Julia Denny-Dimitriou

The book that affected me most has to be The Book of Jacob — a journey into parenthood by Lisa Lazarus and Greg Fried. It was painful but cathartic to read about this couple’s struggles as they navigated the treacherous waters of new parenthood. Like many, they were completely unprepared for the storm they sailed into when they had their son, Jacob. A courageous and beautifully written book.

I do sometimes get a chance to read works I want to read, as opposed to those I have to read. One is A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. I laughed so hard in places that my husband came to find out if I’d finally gone completely loony. I wasn’t brave enough to tell him that the eccentric main character reminded me a lot of my father-in- law.

My final choice goes to The Virus, Vitamins & Vegetables: The South African HIV/AIDS Mystery edited by Kerry Cullinan and Anso Thom. I still believe this should be mandatory reading for everyone, and not just because it’s about probably the single biggest problem this country faces. It also showed how the Mbeki-Tshabalala-Msimang era led us to where we are now. Another government is now in power and would do well to read this book as a precaution against once more leading us somewhere we won’t want to be in future.

Christopher Merrett

Absolutely no contest: Bill Johnson’s South Africa’s Brave New World is a masterpiece of political analysis written with the verve of a highly skilled journalist. His conclusions are sometimes brutal, but they go to the very heart of the burdens of the past and the current rottenness of the state. We ignore at our peril his conclusion that a successful South Africa has to be truly multiracial.

The richness of writing on South African politics is emphasised by Pippa Green’s biography of Trevor Manuel, Choice Not Fate. A model of its kind, it provides a superb balance between personal story and contextual history. Manuel emerges from these pages as a politician of ability with real leadership qualities. Above all, Green’s book is an antidote to the sterility of current demographic obsession.

Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française is a beautifully crafted novel, produced in extraordinary circumstances, of two well-balanced parts. The first traces the experiences of a number of Parisians, of varying likeability, fleeing from the invading Germans in 1940. The second describes a rural community under occupation. But the poignancy of parts of the novel cannot match the fate of the author. She died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz in August 1942.

Janet van Eeden

Hamilton Wende’s laudable House of War is first on my list. Wende has woven a compelling fictional story about one man’s quest for the secret diaries of Alexander the Great. Wende’s actual experiences as a journalist in war-torn Afghanistan give the novel authenticity and substance. House of War is a fascinating exploration of the past and present with additional flashbacks to the predemocratic Rhodesian bush war. I highly recommended this fascinating novel.

An American’s take on the African continent is We are All Zimbabweans Now by James Kilgore. Kilgore was a militant activist in the United States in the seventies who escaped the authorities for 20 years by living in exile in Africa. When he was finally incarcerated, he wrote this novel, based strongly on his experiences in post- liberation Zimbabwe. It’s an excellent portrayal of one man’s journey from starry-eyed idealism and hero worship to disappointed cynicism as the flaws of the ruling party reveal themselves. It’s a highly entertaining and informative read.

Finally, from South Africa is the superbly researched novel, The Double Crown, by Marie Heese. Heese recreates the imagined life of the only Egyptian female king, Hapshepsut, who was the Pharaoh of both upper and lower Egypt over 3 500 years ago. All records of her 20-year reign were obliterated by her jealous stepson and only a chance discovery by archaeologists in 1820 confirmed her existence. I loved this novel, which brought to life vividly the world of Egypt and the circumstances of Hapshepsut’s reign.

Moira Lovell

Of the books I have reviewed this year, the most impressive is J. M. Coetzee’s fictionalised memoir, Summertime, in which a fictive biographer, researching the years 1972- 1977 in the life of the late (although of course very much alive and writing) Coetzee, conducts interviews with five people who knew him at the given time and who are, essentially, disparaging about him, declaring him, inter alia, haughty, cold, sexless and uncertain of self. The work is a tour de force.

In honour of the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Ruth Padel, accomplished British poet and the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, has published the engaging, accessible and frequently deeply moving Darwin, A Life in Poems. Detailing Darwin’s fascinating — and often fraught — life, the poems integrate quotations from letters and Darwin’s own writings to produce an informative and skilful biography.

Although autobiography (except in the hands of the cerebrally athletic Coetzee) tends to be inescapably self- indulgent, André Brink’s A Fork in the Road is an absorbing account of the influences and experiences that have shaped both man and writer. He reflects on the writing imperative and on his evolution as a writer of conscience in a troubled South Africa. Since words have weight and writers, responsibility, Brink determines that silence is anathema.

Stephen Coan

Lliya Troyanov’s The Collector of Worlds provides an oblique view of Richard Burton, the 19th-century explorer, translator, writer, soldier and Orientalist, featuring his exploits in India, Arabia (including his trip to Mecca) and Africa, through the eyes of his servants. It’s a brilliant device that enables Troyanov to illuminate the cultures and places that fascinated Burton, as well as providing a novel perspective on this larger-than-life character.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (first published in 1987 but reissued recently as a Penguin Modern Classic) is the story of a lifelong friendship between two couples who meet during the Depression years. Imagine Scott Fitzgerald crossed with Richard Ford. Stegner’s work remains largely unknown outside the U.S. Pity. This is a masterpiece.

A Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears is set in Provence and fields three characters placed at key moments in European history — the decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the advent of the Black Death in the 14th, and the years leading up to World War 2. The barbarians are at the gate and each character grapples with the dilemma of how to maintain civilised values faced with a new order. A novel of ideas that’s also a great love story.

Stephanie Alexander

Lustrum is the second part of Robert Harris’s fictional biography of the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, as narrated by Tiro, his secretary, the real character responsible for the verbatim transcripts of Cicero’s speeches. The book opens in 63 BC, with Cicero riding high as consul, but soon having to deal with the machinations and passions of the ruthless and power-hungry, including Julius Caesar, the psychopathic Catilina and the scheming, greedy Clodius. As in the earlier Imperium, Harris displays a confident grasp of the period, and also a sure — and tender — understanding of the human weaknesses that lead to sorrow and tragedy.

Aravind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations presents a portrait of eighties’ India as expressed in the lives of ordinary, but all very different, inhabitants of a fictional “everytown”, Kittur. High-caste, low-caste, wealthy, poverty-stricken, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, politically rabid or ignorant — all are here, presented lightly, yet without any of the quaint whimsy often used to blur grim Indian realities for Western readers.

Last choice is a reread, a 2004 Vintage Books reprint of Harper Lee’s 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Everyone should own and reread this regularly, not just because its examination of race and class, hypocrisy and prejudice in the Deep South of the thirties is important, but for the beauty and simplicity of the writing, the warmth, kindliness, honesty, humour and humanity. To read it is to refresh the soul.

Yves Vanderhaeghen

The Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who played with Fire, The Girl who kicked the Hornet’s Nest) by Stieg Larsson was the revelation of the year. Each book is as good as the other, and they took about a week to devour. In these three novels (or one extended thriller if you wish) about a somewhat dysfunctional heroine and an investigative journalist who expose corruption and abuse of power in all echelons of Swedish society, Larsson portrays a society which is enviably open, in spite of the seething undercurrents of prejudice and crime. Don’t go out and buy just one; stump up for all three at once.

Technically, I’ve already listed my three best reads, but Born to Run by Christopher McDougall was another stand-out book. It convincingly and entertainingly argues that humans owe their survival to their ability to run long distances (so there you go Comrades runners), and marries running lore, anthropology, science and travel as the author conducts a quest to find out if there is a breed of perfect runner. He finds them in the form of the Tarahumara tribe in the inhospitable mountains of Mexico, barefoot runners of prodigious talent and endurance. A brilliant read for runners and others.