Chant of the Doves is Stephen Coan’s first collection of poetry. And I hope that it will be the first of many. It is a slim, pocket-sized collection, comprising approximately seventy short untitled poems. A large number of these are haiku poems – although not in the strict ninth-century classical Chinese style, but rather more loose and open-ended.

Coan has made a name for himself as feature writer at Pietermaritzburg’s daily newspaper, The Witness (where he is assistant editor), and also as a researcher on the work of H. Rider Haggard. In 2000 he edited for first-time publication, Haggard’s account of his 1914 visit to southern Africa, Diary of an African Journey. And in 2007 he edited (with Alfred Tella), Mameena and Other Plays: the Complete Dramatic Works of H. Rider Haggard.

Published by Penguin.

It is no easy task to create an entirely new place from scratch. Tom Eaton, in his new novel The Wading, has done just that, and done it well.

Cape Formosa is a small island separated from the Mainland by a shallow channel known as the Wading. To some the island is a tropical haven, a place to escape the real world; to others, a prison. The novel begins just as the regular supply aircraft is damaged in a storm, cutting off the island from their one source of contact with the Mainland, and introducing the pilot and his granddaughter to the regular inhabitants of the Cape. Claudette, the granddaughter, is a strangely mature and whimsical child, who holds sway over the two main characters in the book – Muller and Bee.

There is a strong sense of foreboding throughout The Wading, a sense that although things look quite peaceful and staid on the surface, they are about to erupt, and violently. This is a promise that is never quite kept.

Tom Eaton

I often start bits of fiction at the end: an image or a more complete climax sticks with me for a few weeks or months, and then I try to work out how to arrive at that final image. With The Wading I had an image and a conclusion in mind, a particular fate for Muller (one of the two main characters). That conclusion disappeared during the rewrite of the novel, which improved it, but I was happy with the process up to that point, so the rest stayed.

As for the tone and mood as a whole, I've always enjoyed quiet decay, when the natural world takes back spaces that have been abandoned by people. 

Cape Formosa was more or less intact in my mind from the outset. It's a conglomeration of many places - the Overberg, images I've seen of the Caribbean, parts of South America, and perhaps the South Pacific. I've always associated those places with a comforting decay, where people make do but are ultimately being quietly shunted to the sideline, and where each summer finds the beaches an inch further inland, and the weeds a foot taller.