I like the title of Kobus Moolman’s recent collection of poetry, Separating the Seas. The turmoil in the words encouraged me to do this review. For as I grow older and begin to understand myself more, I find contentment in chaos and in storms. I am impatient with light which I find false. The dark principle to me explains everything, including absurdity, absence and loss. I know now that humans are exceedingly weak. Poets must deal with the rising complexities in human language with the understanding that life is in its most demoralizing and absurd stages . And therein lies the meaning in the struggle to which Kobus Moolman refers: a search for man’s elusive sanity.

There’s a perceptive urgency in these finely crafted poems to use language to undo life’s persistent puzzles:

The mist comes in

on the slough of the sea.

The sea appears

out of the mist in scraps.

There is no border

to the wound all around,

and the thinning of the grey

far away into doubt.

(“Confirmation”)

Published by Penguin.

This remarkably wise, prize-winning first novel is about power.  Although the setting is deliberately not identifiable (like Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians), South African readers will find the kind of state power that Dovey depicts historically all too recognizable: it is illegitimate, brutal, and lacking gravitas or authority.   The “earthly trappings … of people in power” (136) are everywhere, but those who exercise or resist power are presented in their private lives, stripped to their defecating, copulating and ruminating selves.  And yet there is a beauty and freshness in the writing that kept me engrossed.  The local effects are often delicate and subtle but they bear strongly on the novel’s themes, as when one woman remembers the cowries in her collection being “smooth and tight as a baby’s fist” (128). 

The new novel recently published by Michael Cawood Green, entitled For the Sake of Silence, has considerably enriched the literary-historical landscape of Durban. The signal achievement of this book is the breathe of life it imparts to the former monastery of Mariannhill, by relating the compelling narrative of how the institution was established by a community of silent, contemplative Trappist monks in late 1882.  

For most residents of Durban, Mariannhill occupies a somewhat enigmatic space in the cultural milieu of the city, and few people know anything of the background behind the beautiful collection of buildings located near the highway on the way out of town. By means of exhaustive research, Michael Green has created a broad portrait of the Trappist endeavour, littered with rich details of the monks’ lives and the various motives that inspired them. 

Zahrah the Windseeker is a tale of friendship, self-realisation, courage and adventure. Zahrah, the protagonist, has special powers of which she is at first ashamed. Yet when she has to travel into the forbidden jungle in search of an antidote to save her best friend's life, Zahrah discovers and embraces the strength and courage which lie within her.

The book, a work of magic realism, is remarkable in its originality and imagination. The author skillfully explores local myths about dada children, talking animals and the supernatural realm. The result is a captivating piece of fiction which both adults and children will appreciate.