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JULY '24 LIBRARY REVIEWS

CONTEMPORARY FICTION (RWANDA)

Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Mark Polizzoti, 2024
R295 from The Book Lounge

Kibogo is familial storytelling and community gossip. It is a story shared through muted whispers and behind teeth desperately stuffing down a cackle. A hand-me-down that survives in spite of. It’s a story told four times, each time adapted for the Rwandan society it finds itself in. Beginning with the brutal famine of the 1940s, when villagers from a mountainside town look to the Belgians, and Jesus, and some even to Kibogo, to bring the rain. Scholastique Mukasonga pens a masterful fable filled with biting satire, reflections on the narratives that make society, the power they hold, and a sneaking belief in the fantastic. Faye Kabali-Kagwa

CULTURAL STUDIES (SOUTH AFRICA)

Place by Justin Fox, 2023
R320 from The Book Lounge

Want a degree-equivalent reading list of South African fiction? Justin Fox’s Place will do the trick. For it, the well-known author and journalist travelled to and wrote about the rural settings of some of the country’s most famous books. Chapters run from the likes of Zakes Mda’s Wild Coast to JM Coetzee’s Moordenaars Karoo and Herman Charles Bosman’s Groot Marico – each one, a love story of land and literature, past and present. Sarah Buitendach

CULTURAL STUDIES (SOUTH AFRICA)

Place by Justin Fox, 2023
R320 from The Book Lounge

Want a degree-equivalent reading list of South African fiction? Justin Fox’s Place will do the trick. For it, the well-known author and journalist travelled to and wrote about the rural settings of some of the country’s most famous books. Chapters run from the likes of Zakes Mda’s Wild Coast to JM Coetzee’s Moordenaars Karoo and Herman Charles Bosman’s Groot Marico – each one, a love story of land and literature, past and present. Sarah Buitendach

CONTEMPORARY FICTION (NIGERIA)

Lightseekers by Femi Kayode, 2021
R275 from Clarke’s Bookshop

In Lightseekers, a psychologically-intriguing whydunit – the who is known, the why is the mystery – Femi Kayode skilfully traverses the insider / outsider shifts in perspectives of Philip Taiwo, recently returned to Nigeria from the USA. He manages simultaneously to locate the tension against a seething backdrop of the chaos, religious conflict, simmering violence and corruption often assumed endemic to Africa, while pointing to both their colonial roots and their contemporary parallels in the US. The themes of police complicity, gun-toting civilians, social media as a mechanism for divisiveness and the ripples of trauma are given both local specificity and global recognition. The combination of vivid context, relatable characters and disturbing plot make for compelling, albeit dark, reading. Shivani Ranchod

ART PHOTOGRAPHY (KENYA)

Camo by Thandiwe Muriu, 2024
R920 from Jonathan Ball

Mesmerising and compelling, Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu’s images generate a hypnotic appeal as one turns the pages of Camo, her first book. Are these portraits of people? Of patterns and textiles? Of the threads of joy all too easily lost in the everyday grind? Certainly, Muriu’s pictures – each of which features a woman arrayed in finery made from the same bold wax print that make up the backdrop against which she is posed – reinvent the conventional portrait in a fabulously fresh and contemporary way. The book also combines the images’ visual inspiration with idiomatic wisdom, as each spread includes a thought-provoking African proverb. Gorgeous on every level. Robyn Alexander

ART PHOTOGRAPHY (KENYA)

Camo by Thandiwe Muriu, 2024
R920 from Jonathan Ball

Mesmerising and compelling, Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu’s images generate a hypnotic appeal as one turns the pages of Camo, her first book. Are these portraits of people? Of patterns and textiles? Of the threads of joy all too easily lost in the everyday grind? Certainly, Muriu’s pictures – each of which features a woman arrayed in finery made from the same bold wax print that make up the backdrop against which she is posed – reinvent the conventional portrait in a fabulously fresh and contemporary way. The book also combines the images’ visual inspiration with idiomatic wisdom, as each spread includes a thought-provoking African proverb. Gorgeous on every level. Robyn Alexander

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