Along with spending too much time on Facebook and perusing the sidebar of shame on the Daily Mail website, deciding where to set one’s novel provokes feelings of intense guilt in South African writers. When writers get together, either socially or on formal discussion panels, they often confess to feeling conflicted about where to set […]
Sarah Lotz
Posted inLifestyle
Local erotic fiction goes global
In the same week that South Africa’s first mainstream erotic novel for women hit shelves, a major publishing deal was announced that is poised to take local erotica worldwide. There are those who chose to link these two events with the horrific rape and murder of Anene Booysen — the implication being that women’s erotic […]
Posted inLifestyle
The only responsibility of a young adult author is to tell a good story
Teenagers are easy to influence. Their plastic minds are wide open to suggestion from just about any source, except for their parents or other authority figures. Popular culture seems to play a particularly large role in shaping their behaviour. In the literary world, this has led to a great deal of introspection on the part […]
Posted inLifestyle
Putting our fiction on the map
South Africa has long had a fine international reputation for literary fiction. Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee have both won the Nobel Prize for literature. Coetzee has won the Booker Prize twice. Andre Brink has won a slew of international awards. And those are just the names that come immediately to mind. What we have […]