Verdict: carrot
One of South Africa’s most lauded non-fiction writers has high praise for new entrant on the scene Jacob Dlamini:
At the beginning of his new book, Native Nostalgia, Jacob Dlamini tells us that he is going to do something audacious, perhaps even dangerous: he is going to get nostalgic about his childhood. Why is that audacious, you may ask. Well, because Dlamini grew up in Katlehong, an apartheid township, and those who wax nostalgic about such places risk being condemned as “reactionaries or even apologists for apartheid”.
Native Nostalgia proceeds nonetheless, and the world it brings forth is delightful. Dlamini is a humdinger of a talent. He takes from his childhood a great jumble of objects – the radio that sits in his mother’s kitchen, the rats that infest the streets, the indigenous first names of the fancy, middle-class kids – and, almost at will, it seems, he makes them play. Into his life his mother’s radio brings a bloated ensemble of sounds, stories and ideas – the death of Marvin Gaye, the stubborn persistence of Gerrie Coetzee, the white, Afrikaans-speaking heavy weight world champion supported to the hilt by blacks. It is from Radio Zulu that the seeds of Dlamini’s political awaking come; there is an announcer who prefaces each piece of news with the words Bathi ngithi – “They say I must say this”.
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February 9th, 2010 @10:52 #
Hey, read this review. It's one of those gems that does both the reviewer and the reviewee credit -- fine writer writing about fine writing.