BOOK SA – Magazine

A whole host of launches for The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers will take place this week, including tonight’s launch at the Book Lounge in Cape Town. Start the festivities at home with the following excerpt:

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I was eight thousand kilometres away, drunk and happily unaware at a friend’s birthday party in Berlin, when I learned that the first white farmer had been murdered. Someone had left a television on in the corner of the apartment. I knew, even with the sound off, that it was a news report on Zimbabwe.

There’s something about rich red earth the colour of blood that you can never wash away, no matter how far you’ve travelled, or how long you’ve been running. It was a Sunday afternoon, 16 April 2000.

For the previous month back in Zimbabwe the government of President Robert Mugabe had been threatening to take away land from the country’s forty-five hundred white farmers. Gangs of armed men – said to be veterans of the liberation war that had ended white rule twenty years earlier – had begun invading white-owned land, assaulting black farmworkers, looting homes, burning tobacco barns and stoning dogs, pigs and cattle to death. Still, it was a shock to discover that a farmer had now been murdered. His name was David Stevens. He had been savagely beaten, and then shot in the face and back at point-blank range with a shotgun, after a mob abducted him from his farm in the district of Macheke.

I had been out of Zimbabwe for seven years, travelling, writing, drinking away my late twenties and early thirties in the rootlessness of London, but I knew that Macheke was only an hour’s drive from my parents’ game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains of the country, and that they were in terrible danger. If they didn’t leave fast, they would surely be murdered as well, and it would be a brutal, bloody, all-too-African end. They would die like this man Stevens.

I frantically dialled their number and waited for what seemed like hours to get a connection. My mother finally answered.

She sounded on edge, her voice high-pitched through the static.

‘Hello, yes, who’s this?’

‘Mom, it’s me, Douglas. Jesus, what’s happening? Are you guys all right?’

‘It’s terrible,’ she said.

I pictured her and my father barricaded in the house, a mob rattling their gates.

‘What’s happening? Mom, what’s happening?’

‘We’ve already lost four wickets.’

‘Four what?’

‘Four wickets, darling. Not going very well at all. It’s ninety-one for four …’

Christ. She and my father were watching a cricket match. I could hear the crackle of the commentary on the TV in the background. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified.

‘Jeez, Ma. Not the cricket. The farm. Have you any idea what’s going on? This guy has been murdered up the road from you. Are you sure you’re okay?’

There was a long pause, as if I had sucked the air out of a balloon. I heard her take a drag of her cigarette. She would have a drink nearby. Bols brandy on the rocks. She’d switched from Gordon’s gin years ago. Said it gave her headaches.

I could picture my father clearly now, too, down the passageway, around the corner in the living room, feet up in his leather recliner. The remote would be in one hand, a mug of Coke in the other, and he would be cursing at the new batsman for playing a loose shot: ‘Move your bloody feet! Get into line! Ag, hit the ball, for Chrissake!’ Dappled late-afternoon sunlight would be streaming through the arches of the veranda, illuminating the purple crests of the mountains behind and setting on the wheat fields of the farms in the valley below.

Those farms could have been on fire for all my parents knew.

‘Oh, that,’ my mother finally said, her voice fading through the static.

‘Yes, well, it doesn’t look very good, does it? I guess we’re just going to have to wait and see.’

Wait and see didn’t seem a wise option to me.

I told her I thought it best they pack up fast and lie low, whether in Mutare, the closest town, in another valley over the mountain pass nineteen kilometres away, or, even better, across the border in Mozambique. Mozambique. It sounded absurd just suggesting it. Mozambique had been at war for most of my childhood. People fled Mozambique for our side of the border. But like the seasons, in Africa the state of nations turns and occasionally comes full circle. Yes, Mozambique. Anywhere would be safer than Zimbabwe.

But my parents, I discovered on that phone call, were not going anywhere.

‘Darling,’ my mother said, ‘don’t be ridiculous. We are Zimbabweans. This is our land.’

And then I heard steel in her voice, fury rise in her throat.

‘Over my dead body will they take this place. Over my dead body.’

By the time I put down the phone my mother was asking me how I was, and when I was going to come and visit again. She had the stoic, breezy air of someone who had lived through a lot and expected to live through this, too. She had seen worse.

‘How are they?’ my friend asked when I returned to the party.

‘They’re watching cricket,’ I said. ‘They have no idea what’s going on.’

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• The Last Resort is published by Jonathan Ball
• Jonathan Ball home
• Jonathan Ball @ BOOK SA

Book details

• The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe by Douglas Rogers
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781868423620
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Hello, what’s this? I asked myself when, while perusing a recent Book Lounge newsletter, a work with the novel title The Ayahuasca Diaries caught my eye.

Ayahuasca, of course, is a well-known psychedlic herb – but references to it are far and few between in this corner of the world.

Turns out, Sunday Times journo Caspar Greeff went off to South America in search of the kind of consoling that ayahuasca can purportedly give – and he took his father along with him. The result is a memoir unique on the SA Lit scene, which is being launched at the BL tonight, and from which we are pleased to bring you this excerpt:

* * * * * * * *

This morning Scott brought his .22 rifle to the Internet room at the heart of his magical jungle empire. He strode up the stairs, posed like Buffalo Bill onstage at his Wild West show and aimed the rifle at the ceiling.

POW!

A bat tumbled down, blood trickling out of its little mouth. The creature flapped its wings feebly and died. ‘That bat’s had better days than this one,’ Scott observed.

I don’t want to give the impression that Scott Petersen was a trigger-happy cowboy who enjoyed killing: the shaman shot the bat because it shat on his computer.

Another pilgrim – as Scott calls his clients – had joined us. Ralph, a 58-year-old, bearded, bespectacled builder and Buddhist, lives in Crestone, Colorado. Crestone, on the western shoulder of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, has a population of 82, but is one of the centres of spiritualism in the United States. The village is home to seven Buddhist temples, two Hindu ashrams, a Zen retreat, a Carmelite monastery, a Tibetan Peace Park, a Cretan labyrinth, and an Assyrian ziggurat.

‘And five brothels,’ added Scott irreverently.

‘And one crystal meth lab and one opium den,’ laughed Ralph, a gentle soul who looked not unlike Jerry Garcia in his Blues for Allah days.

A large turquoise insect was trapped on the green mosquito netting of a window and, experiencing a moment of compassion, an instant of Buddha-mind, I picked it up to free it to the outside world. The insect buzzed furiously and fire shot through my system. My right index finger was aflame, my heart accelerated dramatically. The flamboyantly coloured creature was a wasp, and it had done what wasps do in these situations: stung me.

‘Fuego! Fuego! (Fire! Fire!),’ I yelled in my makeshift Spanish. ‘Jesus, this thing’s got a hell of sting.’

Dad grinned. ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished,’ he said. He believed that.

‘No, that was great,’ I muttered through tears of pain. ‘Exhilarating. I could get addicted to this feeling, keep one of these wasps as a pet and let it sting me whenever I feel less than alive.’

But today I feel alive. So very alive, even before the wasp injected its venom into my system. Maybe it has something to do with last night’s ayahuasca ceremony. Dad, having decided that the potion is poison, stayed in the bungalow, reading, when Scott came to fetch me at 8pm. I heard the shaman’s gumboots squelching through the mud and felt my pulse quicken.

‘Hope I don’t get stuck in Hell,’ I remarked to Dad as I walked out.

‘I’m sure you won’t. I think you’re going to have a breakthrough tonight. Good luck.’

‘Thanks Dad. Good night,’ I replied and joined the shaman on the path to his temple/ceremony room. The ayahuasca had been freshly heated to remove fermentation, and was still warm when I put the cup to my lips. It was a dark russet colour; the colour of rich soil, a hue of autumn.

I looked into the cup and said a short prayer to the goddess of ayahuasca. (‘Please don’t make me go mad.’) Then held the cup up. Toasted the universe. ‘Salud! (Health).’ I downed the potion in two sips. As usual it tasted vile. Horrid, bitter medicine. I ignored the shrieks of protest from my taste buds, went to my place on the wooden bench and waited.

Scott said his customary prayer in Spanish, and extinguished the candles. The moon was full and silver light danced in the room. I waited for the jungle juice to take effect. The waiting was scary – then I saw legions of eyes. The moonbeams stopped dancing and the darkness doubled. I felt as if I was in somebody else’s mind. I was trapped between two realms. The air was charged with magic. A lattice fell from my eyes, and I saw the fine filaments that connect everything. Honeycomb fractals flashed across my vision.

Then the fear. That feeling of mega déjà vu. Mega vu. Mega-view. The knowledge that I had done exactly this millions of times before and would be in this same room in this same ceremony feeling the same emotions and thinking the same thoughts countless numbers of times again. I travelled back to the beginning of time, when a disembodied consciousness created the universe out of loneliness and all history unfolded, then I arrived at Scott’s ceremony room and drank ayahuasca and travelled back to the beginning of time where a disembodied consciousness created the universe out of loneliness, and all history unfolded … and I was looping, over-compensating again.

I reached for my notebook. My hands looked far away and were elongated as if they were underwater: they glowed like they’d been picking beetroots in Chernobyl. I scribbled down two sentences: ‘This has never happened before. And this will never happen again.’

That seemed to help. I felt flooded with compassion and love. I stopped thinking about myself, brought friends to mind, and it felt as if we were communicating on a plane far removed from the physical world.

Walter started singing icaros, and he sang all of creation into existence. My spirit soared. I was filled with awe and gratitude. I had an inkling of what is called ‘shamanic ecstasy’.

According to the late Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade, the shaman:

… commands the techniques of ecstasy – that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography.

I may have been unsanctified by my initiation, I may have been unfurnished with a guardian spirit, but I was certainly venturing into a mystical geography. Vivid pictures flashed through my mind. Scenes transformed and metamorphosed. I saw Moses schlepping up Mount Sinai to fetch commandments inscribed in stone by the wrathful storm deity Yahweh, back in the days when men still heard the voice of God as clear as a tune through an iPod earpiece. I went to a village on a planet in another galaxy where I have another life which I live concurrently with my Earth-life. I had committed a crime there and was imprisoned inside a colossal tree which was called the Axis Mundi – the Centre of the World. I felt my blood turn to sap as the tree absorbed me. Then I was on a bridge over a river which I knew was the Ganges, facing a trio of monkey-faced demons who brayed like donkeys and brandished massive clubs. A blow from one of those clubs would knock my head off. I walked up to the monkey-demons and surrendered completely and they vanished.

I became aware that all life is sacred, that all beings are fragments of one mind.

Someone walked over to me. He had the head of a fish and the body of a man. He wore Scott’s white robe. I looked at him curiously. He blew perfume on me, and gave me a word of advice.

‘Breathe,’ he said.

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• The Ayahuasca Diaries is published by Jacana
• Jacana home
• Jacana @ BOOK SA

Book details

• The Ayahuasca Diaries by Caspar Greeff
  EAN: 9781770097612
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Photo courtesy jungleblog

Paddy Kearney’s biography of anti-apartheid campaigner and Catholic bishop Denis Hurley, Guardian of the Light, is a world-traveller – much like its subject – and is being launched in the UK and Ireland this week.

The biography’s title comes from Alan Paton, coined the phrase in reference to the bishop. Hurley was also known as an “ecclesiastical Che Guevara”.

Born in Cape Town in 1915 of Irish parents, Hurley became the youngest Catholic bishop in the world in 1947 at 31. His career as an outspoken opponent of apartheid began in 1951 when, as chairman of the Southern African Bishops’ Conference, he drafted the first of the ground-breaking pastoral letters in which the bishops denounced apartheid as “blasphemy” and “intrinsically evil”.

BOOK SA is pleased to bring you three excerpts from his biography:

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EXTRACT ONE: DENIS HURLEY ON ROBBEN ISLAND

Archbishop Denis Hurley’s father was a lighthouse keeper. At the time of Denis’s birth in 1915 his father was stationed at Cape Point. Three years later he was transferred to Robben Island.

Over the years, the island has been used for various purposes, but at the time the Hurleys lived there, from 1918 to 1923, it had a mental hospital, a leper asylum and a big prison for black convicts serving long sentences. There were Anglican and Catholic churches, a school, a library, sports fields, tennis courts and recreation halls, a police force and a fire brigade which made a big impact on the children.

Denis’s memory is that ‘father and mother were wonderful parents, and we became a deeply united family with a strong Irish-Catholic faith. Mother was the predominant influence in the matter of faith … She lived her faith and communicated it easily to her children. Father was devout but it was mother who created the deep spiritual atmosphere of our home’.

His father, said Denis, had a tremendous sense of justice and fair play. He used to tell his children.: ‘No matter what level people are at, what colour their skin, you know that you are not to treat anybody badly in this house.’

Denis attended the little government school on the island. One day Denis was asked by his teacher, “What is your religion”, to which he replied, “Irish”. He told his mother about this at home, but she said he should not say that too loudly. It was the early 1920s, the time of the Irish rebellion against British control of Ireland. His mother was aware that the Irish rebels were unpopular with loyal British subjects on Robben Island and in Cape Town.

In the early mornings a group of convicts would come round to each house to collect the night soil. Dressed in bright-red striped uniforms, they drove on a dashing mule cart, clanging and rattling buckets and shouting to each other. Denis found this activity most attractive and would have liked to join them as a convict – an ambition that did not last long.

His parents took turns to wash up at night. The one who was not ‘on duty’ would read aloud interesting articles from the newspaper. Often the items concerned conflicts in Ireland, and one name sounded most ominous: ‘devil era’. Later, Denis learnt that this was Eamonn de Valera, the elected leader of the Irish rebels, later to become prime minister of Ireland.

An event on Robben Island that caused great excitement, especially for children, was the arrival of planes which took people on short trips for ten shillings a flight. From Robben Island they flew to Table Mountain, giving their passengers an outstanding view of Cape Town, and then returning to the island. Denis was also fascinated to watch ocean liners sweeping into Table Bay east of the island. The Union Castle liners were particularly impressive and he enjoyed sketching them.

EXTRACT TWO: DENIS HURLEY AND THE GREAT DICTATORS

During his studies at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome, the young Brother Hurley focussed on the Church’s social teaching. In a dissertation entitled: ‘Economic Domination by Credit Control’ he focussed on a passage of Pope Pius X1’s letter dealing with credit control. This involved Hurley in research on the big mining houses and banks of South Africa which were imposing a tyrannical domination over the country, a study he described as ‘a great sharpening of conscience’.

Hurley was impressed by the angry phrases that Pope Pius used against credit control: ‘He was a real fighter, Pius X1’. Quite how much impact was made by the Pope on the scholastics is captured by Hurley’s comment: ‘We ate and slept and pondered over the Pope’s letter. And then there were the other encyclicals against communism, fascism and Nazism. These things were our bread and butter.’

Dramatic political developments were taking place in Italy, and the young and impressionable Hurley eagerly recorded what he saw: ‘The whole Italian nation is mad with Fascism. Every second man in the street … wears some kind of uniform, principally the black-shirt variety. Soldiers carry rifles, revolvers, bayonets. Policemen sport sabres, rapiers, daggers and revolvers. Even little boys are togged out in black shirts and wellington boots.’

Towards the end of April 1936, about the time of the Italian conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), Hurley saw Mussolini for the first time. He and another Oblate student, Joseph Fitzgerald (later, also an archbishop), remembered seeing posters announcing that Mussolini was to address a fascist rally in the Piazza Venezia next to his office. Hurley and Fitzgerald went along to listen:

“We found the Piazza full of people, shouting ’Duce, Duce, Duce’. After quite a long period, the French doors opened from the office to the balcony and out came Mussolini, alone. He stood there, looked at the crowd, threw up his hand in the Fascist salute. Left and right there were more cries of ‘Duce’, so that he held up his hand for silence … and began to speak”.

On 3 May 1938 Adolf Hitler came to Rome on a six-day state visit. He wanted to be received in the Vatican, but Pius X1 showed his total disapproval by leaving the city for his summer residence. He gave instructions that no member of Hitler’s party be allowed into the Vatican.

During the visit, a big military parade took place along the Via dell’Impero. That morning, Hurley was in the study hall of the International Scholasticate, close by. One of the scholastics came running into the hall and said to him: ‘Come quickly. You can see Hitler from the roof.’ Following the Pope’s example, Hurley said: ‘No, I’m not going to see that man.’ In 1999 he said: ‘By that time … we knew that Hitler was already something of an embodiment of evil. We didn’t know about his attitude to the Jews, but we knew he had taken up the cudgels … against the Catholic Church.’

EXTRACT THREE: HURLEY ON TRIAL

Archbishop Hurley paid a price for his prophetic witness against apartheid. Most notably he was charged and brought to court in 1985 for statements against the notorious Koevoet counter-insurgency group in Namibia.

In the midst of Hurley’s preparations for this trial, a message came from a famous prisoner – Nelson Mandela. Writing from Pollsmoor Prison, Mandela said: ‘Archbishop Hurley is often in my thoughts, especially now. I would like him to know that.’

Three days before the trial date, Minister Kobie Coetsee announced that the charges would be withdrawn. Since Hurley had already been formally charged, the state would be obliged to give reasons for not proceeding with the trial when Hurley appeared in court.

When Hurley entered the Pretoria Magistrates Court on 18 February 1985, it was packed with supporters who overflowed into the corridors, many of them wearing WE SUPPORT HURLEY stickers. Bishops, priests, nuns and lay people had come from many countries, as well as representatives of other churches, legal and human rights experts, diplomatic representatives and a large media contingent. As Hurley entered the court, they gave him a standing ovation, and the magistrate, W.J. van den Bergh, had to call for order.

Hurley stood in the dock as the lead prosecutor, Mr Frans Roets, made a short statement indicating why the charges were being withdrawn. The crowded court listened quietly during Roets’s statement until he accused Hurley of ‘wallowing in the glamour attributed to him’ as a result of the case. Then ‘there was a roar from the whole court … people were so surprised by his remark and so indignant that they all shouted him down’.

The hearing over, the crowd of supporters walked with Hurley to nearby Khanya House, the SACBC headquarters, where a media conference was held. Hurley described it as ‘bright and cheery … like a crowd after winning a rugby test match’. He began the conference by speaking about his relief that the case was now over, but also his disappointment that the behaviour of the security forces would not now be made public. His legal team had assembled a ‘devastating’ collection of findings at trials and inquests involving the security forces in murder, rape, assault and robbery.

After thanking his legal team, Hurley expressed ‘the hope and prayer that the aborted trial may be used by God in hastening the day when the horror of Namibia may come to an end, when the good name of the security forces so grievously tarnished, when the designation of ‘policeman’ so sadly disgraced, will be reinstated and rehabilitated and when freedom and peace will come to a country subjected to the distress and cruelty of a war for which unfortunately South Africa is mainly responsible. May God grant the grace of repentance to the offending party and the grace of forgiveness to the offended, that reconciliation may result and peace and friendship come into their own’.

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• Guardian of the Light is published by UKZN Press
• UKZN Press home
• UKZN Press @ BOOK SA

Book details

• Guardian of the Light: Denis Hurley: Renewing the Church, Opposing Apartheid by Paddy Kearney
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781869141813
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Photo courtesy the Witness

The back cover of Lisa Lazarus and Greg Fried’s The Book of Jacob leads with a quote from Tom Eaton: this book, says Eaton, is “a startlingly honest, superbly adult and intelligent insight into the existential earthquake that is the arrival of a first child”.

Tom Eaton: an unlikely source for a parenting book’s blurb. Fittingly, The Book of Jacob is an unlikely parenting book. At its launch, Fried classed it as a “gothic parenting” text, which may well be a genre of one. A quote from Franz Kafka prefaces a section toward the end, called “Late Winter”; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland features heavily.

There’s possibly another “genre of one” that The Book of Jacob belongs to, too: the parenting book that is celebrated as much for its writing as for its subject. It is, quite simply, splendidly written. Here’s an excerpt from the mother’s pen:

* * * * * * * *

2 + 1 = 3

‘This is my ear, this is my ear, that is your ear, your ear,’ sings Greg. He conscientiously touches the appropriate bits of Jacob’s body. ‘This is your foot, das ist gut.’

‘Do you think this will help him learn English and German?’ he asks.

I don’t answer. I have no idea. In truth, I’m stumped as to how Jacob can possibly learn English from the disconnected slivers of language he hears from us. Perhaps he hasn’t settled on English yet: the other day he chirruped, perfecting a sound found only in the Amazon rainforest, beautiful and melodious.
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Most people have heard of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” – child soldiers and orphans who were displaced during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 – 2005 – two million killed, according to Wikipedia). Many of the children were adopted by families in the United States and found themselves relocated to landscapes impossibly distant from those of central Africa. Think: Minneapolis in winter.

What is less well-known is that the “Lost Boys” didn’t only go to America. Other countries took them in, too – including South Africa, although, in SA’s case, it wasn’t in the open-armed fashion seen elsewhere. First, you had to walk here, which might take ten years or more. Then, you had to battle Home Affairs while finding a way to feed yourself. Eventually, if you worked hard and caught enough breaks, you could become someone. A successful businessman, for instance, or an author.

Aher Arop Bol became both. BOOK SA is pleased to bring you an excerpt from his memoir, The Lost Boy:

* * * * * * * *

(Note: Aher is seven or eight years old when he tells this story)

In July 1991 the SPLA platoon in our area was ordered to leave and move to the equatorial region of southern Sudan. Many minors were thinking of following the soldiers, rather than starving to death as so many had done in Ethiopia in 1987. We had strict orders not to leave our camp, but I, as an individual taking charge of my own life, was determined to escape.
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Anthony Sampson’s posthumous autobiography, The Anatomist, will be launched, very appropriately, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation tomorrow.

It’s difficult to say whether Sampson had more to do with South Africa, or whether South Africa had more to do with him, such are the deep connections between SA politics and letters and the bestselling UK author who began his career, almost on a whim, at Drum magazine. There, he worked with the likes of Henry Nxumalo, Can Themba, Es’kia Mphahlele, Todd Matshikiza and Arthur Maimane, among others. These relationships, which Sampson forged in his mid-twenties, served him exceedingly well all his life – which came full circle, in a sense, when he was appointed Nelson Mandela’s official biographer.

BOOK SA is privileged to bring you an extended excerpt from the chapter that treats Sampson’s years at Drum:
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There can be few in South Africa who live the life of letters like André Brink.

His bibliography is intimidating; his contributions to South Africa’s public conversations on art and politics are plainspoken and vigorous; he is one of a handful of South African writers who produce a book a year, year after year.

The latest work is freighted with significance. A Fork in the Road is his memoir, a long look back over people, places and books – which curiously ends at a curious, yet very endearing beginning, Brink’s “Letter to Karina”, in which we learn that the Karina in question, who needs no introduction to BOOK SA readers, inspired Brink to overcome his leeriness of memoirs, and write one.
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One of the few occasions when Zapiro got it wrong has stuck in my head from the moment the cartoon was published. It showed COSATU Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi floating on a surfboard on a perfectly calm ocean, spouting off about the “Zuma tsunami”. The message was that the tsunami was happening only in Vavi’s head. To me, it just seemed like wishful thinking on Zapiro’s part.

And of course, Jacob Zuma was the real-tsunami-deal. He swamped South Africa in his unstoppable rise to the top of the ANC, and left our political landscape littered with the drowned.

Journalist Jeremy Gordin has been around for most of Zuma’s latter-day Poseidon Adventure. His book, Zuma: A biography started attracting controversy while the ink was still wet on the cover – and hasn’t stopped. A lightning rod subject will do that to a book.
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Pippa Green’s biography of UDF-leader-turned-world’s-longest-serving-finance-minister, Trevor Manuel, will be launched in Cape Town and Johannesburg next week.

In keeping with the SA tradition of monumental auto/biography, it’s a big book, published in hardback and running to hundreds of pages. Green has put her all into it, conducting many hours of interviews with Manuel over a period of four years, and canvassing more than 90 members of Manuel’s friends, family members and even enemies to flesh out her portrait of her subject. You can find Green’s thoughts on the art of biography in an excellent post over at Wordsetc.

In this extract from Choice, not Fate, Manuel finds a way to get out of jail once a week, and cherishes being able to hold his 14-month-old son during a chaperoned visit to the dentist. Enjoy!
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Every time I hear classical music, I’m taken aback by how, well, good it is. I fell out of the habit of listening to it upon discovering the infinite cool of the world of indie rock, but certain passages in classical music – the first four notes of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance – can make you forget other kinds.

Classical music is also a world of its own, of course; people who inhabit it live in vast estates of the mind, founded on symphonies, dotted with overtures and cantatas and other forms. David Tidboald is one such person. A conductor who established two orchestras in South Africa, travelled widely on the back of his expertise and knew and performed with the greatest musicians of the 20th century, he has just launched his “candid memoirs”, People I Made Music With.
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