Chris Roper has written a detailed account of the Books on the Bay launch event. The full article requires a BL Premium subscription to view.
Some of the region’s top writers will appear at the inaugural Books on the Bay festival in Simon’s Town next month. Their works present us with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of our current condition — but also some sense of goodness in a world seemingly gone bad.
The weather in Cape Town last Friday was hot and sticky, with my car’s temperature gauge showing 34ºC in the late afternoon. Perhaps not ideal conditions in which to squeeze cheek to buttock into the church of St Francis of Assisi in Simon’s Town for the opening of the inaugural Books on the Bay literary festival. The purgatory of those torture devices known to Christians as pews, and the struggle to remain absolutely still while breathing shallowly through your mouth, in case you break into a heavy sweat, added a quality of endurance to the event. …