By BRUCE DENNILL & NIGEL WILLIS
Ink by Ingrid Mennen and Irene Berg
100 Books That Changed The World by Scott Christianson and Colin Salter
Catching Tadpoles: The Shaping Of A Young Rebel by Ronnie Kasrils
Shots From The Edge by Greg Marinovich
Janis: Her Life And Music by Holly George-Warren
Ink is a children’s book about a child who truly loves a book. It’s a book she builds – literally – as she grows in her understanding that words tell stories and that stories create worlds, worlds peopled with friends who share experiences and bring comfort, as they are created and once they exist. It’s a beautiful piece, illustrated with drawings that, while wonderfully designed, recall the way many children express themselves artistically, which will likely help young readers relate to the material. Best-case scenario? This book will become a firm favourite of each child who owns it, being read and re-read and perpetuating a richer love for reading as that process continues. Recommended. – BD
By the same author (Scott Christianson) as 100 Documents That Changed The World, 100 Books That Changed The World, an easy-to-read reference book, takes readers back through the history of literature, highlighting some of the epoch-making works that widely influenced philosophy, economics, gender relations, language, religion, education and much more besides. As with any such list, the choices are highly subjective, but the realisation that a single set of collected ideas can have the sort of influence these books have had remains an energising, stirring thought. Among the many expected titles here – the King James Bible, On The Origin Of Species, Ulysses, One Hundred Years Of Solitude – are works that many readers may not have considered, including The Pencil Of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot; The Origin Of Continents And Oceans by Alfred Wegener and A Book Of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David. Understanding why these are worth considering in the same breath is fascinating and provides fuel for a reader’s revision of their own perspectives. – BD
Ronnie Kasrils is a prolific and talented author. He has written three previous memoirs: Armed and Dangerous, An Unlikely Secret Agent and A Simple Man. In Catching Tadpoles, he recalls his childhood and early adulthood, covering the period from his birth in 1938 to 1960 when, following ‘The Sharpeville Moment’ on 21 March of that year, he made his commitment to ‘the struggle’. This book was written with the encouragement of his publishers. They thought it would contribute to an understanding of the forces that shaped the making of a white person who became a liberationist and revolutionary. The remarkable feature – indeed recurring theme – of this memoir is how utterly typical Kasrils was of a nice Jewish boy, growing up in Yeoville at the time when he did. Moreover, there was not much extraordinary about him. He was a good but not particularly talented scholar, a reasonably accomplished sportsman but neither a schoolboy hero on the field nor a nerd. It seems he was always a ‘man’s man’; who had ‘charming ways with the ladies’. He was high-spirited, with a zest for life and a good sense of humour. To this day, Kasrils is very ‘Jewish’ when it comes to his humour. He was occasionally rebellious. He certainly had a social conscience and was disturbed by apartheid but so were a number of other whites, who did not make the same ‘quantum leap’ as Kasrils. Yeoville, when Kasrils was growing up there, was a very Jewish suburb of Johannesburg. Jews were, indeed, disproportionately represented among the whites who joined the struggle. Almost certainly, Joe Slovo was the most famous Jewish son of Yeoville involved. But the party of liberal capitalism, the party of ‘the Helen Suzmans and the Oppenheimers,’ was also ‘over-represented’ (if that word may be permitted) by Jews. Some Jews supported the National Party but, until its demise, most supported ‘the party of Smuts’, the United Party (UP). In this regard, they were indistinguishable from most other white, English-speaking South Africans. For many years, Harry Schwarz, a so-called ‘Young Turk’ in the UP, was the MP for Yeoville. He was Jewish. Kasrils was at school with Richard Goldstone, one of South Africa’s most famous judges, and Tony Bloom, the billionaire captain of industry. Both Goldstone and Bloom were Jewish but, unlike Kasrils, neither became Marxist revolutionaries. Kasrils’ account of Yeoville during the Second World War and until the time that Hendrik Verwoerd took South Africa out of the Commonwealth provides a fascinating social history of a life and culture in a particular place that has now, effectively, disappeared. Kasrils attributes much of the development of his political consciousness to an excellent history teacher called Teddy Gordon who, when declaiming about the French Revolution, drew attention to the iniquities of apartheid. Excellent teachers do indeed have a profound impact on those who learn from them but there were many others who fell under the spell of this fine man but did not become activists. What must have had a huge impact on Kasrils was the fact that his mother’s first cousin, Jackie Arenstein, was one of the Treason Trialists in the 1956 case. In this regard, he must have been different from most of his white or even Jewish colleagues. The power of the book is found in its candor. It forces one to confront the issue of why we make certain large choices in life, whether political or otherwise. The truth is that it is, almost certainly, a combination of factors that operates. The best glimpse of what makes Kasrils ‘tick’ politically is found in his assessment of the situation in the Middle East. The state of Israel came into existence in 1948 with the support of the United Nations, including the Soviet Union. There can be no doubt that the impetus for this derived from the Holocaust of recent memory. That eclipsed other considerations like the displacement of the Palestinians. White South Africans who are not Jewish are mostly not ideological ‘Zionists’ but, on the question of Israel, have views similar to those of most Western political leaders (other than right-wing Republicans in the USA). In other words, they sympathise with both the Jews and the Palestinians, they wish a solution could be found but cannot think of any that will work in the immediate future. For this reason, they encourage the parties to keep talking. But not Kasrils. For him, the existence of the Jewish state of Israel is wrong and he takes sides. He has courage, perhaps even foolhardiness. He was on the right side of history when it came to apartheid but gives no credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Much though one may admire Kasrils, one cannot avoid thinking that he has been blessed with a generous dose of good luck in his political fortunes. – NW
Photojournalist Greg Marinovich has been to some of the world’s most terrifying and broken situations – warzones, political revolutions, pandemics and more – and come back to tell stories that most other people don’t want to tell. How many people want to meet with the survivors of some sort of slaughter and to unpack their grief in eloquent prose? How many people want to expose themselves to suffering on a daily basis, and put themselves at risk of lethal harm while doing so? It’s a mindset that most won’t be able to identify with, but thanks to Marinovich, readers gain insight into the human heart of conflict around the world, from Bosnia and Somalia to Angola, India, Saudi Arabia, and Uganda to a number of locations around his home country, South Africa. The combination of empathy and focus with which he approaches each assignment is fascinating – wanting to care and getting involved with subjects logically clashes with the authenticity of reportage. But Marinovich strikes a persuasive balance, never just observing from a totally disconnected distance, but also staying disengaged enough to get to the centre of whatever situation he has placed himself in. Marinovich is arguably best known as a photographer, but his writing is the equal of his remarkable eye for an evocative frame, making Shots From The Edge so evocative that many will find it difficult to read. The world is troubled place, and its dark heart is starkly, but also poignantly, delivered in these pages. – BD
Janis Joplin was – without trying to be – a musical archetype, a completely committed, whole-hearted performer who regularly left so much of herself on stage or in the studio that her health suffered. Her story is rich, intense and relatively short, that last given that she was, tragically, a member of the 27 Club – musicians who died at that young age, victims of hard living that often fuelled by an all-encompassing passion for their art. Holly George-Warren apparently had unfettered access to Joplin’s family, friends, bandmates and personal archives for Janis: Her Life And Music, and it shows in the richness of the telling of the story of the relatively few years in which Joplin came out of her shell and climbed the ladder of musical stardom. It’s a sympathetic perspective, but one that doesn’t shy away from including the behaviours that often tripped Joplin up – precocious and robust sexuality and alcohol and drug use that went well beyond the simply recreational – and the damage they inflicted on her health and potential. This cautionary aspect is balanced by the singer’s legendary charisma and transparent love for music, which is, if not inspiring, certainly infectious. What could have been is fairly irrelevant – Joplin’s regularly poor decision-making could potentially have sent her career sideways anyway. This book is a celebration of her energy and talent, and an exploration of what undermined her progress. – BD