The Books Page
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This site is the work of Vivien Horler, former Books Editor of the Cape Argus in Cape Town.
The Books Page
2d ago
These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first four – Exit Wounds, There are Rivers in the Sky, How to Say Babylon, and The Dark Wives, are part of a list of Exclusive Books’s top reads for September. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler Exit ..read more
The Books Page
6d ago
Review: Archie Henderson Beirut Station: Two lives of a spy, by Paul Vidich (Pegasus/No Exit Press) With the devastation in Gaza and the prospect of another war breaking out in Lebanon (did the last one ever end?), this novel seemed like a good idea – if it could explain some of the complexities of Middle ..read more
The Books Page
2w ago
Review: Vivien Horler The Truth about Cape Slavery – The foundations of colonial South Africa, by Patric Tariq Mellet (Tafelberg) In 1808 an enslaved man, Louis van Mauritius, led an armed uprising of 346 fellow enslaved and Khoe farm labourers from the Malmesbury, Swartland and Durbanville districts. It took them three days to get to ..read more
The Books Page
3w ago
Review: Vivien Horler Single Minded, a novel, by Marina Auer (Kwela) The tagline on the cover is: “Welcome to Eden [State Hospital]. Good luck getting out alive.” Part 1 is titled: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” You get the picture. It is January 2001and anaesthetist Murphy Meyer arrives at the hospital outside Pietermaritzburg ..read more
The Books Page
1M ago
Review: Vivien Horler A Short Life – a novel, by Nicky Greenwall (Penguin Random House) I like thrillers set in Cape Town, as long as the author doesn’t take too many chances – like the book I read a year or two ago in which a character caught a train from Bakoven. Eish. This one ..read more
The Books Page
1M ago
These are among the respectable haul of books that landed on my desk this month. The first three – Irascible Genius by Kevin van Wyk, Hot Tea and Apricots by Kim Ballantine, and The Tea Merchant by Jackie Phamotse, are among Exclusive Books’s top reads for the month. A fourth novel, A Short Life by ..read more
The Books Page
1M ago
Review: Vivien Horler A Calamity of Souls, by David Baldacci (Macmillan) It is always a pleasure to come across a hefty courtroom drama, well plotted and well written. A good story to immerse yourself in. A Calamity of Souls is one of those. And you don’t have to take my word for it – there ..read more
The Books Page
1M ago
Review: Vivien Horler The Bitterness of Olives, by Andrew Brown (Karavan Press) For the author the situation must be bitter-sweet. His seventh novel, published in 2023, is about Gaza and Israel and the situation in the Middle East. It is set during the third intifada – the time of the (first?) Trump administration, the European ..read more
The Books Page
1M ago
Review: Vivien Horler You are Here, by Davied Nicholls (Sceptre/ Jonathan Ball) After you’ve read the first two chapters you know where this novel is going. Marnie is a divorced copy editor in her late 30s who works from her London home. She doesn’t get out much. But she never thought, when she contemplated her ..read more
The Books Page
2M ago
Review: Vivien Horler Quiet Time with the President – A doctor’s story about learning to listen, by Peter Friedland with Jill Margo (Jonathan Ball Publishers) With so much written about Nelson Mandela in books and the media, it can be hard to find something new. But there are great new anecdotes – certainly new to ..read more