THE BOOKS
Already Out
ADD TO GOODREADS
From a Natal boarding school in the seventies and Soviet spies in London in the eighties to the 1995 Rugby World Cup and intrigue in the Union Buildings, Tales of the Metric System shows how ten days spread across four decades send tidal waves through the lives of ordinary and extraordinary South Africans alike.
Playwrights, politicians, philosophers, and thieves, all caught in their individual stories, burst from the pages of Imraan Coovadia’s Tales of the Metric System as it measures South Africa’s modern history in its own remarkable units of imagination.
Written in a style similar to David Mitchell's novels and Jennifer Egan's Visit From the Goon Squad!
Marrow Island by Alexis M. SmithADD TO GOODREADS
Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment. Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to be “ministering to the Earth.” There have been remarkable changes to the land at the colony’s homestead. Lucie’s experience as a journalist tells her there’s more to the Colony—and their charismatic leader-- than they want her to know, and that the astonishing success of their environmental remediation has come at great cost to the Colonists themselves. As she uncovers their secrets and methods, will Lucie endanger more than their mission? What price will she pay for the truth?
I've only heard really excellent things about this one!
Coming Out This Month
Coming Out This Month
The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir by Susan DaitchADD TO GOODREADS
Indiana Jones meets Italo Calvino in a masterful, absurdist blend of biting social satire, rollicking adventure, invented history and mythology.
A series of archeological expeditions unfolds through time, each one looking for the ruins of a fabled underground city-state that once flourished in a remote province near the border of present-day Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sealed off for centuries by seismic activity, Suolucidir beckons with the promise of plunder and the glory of discovery, fantasies as varied as the imaginations of her aspiring modern-day conquerors.
A satiric, post-colonial adventure story of mythic proportions, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir takes place against a background of actual events, in a part of the world with a particular historical relationship to Russia and the West. But though we are treated to visual "evidence" of its actual existence, Suolucidir remains a mystery, perhaps an invention of those who seek it, a place where history and identity are subject to revision, and the boundaries between East and West are anything but solid, reliable, or predictable.
Ok, this just sounds fun. It's got blurbs from some great authors!!
THE LINKS
From Panels: Beyond Bechdel: A Brief History of Queer Comics
New Yorker article on the ongoing importance of the true crime genre. There's certainly a resurgence lately, at least in the mainstream.
For anybody interested in the business of books, Here's everything you wanted to know about book sales written by Lincoln Michel.
And, from Tor: 100 African Writers of SFF - Part One: Nairobi. An amazing, in depth look at some great authors!!
What books did you hear about this week?