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Top 10 books of the year

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA Dec 15 2009 00:00

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Some books are lazy, languid affairs and some are page-turners -- forcing you to finish them in one go. We asked our book critics, Darryl Accone and Percy Zvomuya, for their top 10 reads of the year.

Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution
Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui and Moisés Sío Wong
(Pathfinder Press)
Even more fascinating than its title and subtitle suggest, because all three generals have much to say about the war against the apartheid army in Angola, and the decisive Angolan and Cuban victory at Cuito Cuanavale, which ultimately brought the National Party to the negotiating table. Chui headed the 90th Tank Brigade in Malanje, and lost a leg when his vehicle hit an anti-tank mine in northern Angola.
-- Darryl Accone

The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolano
(Picador)
Literature as life: Bolano and his characters live to write in this compelling and unforgettable portrait of the pursuit of literature, and unflinching statement of aesthetic belief.
-- Darryl Accone

The Cry of the Sloth
Sam Savage
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
The epistolary novel steps into the delightfully entangled and disrupted world of small-town dreamer Andrew Whittaker, landlord, not very handyman, and quixotic editor of an independent literary journal that isn’t.
-- Darryl Accone

Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics
Jonathan Wilson
(Orion)
Art and artifice, stratagems and sleight-of-feet: they’re all here in this page-turner on the philosophy and praxis of the great thinker-coaches and teams. Essential reading to understand better what really happens during a football game.
-- Darryl Accone

Small Memories: A Memoir
José Saramago
(Harvill Secker)
The Master of Lisbon shows the grandeur of small things recollected in this refulgent memoir of the child, boy and youth from Azinhaga who became the man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.
-- Darryl Accone

The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
(Faber and Faber)
The Master of Istanbul adopts a simple declarative style in this story of love gained yet thwarted, requited but denied. These entanglements of heart and soul are told in prose the more affecting for its uncharacteristic directness.
-- Darryl Accone

2666
Roberto Bolano
(Picador)
The best novel I read this year.The New York Times said the 1000 page tome is "a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form". Finish and klaar.
-- Percy Zvomuya

CONTINUES BELOW

Amulet
Roberto Bolano
(Picador)
Narrator Auxilio Lacouture's frank and often humourous reminiscences about Mexico City's poetry scene from a university toilet under a military siege.
-- Percy Zvomuya

Summertime
JM Coetzee
(Harvill Secker)
The master, John Maxwell Coetzee, is dead and an English biographer is interviewing people who knew him. The Booker shortlisted narrative is Coetzee in his wickedly inventive mode, flagellating the self and his Afrikaaner kinsfolk.
-- Percy Zvomuya

A Man Who is Not A Man
Thando Mgqolozana
(University of Kwazulu Natal Press)
Mgqolozana is perhaps South Africa's most significant new writer from 2009.The moving novel is about a botched circumcision. In the narrative Mgqolozana portrays with tenderness and craft a ritual that's eating up boys it was supposed to make into men.
-- Percy Zvomuya

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Summertime by JM Coetzee................. I just couldn't put it down, He is a Genius

M Gomez on December 15, 2009, 9:10 am

... "Outliers - the story of success" by Malcolm Gladwell, is this 2009's recommended read for me... looks like you were only interested in Novels and Biographies to make your list sort-of

Z B on December 16, 2009, 1:38 am

@M Gomez, No doubt, JM is the master...@ZB Read a couple of chapters from Gladwell, liked them. Must look out for it.

percy z on December 17, 2009, 10:27 am

Botched circumcision!!! That caught my attention. I will surely read that book to search for anything new that Thando has brought up, if not the same Mission prejudiced response to African traditions, which now are being downplayed by the almighty Western media and education. In 1991 City Press carried Sophie Tema's article against circumcision, and The Star added the fire. I responded in an article called "consciousness for the seemingly conscious" published in Classic, a magazine of the African Writers Association. Revealed through such tradition-blind articles and books is their loyalty to Western articulations. i look forward to reading the book

Chimwala Guta on December 31, 2009, 8:09 am

You missed out an important local book called Pop-splat, by Ian Martin.

It's a thriller and social satire that satirises South Africa's sick society, dealing with everything from corrupt police to pseudo art critics.

The story is deceptively simple: a wealthy businessman (a la Brett Kebble) is murdered in a 'hijacking'. It's then up to the son to track down the killers. The book ends in a family-murder style bloodbath that would make Quentin Tarantino blush.

In short, a page-turner thriller with lots of local flavour as well as some clever ideas.

More info at www.pop-splat.co.za

Doug Shogun on May 18, 2010, 3:34 pm