If you love reading, regard authors as heroes and enjoy sitting at pavement cafés and chatting to like-minded people while sipping something cold or hot depending on the weather, you should not miss this year’s Franschhoek Literary Festival from May 15 to 17.
Festival director Ann Donald says she has got some wonderful authors lined up, and she’s right: Deon Meyer (Cobra), John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, A History of Loneliness), Belinda Bauer (Blacklands), Lyndall Gordon (Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life, Divided Lives), Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (A Human Being Died That Night), Zelda la Grange (Good Morning, Mr Mandela), Charles van Onselen (Showdown at the Red Lion), Jonny Steinberg (The Number), Jonathan Jansen (How to Fix South African Schools), Finuala Dowling (Home-Making for the Down-at-Heart), Chris Higginson (The Dream House), Christopher Hope (Jimfish) and Darrel Bristow-Bovey (I Moved Your Cheese, One Midlife Crisis and a Speedo) – to mention only a few.
The programme came out this past week, to Donald’s “great relief”. “It’s been quite a struggle to fit people in in a way that works for them and the audience and the festival, but I think we’ve done it.”
Highlights include the inaugural André Brink Memorial Lecture to be given by Harry Garuba of UCT’s Centre for African Studies and English Department; actor Kurt Egelhof reading a selection of poems and passages from the memoirs of the late lamented Chris van Wyk (Shirley, Goodness and Mercy); and the Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlist announcement.
Here are some of the events that caught my eye:
• Charles van Onselen and Jonny Steinberg on stories of SA gangsters.
• Alison Lowry talking to Christopher Hope and Rehana Rossouw (What Will People Say?) about the challenges of writing true-to-life stories.
• Justin Fox (The Impossible Five) talking to Belinda Bauer, Imraan Coovadia (Tales of the Metric System) and Ivan Vladislavic (A Handful of Keys) about the books on their shelves.
• Jenny Crwys-Williams talking to Andrew Brown (Solace), Deon Meyer and police Major-General Jeremy Vearey about real v fictional policing.
Donald says the bookings are going well, and already the event titled “Just Julius”, which will see Dennis Davis speaking to Fiona Forde (Still An Inconvenient Youth), Richard Poplak and Kenny Kunene, is almost sold out.
Most events are R70. For more information go to www.flf.co.za. – Books Editor