of Cape Town’s creative writing MA course. Though…

Anatomy of a nation

This novel centres on the sleepy — not to say dying — town of Vlenterhoek in the remote Northern Cape. Like the author herself, Leah Hopkins returns home to South Africa…

Of human bondage

Delving into a range of new fiction, Shirley Kossick looks at two books that explore effects of colonialism against backdrops of soaring and Australian and New Zealand…

Birth, hunting and holy fools

Barbara Trapido’s sixth novel, <i>Frankie and Stankie</i> (Bloomsbury), has all the aplomb of her earlier work and again the witty style and sometimes flippant tone tend to…

A keen and inventive mind

<b>Review:</b> <i>I Flying</i> by Finuala Dowling (Carapace)

A gruelling chronicle of misfortune

<b>Book review: </b> <i>No Way Out</i> by Zinhle Carol Mdakane (Life History Series, University of Durban-Westville)

When the caged bird sings

Born in South Africa, Lindsey Collen has lived in Mauritius since 1974 and has been a controversial figure there for her espousal of women’s rights. Though her novel, <i>The Rape…

Kingsolver is the best of the Boeke

The shortlist for this year’s "Boeke" Prize — an Exclusive Books promotion — offers six very different novels, writes Shirley Kossick .