Blogging Hiatus

Gentle Reader,

Some five years into the life of Afrika T, I now find myself unable to keep up with contributions at a level that I and you have come to expect from this blog. Partly this is because of other activities in responsible tourism (see example here, and another here), partly from other projects in sustainability (see examples here and here), and partly for reasons that are more personal.

I am certainly still active online and in responsible travel, so feel free to comment on existing posts here, to follow me on Twitter, and to note what I've been reading online via Delicious. I also hope to return to Afrika T, so am not bringing the blog to a halt, just declaring a hiatus of indefinite duration...

Thank you for your support over the years, and, if you're a newcomer to the site, may it still prove valuable.

Kind regards

Kurt

5 December 2011




Top Book Picks

So many people ask about books to read before they travel, or to carry with them as they travel. Here are my recommendations for the Responsible Traveller to southern Africa.

South Africa
  1. Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (Noel Mostert) – narrative non-fiction history
  2. Born in Soweto: Inside the Heart of South Africa (Heidi Holland) - narrative non-fiction 
  3. Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela) - autobiography
  4. The Covenant (James Michener) - narrative non-fiction history
  5. Borderline(William Dicey) - travel writing

Cape Town

Fiction
  1. Life and Times of Michael K (JM Coetzee) - literary classic
  2. Shark's Egg (Henrietta Rose-Innes) - Caine Prize winner
  3. Moxyland (Lauren Beukes)
  4. You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (Zoe Wicomb)
  5. Buckingham Palace, District Six: A Novel of Cape Town (Richard Rive)
  6. What Poets Need (Finuala Dowling)
  7. Love Themes for the Wilderness (Ashraf Jamal)
  8. Like Clockwork (Margie Orford)
  9. Coldsleep Lullaby(Andrew Brown)
  10. Devil's Peak: A Novel (Deon Meyer) - crime fiction
  11. Payback (Mike Nicol) - crime fiction
  12. Trespass (Dawn Garisch)
  13. Whiplash (Tracey Farren)
  14. Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona)
  15. Ice in the Lungs (Gerald Kraak)
  16. Mason & Dixon: A Novel (Thomas Pynchon)
  17. Garden of the Plagues (Russel Brownlee)
  18. Black Petals (Bryan Rostron)
  19. The Reluctant Passenger (Michiel Heyns)
  20. Skyline (Patricia Schonstein)

Non-Fiction
  1. Cape Town: Making of City (Nigel Worden et al) – history
  2. Cape Town in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated Social History (Vivian Bickford-Smith et al) – history
  3. A City Imagined: Cape Town and the Meanings of a Place (Stephen Watson, ed.) – anthology of writers' flash memoirs
  4. The Rocks and Mountains of Cape Town (John Compton) – natural history
  5. The Number: One Man's Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs (Jonny Steinberg) – non-fiction
  6. Sachs Street (Rayda Jacobs) - memoir
  7. Love and Courage: A Story of Insubordination (Pregs Govender) - memoir
  8. Forced to Grow (Sindiwe Magona) - autobiography

Poetry
  1. City in Words: An Anthology of Cape Town Poems (Gus Ferguson and Ingrid de Kok, eds.)
  2. The Other City: Selected Poems, 1977-1999 (Stephen Watson)


Some will not be available outside of South Africa, but check university libraries and used book stores if the links above don't do the trick.

Suggestions? Please send me an e-mail.



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