In the February / March 2020 issue of Creative Feel, we review Borderline, Find Me, and Paper Tiger, three books that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat.
Borderline | By Marita van der Vyver | Publisher: Penguin Random House SA | ISBN: 9781485903819
A letter among her deceased ex-husband’s belongings rips open Theresa’s world. For years she has turned her back on Theo, a man who spent the last two decades of his life institutionalised, and on their shared past in a country where teenage boys were conscripted to fight on ‘the Border’ in a war that those back home knew little about. Least of all Theresa, who spent her days dreaming of discos and first kisses.
Realising that the letter was written by a Cuban soldier and addressed to his child – who, if still alive, would be at least 40 years old – Theresa heads for Cuba: to search for the soldier’s child, to deliver the letter, to atone in some way for Theo’s deeds and for her own ignorance.
In sultry Cuba, amid its picturesque 1950s cars and the fragrant smoke of its cigars, Theresa’s search connects her intimately with those branded ‘the enemy’ during the war in Angola as she begins to unravel what growing up in the South Africa of that time really meant.
Marita van der Vyver was born in Cape Town and holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Stellenbosch. She published three novels for adolescents before her first adult novel, Griet skryf ‘n sprokie, became a best-seller, winning the M-Net, Eugène Marais and ATKV Prizes in 1992.
Find Me | By André Aciman | Publisher: Faber & Faber | ISBN: 9780571356829
In this spellbinding new exploration of the varieties of love, the author of Call Me by Your Name lets us back into his characters’ lives years after their first meeting.
In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train upends Sami’s visit and changes his life forever.
Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.
André Aciman is the author of Eight White Nights, Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, False Papers, Alibis, and Harvard Square, and the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and lives with his wife in Manhattan.
Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the nuances of emotion that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the world of one of our greatest contemporary romances to show us that in fact true love never dies.
Paper Tiger: Iqbal Survé and the downfall of Independent Newspapers | By Alide Dasnois and Chris Whitfield | Publisher: Tafelberg | ISBN: 9780624087175
When Iqbal Survé fired Cape Times editor Alide Dasnois the day after Nelson Mandela’s death, a storm engulfed Independent Newspapers. Many pointed to a Cape Times story about one of Survé’s firms as the real reason for his ire. In the months that followed, newsrooms were torn apart by suspicion, recrimination and what many believed was a witch hunt to expel those not prepared to toady to the owner. Veteran journalists Dasnois and Chris Whitfield tell the real inside story.
Alide Dasnois is the former editor of the Cape Times and Business Report. She has a master’s degree in development economics from the Sorbonne, and is part-time associate editor at GroundUp news agency based in Cape Town.
Veteran journalist Chris Whitfield is the former editor of the Cape Times, Cape Argus and Weekend Argus, and the former editor-in-chief of Independent Newspapers Cape. His first book was On Your Bike: Tips & Trails for MTB Riders.
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