Books like Highveld Ways

The story is now quite a famous one, which has since been made into a TV miniseries.

Yet, my having lived over two decades in a once-occupied country, I’ve become especially sensitive to the toll that foreign occupation brings on conquered nations, their inhabitants and cultures. 

In All the Light We Cannot See, we as readers become instantly immersed in the cultures of two children—one blind and living in Paris; the other a German orphan with little direction in life other than his love of tinkering with machines. The read itself, I found provocative in that it explores the innocents—mostly women and children—caught up in the devastation of war.

The novel’s setting is the current Breton village of Saint-Malo, but in the 1940's, where the paths of two teens—a blind French teenager, Marie-Laure (Loberti), and a German soldier, Werner (Hofmann)—cross after Marie-Laure fled Paris with her father to what… show more.

This narrative read to me like an emotional rollercoaster—one that was both heartbreaking and uplifting.

The explorative core, I felt, was created by the deepening sisterly bonds throughout. In this, the protagonist, Imogen, develops an understanding of what it means to love and be loved. I both liked and related to how Imogen poured her creative energies into her artwork while experiencing her past and present converging and colliding.

What has been described as a real-life fairy tale—in fiction form, of course—is one that sneaks up on Imogen. She literally doesn't see it coming. And the read itself is so whimsical that one like myself could easily get lost in its plot. With that in mind, it’s a fun recommendation.

I am highly recommending this read which coincides with the theme of regeneration and renewal, which to me are the gifts that are left to us by our traumas.

In The Generosity of Scars, Scott discusses his 30 years of living and working in high-pressure situations, such as when in service as an American Green Beret in Afghanistan. 

Mann has written The Generosity of Scars in the hopes of helping others channel their life’s challenges into meaningful storytelling, while being most interested in what he calls the ‘real human connection’ in a world in which the machinations of AI are swiftly overtaking.

The author has also appeared on TED stages and before Congress. Yet, what is most impressive to me is his successful fundraising for non-profits and the like.

"While we can't completely escape trauma, we can productively integrate it into our lives." —author Larry Bograd

It was the eve of thirteen-year-old Larry's bar mitzvah... and the eve that his doctor father snuck into the family bathroom and hung himself. Grief entwines families in many secrets, and Larry spent the next forty years unmasking them.

I’ve known this author from when he was a young professor, and I was one of his literature students at MSU in Denver, Colorado. What I hadn’t known then was the quiet trauma that haunted him throughout his youth with the baffling question of why his own father, a Ukrainian child immigrant with a later promising medical career and loving family, could have done such a thing, which left them all a growing family with deeply puzzling scars.

Larry’s quest to unravel family secrets motivated a youthful quest into what was then the pre-glasnost… show more.

This book described not just a heinous crime that was committed near Johannesburg, South Africa, but the effects it had on a man falsely accused and imprisoned for that crime. Instead of focusing on a single perspective, the author chose to focus on several perspectives, some of which were totally unreliable. As a result, I was shown the messy mind states of all those people associated with the crime, 2 decades after it was committed.

I was in a constant state of curiosity with every page, and as soon as I finished the book, I wanted to learn more, not just about the case itself, but the culture and society from which it took place. 

I enjoyed the local setting, the intensity of the novel, and its unflinching exploration of South Africa’s violent crime problems and how crime ties into cultural beliefs.

The novel goes to some dark places, in terms of events and character arcs, and the pacing and well-written scenes keep the reader nailed to the story – you’ll see a side of South Africa which is very real, but perhaps largely unknown to the rest of the world.

Beukes has range and a keen eye, two things that are showcased perfectly in this collection. Experimenting in style, in genre, in tone, in point of view, in everything really. A lot of the stories are overtly speculative, but not all of them are, even though they have a speculative sensibility. Some stories are under 100 words, others closer to 10,000. As someone who enjoys experimental writing, I loved this book. Almost every story features the recurring theme of dehumanization, and they are largely set in South Africa or featuring South African characters. And if that wasn’t enough, there are even 5 nonfiction pieces from her time as a journalist. It's excellent reading. 

First published in 1948, this book will forever occupy a special place in my heart.

Not only is the book partially set in the very countryside where I was raised in South Africa, but it was also responsible for awakening my young conscience to the harsh realities of what many South Africans endured leading up to and during the apartheid years.

I was forever moved by the story and characters, and discovered the power of fiction by reading it.

I find the notion of the “unknown” writer quite problematic.

Most of the time, at least somebody has, in fact, heard of the writer. So by whom is this writer unknown, and for what reasons has their reputation been erased?

The South African writer Miriam Tlali – the first South African woman writer to publish a book in English - is a case in point.

Tlali’s novel Muriel at Metropolitan (about an office worker in apartheid Johannesburg) was banned when it was published in 1975 for its critical portrayal of white South Africans.

Tlali was subsequently ignored by her literary (almost entirely male) peers, dismissed as offering “reportage” rather than “art”. Yet since 2017, Tlali’s work has been celebrated.

The question of whether a writer is “known” or “unknown” is complex with many layers to consider, including the prejudices of racism and sexism. 

This book by South Africa’s most eminent historian, Charles van Onselen, tells the story of the night trains which brought poverty-stricken Mozambican men from Rossania Garcia on the Mozambique border to work as migrant labourers on the gold mines in Johannesburg between 1902 and 1955.

The men travelled in appalling conditions and were preyed on by petty criminals, con men, and corrupt officials. The night trains were a transport system run in partnership between the mining houses and the railways and designed to maximise profit at the expense of the health, well-being, and even the lives of the men it conveyed. 

At the end of their time in the mines, the trains sent the men back to Mozambique, often ill and broken and even insane after their experiences in the mines and in the trains. The story reflects South Africa’s evolving system of segregation and apartheid and the brutal logic… show more.