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An interesting late-morning event was a panel discussion on South African short fiction by Liesl Jobson, Arja Salafranca, Dave Chislett, Motjidibane Bapela, Jane Bennett and Allan Kolski Horwitz, which was followed by the launch of Jobson’s flash fiction collection 100 Papers and Horwitz’s “dream parables” Out of the Wreckage, both published by Botsotso.

 

Throughout the day, in keeping with the focus on children’s literature, there were Peter Rabbits and Miffys wandering around the hall. You could meet Spiderman at the Reader’s Den stand and receive a free comic, attend discussions on early reading for toddlers and child psychology, or receive nutritional advice for children.

 

There was also a discussion about the newly published novel Whiplash by Tracey Farren. An often violent account of prostitution in Cape Town, the novel was rejected by several commercial publishers as being too brutal, before finding a home with recently established independent publisher Modjaji Books. Sales look promising and distribution in the UK and Australia is already being examined. This once again illustrates the willingness and commitment of independent publishers in South Africa to take risks with new and often controversial work.

 

There have been quite a few historical works and political biographies published in South Africa recently. We have seen the two biographies of President Thabo Mbeki, one of Cyril Ramaphosa, plus more recently Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe, published by Penguin SA. A new historical work, The Jews in South Africa, by Milton Shain and Richard Mendolsohn, and published by Jonathan Ball, was discussed at the Dalro literary forum in the exhibition hall. Going back to the first Jewish settlers in South Africa in the 19^th century, this work traces the lives of both public figures and the authors’ families, and studies the experiences of a people often marginalised in South African society well into the 1960s and ignored in local historical works until the revisionist histories of the 1970s.

 

My day was rounded off with a vibrant talk by Book Southern Africa’s Ben Williams, who gave a rewarding presentation on Books and Blogs: Creating Effective Online PR. He provided advice on how to try to maximise online book sales, and just as importantly reminded us that internet users have progressed from being passive recipients of information to active originators of information.

 

On closing, I should add that while chatting with a number of exhibitors throughout the day,  several said that they felt there was something missing from the book fair this year, that there was a sense of flatness and lack of energy. One exhibitor said that part of the problem was that the fair should be a trade show for publishers, printers and distributors, and not a book-selling market for the public.