All last month my local beach was a wild zone after southeast trade winds tore across the peninsula. The tide line was strewn with dead cormorants, smashed gannets and broken seal pups that had succumbed to the choppy seas. I mention this natural mayhem because the cover of the book we've all been waiting for - the first ever South African anthology of crime fiction, Bad Company - shows another (wild in the feral sense) side of Cape Town. It depicts Table Bay with the ghostly harbour in the foreground and a bad moon rising.
Now Cape Town is one of those tourist destinations that the BBC (bless them) said was a must-see before you die. And it is a beautiful city what with its Table Mountain, white sandy beaches, good restaurants, winelands, and fairly relaxed attitude to most things. There is a flip side to this Cape Town, however. One that is grim and poverty stricken and dangerous to those who live on its gritty windblown flats. It is perhaps because of this contrast that Cape Town dominates our nascent crime fiction as the setting of choice. It is also where many of the thriller writers live although that's surely coincidental.
So putting Cape Town on the cover of Bad Company was a good idea. Because if anything - and from the little I've read of the stories - one thing the writers do is show up the disjunctions in what we like to call the Mother City. But the reach is further than that. As the book's editor, Joanne Hichens writes in her introduction: 'The crimes that the stories in this anthology revolve around are of the more personal kind, as opposed to crimes against humanity, or political crimes. And of the seventeen stories, guns feature in only around a third - which is interesting considering our out-of-control gun culture. Between these covers, there are all sorts of ways of killing.
Now Cape Town is one of those tourist destinations that the BBC (bless them) said was a must-see before you die. And it is a beautiful city what with its Table Mountain, white sandy beaches, good restaurants, winelands, and fairly relaxed attitude to most things. There is a flip side to this Cape Town, however. One that is grim and poverty stricken and dangerous to those who live on its gritty windblown flats. It is perhaps because of this contrast that Cape Town dominates our nascent crime fiction as the setting of choice. It is also where many of the thriller writers live although that's surely coincidental.So putting Cape Town on the cover of Bad Company was a good idea. Because if anything - and from the little I've read of the stories - one thing the writers do is show up the disjunctions in what we like to call the Mother City. But the reach is further than that. As the book's editor, Joanne Hichens writes in her introduction: 'The crimes that the stories in this anthology revolve around are of the more personal kind, as opposed to crimes against humanity, or political crimes. And of the seventeen stories, guns feature in only around a third - which is interesting considering our out-of-control gun culture. Between these covers, there are all sorts of ways of killing.
'A large number of the stories feature women and children as victims - which reflects the reality of the rampant abuse of women and children in our country.
'Several stories offer closure, which begs the question: is redemption still something we so desperately seek? On what level do we want things to work out? Although a selection of the stories feature capable police, a couple of them touch on apathy and corruption in the ranks of the cops, which rings only too true.
'And as our collective rainbow-nation culture - with our unique political and social history - has developed, the question bears asking: do these stories reflect unique tensions in our society? Some most certainly do.'
I'm pleased to report that most of the writers in the anthology are members of ITW. Which is why Hichens (and the publisher Pan Macmillan) were able to ask Lee Child to write a foreword. Which he's done and from which I'm going to quote as really that's all the endorsement this book needs. So here are his last few paragraphs:
'Those of us who love the genre love finding new stuff to read. And those of us who travel to promote our own books are always finding new stuff to read. My friend and fellow author David Hewson went to South Africa to support his excellent Nic Costa series, and emailed me from a hotel to rave about the great local stuff he was reading. He told me there was an anthology coming out - the book you are holding right now - and suggested that ITW get behind it. To help the local guys? No! Talent like this doesn't need help. The idea was simply to bring pleasure to our friends and members in America and Europe and Australia and the rest of the world by bringing them something they might not otherwise get a chance to see.
'And what a pleasure it will be. This is a sampler of current South African thriller fiction, featuring seventeen authors, some of whom you will know and others you won't - yet. Deon Meyer is probably the best-known internationally - and deservedly so - but he will have his work cut out to maintain that position based on the evidence here. The stories themselves are fascinating in the way that they see universal themes through a uniquely African lens. As everyone knows, South Africa's up-and-down history meant that much of its contemporary culture developed in isolation, but now it has half a generation that has been much more exposed to the world. The stories in this book reflect that evolution. Some resist the pull of American and British tradition only mildly; some subvert it wickedly; and some could have only been written in and about Africa. All are excellent.
'And all will influence the rest of us. Global exposure is a two-way street. This is not about authors in the rest of the world helping authors in South Africa. It's about the opposite, just as much. The angles and flavours and insights in these stories will enrich the great river of human narrative. They'll find their way into the mainstream and mix and merge and eventually come back again from unpredictable directions.
'As well they should. There was a certain election in America in November 2008 that reminded the world that we don't know Africa as well as we should, and that it has plenty of good stuff yet to explore. If you're a reader, then this anthology is as good a place to start as any.'
Bad Company is only available in South Africa but there are three secure online sites you can buy from: Exclusive Books, Kalahari.net and Loot.
During this month I'm off at a literary festival in Durban called the Time of the Writer - the first occasion in the festival's 12 years that it'll be featuring a crime thriller panel (including Deon Meyer, Margie Orford and Angela Makholwa). More about this in April. SA crime fiction matters, I feel, are definitely looking up.
'Several stories offer closure, which begs the question: is redemption still something we so desperately seek? On what level do we want things to work out? Although a selection of the stories feature capable police, a couple of them touch on apathy and corruption in the ranks of the cops, which rings only too true.
'And as our collective rainbow-nation culture - with our unique political and social history - has developed, the question bears asking: do these stories reflect unique tensions in our society? Some most certainly do.'
I'm pleased to report that most of the writers in the anthology are members of ITW. Which is why Hichens (and the publisher Pan Macmillan) were able to ask Lee Child to write a foreword. Which he's done and from which I'm going to quote as really that's all the endorsement this book needs. So here are his last few paragraphs:
'Those of us who love the genre love finding new stuff to read. And those of us who travel to promote our own books are always finding new stuff to read. My friend and fellow author David Hewson went to South Africa to support his excellent Nic Costa series, and emailed me from a hotel to rave about the great local stuff he was reading. He told me there was an anthology coming out - the book you are holding right now - and suggested that ITW get behind it. To help the local guys? No! Talent like this doesn't need help. The idea was simply to bring pleasure to our friends and members in America and Europe and Australia and the rest of the world by bringing them something they might not otherwise get a chance to see.'And what a pleasure it will be. This is a sampler of current South African thriller fiction, featuring seventeen authors, some of whom you will know and others you won't - yet. Deon Meyer is probably the best-known internationally - and deservedly so - but he will have his work cut out to maintain that position based on the evidence here. The stories themselves are fascinating in the way that they see universal themes through a uniquely African lens. As everyone knows, South Africa's up-and-down history meant that much of its contemporary culture developed in isolation, but now it has half a generation that has been much more exposed to the world. The stories in this book reflect that evolution. Some resist the pull of American and British tradition only mildly; some subvert it wickedly; and some could have only been written in and about Africa. All are excellent.
'And all will influence the rest of us. Global exposure is a two-way street. This is not about authors in the rest of the world helping authors in South Africa. It's about the opposite, just as much. The angles and flavours and insights in these stories will enrich the great river of human narrative. They'll find their way into the mainstream and mix and merge and eventually come back again from unpredictable directions.
'As well they should. There was a certain election in America in November 2008 that reminded the world that we don't know Africa as well as we should, and that it has plenty of good stuff yet to explore. If you're a reader, then this anthology is as good a place to start as any.'
Bad Company is only available in South Africa but there are three secure online sites you can buy from: Exclusive Books, Kalahari.net and Loot.
During this month I'm off at a literary festival in Durban called the Time of the Writer - the first occasion in the festival's 12 years that it'll be featuring a crime thriller panel (including Deon Meyer, Margie Orford and Angela Makholwa). More about this in April. SA crime fiction matters, I feel, are definitely looking up.ITW International Committee Chair for South Africa, Mike Nicol, is a journalist and writer and now a hard-core crime fiction addict. He's published two crime novels - Payback and Out to Score (a co-authorship), and is a founder of the blog Crime Beat. He lives on Cape Town?s peninsula, up a mountain, in the teeth of the wind.
