Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel
Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel (London: Penguin Viking, 2024) GEORGE Smiley, the anti-hero agent, appears in nine novels written by John le Carré who died in 2020. Smiley has a vast […]
From The Thornveld
There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel (London: Penguin Viking, 2024) GEORGE Smiley, the anti-hero agent, appears in nine novels written by John le Carré who died in 2020. Smiley has a vast […]
ANGER stalks the world and seems evenly spread among the generations, although particularly prevalent among men as the crisis of masculinity grows. One would expect in this situation, whatever its genesis, that young charismatic leaders […]
RHODA Kadalie was a well-known radical, anti-apartheid South African feminist who worked as an academic and journalist. Yet, for the last few years of her life she moved to the USA and became a Donald […]
Karyn Maughan, I Will Not Be Silenced (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) BETWEEN 2023 and 2024, the international press freedom monitoring organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) downgraded South Africa’s rating from 25 to 38 among 180 […]
T.J. Strydom, Capitec: Stalking Giants (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) THE LIBERATION of the majority of South Africans after 1990 has all too often been seen in terms of the vote. This was always going to […]
Jonathan Jansen, Breaking Bread: A Memoir (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) This is the story of a transformational journey from exclusive fundamentalist religion to international inclusivity and a broad-minded approach to higher education. Jonathan Jansen’s parents […]
‘GOODBYE, America; it was nice knowing you.’ Those were the words of the British writer Philip Pullman the day Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States. John Cusack, the American actor, reminded his […]
Patric Tariq Mellet, The Truth about Cape Slavery: The Foundations of Colonial South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) CAPE slavery has often been described as relatively benign, a sideshow to the main drama of South […]
EVERY Monday morning in the grounds of our local Anglican church modest food parcels are handed out. This began at a garden gate during the pandemic to help people who had lost jobs and resorted […]
Graham Coetzer, Hunting with the Hawks: Untold Stories from the Elite South African Crime-Fighting Unit (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) THE FAMED Scorpions, the Directorate of Special Operations which fell under the NPA and combined investigative […]