Michael - a respected and haunted South African corporate lawyer - is the narrator of Rusty Bell, a sweeping, intimate, and intricate exploration of the plurality and mystery of things: love, grief, fate, lust, but, most of all, life. Rusty Bell delves into head-cracking and bruising questions in this coming-of- and against-age story; told with humor, beauty, and calculated rage. Brimming with delicacy and authorial thunder, this part-campus novel and part-philosophical epistle is one man's rebellion against 'life as we know it.' Rusty Bell is an appallingly wise examination of the perils of being human, written by author Nthikeng Mohlele, who knows the beauty and savagery of words. *** "'Rusty Bell' is author Nthikeng Mohlele's third novel and continues to document this Johannesburg, South African author as a master storyteller rich with imagination and able to deftly craft truly recognizable characters and offering his readers with a truly engaging novel that is as entertaining as it is memorable. Very highly recommended for personal reading lists and community libraries..." -- Midwest Book Review, MBR Bookwatch, February 2015 ***[South African Nthikeng Mohlele is the author of Small Things (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press - ISBN 978 1 86914 245 2 - 2013). Nthikeng Mohlele was listed by Bloomsbury Publishing, Hay Festival, and Rainbow Book Club as among the 39 most promising authors under the age of 40 from sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora.] [Subject: Adult Fiction]
In this haunting tale of love and learning, the existential chaos of a life ravaged by circumstance takes on a rhythm of its own, one bound by loss and loneliness, but also an intelligent awareness of self. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes brutal, occasionally funny and infuriating, a journalist-comrade-lover caught up in the shade and shadow of politics and social injustice faces treachery and betrayal on every level. Set against the backdrop of a cityscape that taunts and tantalises, this is where love fails and passion wanes, “where suffering has no meaning”, where an individual escapes death only to find himself confronted with choices wrought by remorse and retribution, by conscience and character. And yet, with all trauma, there is a distinct musicality to the lyrical unpacking that follows a string of small things ...
Bantubonke is an accomplished and revered jazz trumpeter, composer and band leader in decline – an absent present and inadequate spouse. He lives for art at the expense of all else, an imbalance that derails his life and propels him to the brink of madness and despair. A story of direct and implied betrayals, Illumination is an unrelenting study of possession and loss, of the beauty and uncertainty of love, of the dangers and intrusions of fame.
Bantubonke is an accomplished and revered jazz trumpeter, composer and band leader in decline – an absent present and inadequate spouse. He lives for art at the expense of all else, an imbalance that derails his life and propels him to the brink of madness and despair. A story of direct and implied betrayals, Illumination is an unrelenting study of possession and loss, of the beauty and uncertainty of love, of the dangers and intrusions of fame.
Those in the know claim Michael K disembarked from a diesel-smoke-spewing truck one overcast morning, looked around, and without missing a beat, chose a spot where he set down a small bucket (red, burnt and disfigured) that contained an assortment of seedlings, some fisherman's twine and a rudimentary gardening tool - probably self-made.' How is it that a character from literary fiction can so alter the landscapes he touches, even as he - in his self-imposed isolation - seeks to avoid them? How is it that Michael K, bewildered and bewildering, can remain so fragile yet so present, so imposing without attempting to be so? In this response to JM Coetzee's classic masterpiece, Life & Times of Michael K, Nthikeng Mohlele dabbles in the artistic and speculative in a unique attempt to unpack the dazed and disconnected world of the title character, his solitary ways, his inventiveness, but also to show how astutely Michael K holds up a mirror to those whose paths he inadvertently crosses. Michael K explores the weight of history and of conscience, thus wrestling the character from the confines of literary creation to the frontiers of artistic timelessness.
Thoughtful, eccentric and besieged by the erotic and the sensual, the profane and the redemptive, Milton thinks and writes on pleasure as it is both experienced and imagined. Drawn against the canvas of wartime Europe and modern-day Cape Town, South Africa, Milton sacrifices all for glimpses into the secrets and deceptions of pleasure - and how powerless those apparent insights are in the vast scale of life in its glory and absurdity."--Back cover.
This will help us customize your experience to showcase the most relevant content to your age group
Please select from below
Login
Not registered?
Sign up
Already registered?
Success – Your message will goes here
We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.