Rachel Marcus has a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg, or rather Rachel Marcus HAD a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg – right up until she got fired …
Forced to sell everything she owns and leave Joburg in a hurry, Rachel moves to New York City where she plans to make a fabulous life for herself and prove to everyone back home that she’s not a complete disaster. Except that the only job she can find is at a crap advertising agency, with a hippie freak for a boss and an alcoholic drug addict for an art director. And the only apartment she can afford is the world’s smallest cockroach-infested rat trap. In fact, the only upside to her new life in the Big Apple is her new best friend – her frustratingly petite neighbour, Sue.
However, just when things seem to be going from bad to worse Rachel meets the oh-so delicious Jerrod Craig. And not only does Jerrod have all his own teeth but he is also Creative Group Head at one of the biggest advertising agencies in New York. Suddenly it looks like Rachel’s life might just be coming together – a handsome boyfriend with all the right connections can put a silver lining on any cloud. Now all she needs is that cup of tea…
Event Details
Date: Thursday, 25 March 2010
Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
Venue: Exclusive Books Constantia Village, Spaanschemat Road Constantia
In A Million Miles from Normal, Rachel Marcus has a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg, or rather Rachel Marcus HAD a great life and an amazing job as a top copywriter at an advertising agency in Johannesburg – right up until she got fired …
Forced to sell everything she owns and leave Joburg in a hurry, Rachel moves to New York City where she plans to make a fabulous life for herself and prove to everyone back home that she’s not a complete disaster. Except that the only job she can find is at a crap advertising agency, with a hippie freak for a boss and an alcoholic drug addict for an art director. And the only apartment she can afford is the world’s smallest cockroach-infested rat trap. In fact, the only upside to her new life in the Big Apple is her new best friend – her frustratingly petite neighbour, Sue.
However, just when things seem to be going from bad to worse Rachel meets the oh-so delicious Jerrod Craig. And not only does Jerrod have all his own teeth but he is also Creative Group Head at one of the biggest advertising agencies in New York. Suddenly it looks like Rachel’s life might just be coming together – a handsome boyfriend with all the right connections can put a silver lining on any cloud. Now all she needs is that cup of tea…
Paige Nick has been a copywriter in advertising for 15 years, where she has worked on brands like BMW, Nashua, Kulula.com, Levi’s Jeans and Allan Gray. A Million Miles from Normal is 99% fictional, although many of the characters are an amalgamation of the people Paige has worked with and clients she has met over the years. This is her first novel.
Filming is well under way on Spud the Movie at Michaelhouse in the Natal Midlands. An excited John van de Ruit praised Troye Sivan, the Australian teen idol who plays Spud, saying that the 14-year-old is exactly how he had imagined the character. The movie is based on the trilogy which began with Spud, and followed with Spud: The Madness Continues and Spud: Learning to Fly. The film also stars British comedian John Cleese and is scheduled for release later this year.
A movie crew descended on the private boarding school in the KwaZuluNatal Midlands four days ago to transform a small dormitory room into the main set of the film of Van de Ruit’s popular book.
The book tells of the experiences at boarding school in 1990 of a boy nicknamed “Spud” .
Yesterday, the excited author told The Times: “I never imagined that Spud would become this big. Watching the scene before me, I can say that it has been truthful to the book and I am very pleased with that.”
Jennifer Crocker learns that Mark Behr’s ambition was to write a “plaasroman [farm novel] for the 21st century” with Kings of the Water – and that it’s a book that works in profound ways with Behr’s sense of South African self:
Behr lives in the US but is intimately linked to South Africa. He says he lives openly as a gay man, so there is the temptation to assume Michiel Steyn [his main character] is Behr.
Michiel is a gay man. He has fled Paradys (Paradise) after an incident during his military service which “disgraced” him, and ends up living in the US. In the act of being himself he has betrayed the Afrikaner image of what a man is and so is cast out, ostensibly by his father but also, it seems, by himself.
Behr says: “At heart it is a book about the fluidity of life and the inevitability of change – personal, political, psychological, environmental, discursive – and the foolishness (and danger) of all kinds of certitude and of trying to control what cannot be controlled.
Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith has a wide-ranging conversation with Ja, No, Man! author Richard Poplak about the effect of American pop culture in the so-called Muslim world, which is the subject of Poplak’s latest book, The Sheikh’s Batmobile.
Listen:
Podcast: Tymon Smith in conversation with Richard Poplak
An extract from an essay collected in Achebe’s forthcoming The Education of a British-Protected Child:
Nigerian nationality was for me and my generation an acquired taste – like cheese. Or better still, like ballroom dancing. Not dancing per se, for that came naturally; but this titillating version of slow-slow-quick-quick-slow performed in close body contact with a female against a strange, elusive beat. I found, however, that once I had overcome my initial awkwardness I could do it pretty well.
Perhaps these irreverent analogies would only occur to someone like me, born into a strongly multiethnic, multi lingual, multireligious, somewhat chaotic colonial situation. The first passport I ever carried described me as a “British Protected Person”, an unexciting identity embodied in a phrase that no one was likely to die for. I don’t mean it was entirely devoid of emotive meaning. After all, “British” meant you were located somewhere in the flaming red portion of the world map, a quarter of the entire globe in those days and called “the British Empire, where the sun never sets”. It had a good ring to it in my childhood ears – a magical fraternity, vague but vicariously glorious.
“Foreigners think we’re nuts, coming back to a doomed city on a damned continent, but there’s something you don’t understand: it’s boring where you are.” – Rian Malan
Journalists Heidi Holland and Adam Roberts approached about 80 journalists and writers based in Johannesburg and asked them to write short pieces about the city in which they work and live. They did not specify form or style – the contributors were free to express themselves how ever they wanted to.
In this new, updated edition over 50 pieces of writing emerged that reflect aspects of the city, idiosyncratic reactions to living and working here, appreciations of small and big things, some poems, some criticisms – all will find resonance with Jozi residents and all will be enlightening and entertaining to visitors hoping to learn something about our metropolis. Amazingly, many of the contributors expressed how much they enjoy being in Jozi – a far cry from the common perceptions of this infamous city!
With contributions by: Zakes Mda, Ivan Vladislavic, Max du Preez, Mark Gevisser, Gcina Mhlope, Christopher Hope, Rian Malan, Wally Serote and more.
All royalties from the sale of the book go to Cotlands, for the benefit of children with HIV and AIDS.
About the editors
Heidi Holland is an accomplished author and journalist, based in Johannesburg. She has published African Magic, The Colour of Murder and the highly acclaimed Dinner with Mugabe (over 31 000 copies sold to date).
From 2001 to 2005, Adam Roberts was the Southern Africa Correspondent of The Economist based in Johannesburg. Since the middle of 2006 he has been the News Editor of Economist.com. He has written a book about the failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, The Wonga Coup. Adam is also a regular ‘Comment is Free’ contributor for the Guardian.
Zakes Mda reminds me while sitting at the Grace Hotel that he doesn’t “need to be in South Africa all the time to be a participant in South Africa and its development. The world is my stage, I’m not a parochial person who needs to be here all the time in order to be a South African.”
He’s spent most of his time since 2002 in Athens, Ohio where he’s a professor in the English department at Ohio University. But the 62-year-old playwright, academic and novelist is back home for a few weeks promoting his latest novel, Black Diamond, the story of a magistrate, two threatening criminals and the bodyguard hired to protect her.
His previous novel, Cion, was a difficult and quite literary novel that saw the resurrection of Mda’s most famous character, the “professional mourner” Toloki, hero of Ways of Dying, arguably his best novel, and his transportation to the US. Black Diamond is a pretty straightforward and occasionally humorous story set in the West Rand of Joburg that began life in the wake of Cion’s success in the US.
The Clint Eastwood-directed adaptation of John Carlin’s Invictus (originally titled Playing the Enemy) opened around the world this weekend. As might be expected, media coverage of the story of South Africa’s fabled 1995 Rugby World Cup win – and the crucial role that Nelson Mandela played behind the scenes – has been intense.
Morgan Freeman was in South Africa to attend the local premiere, and the Sunday Times snapped up an interview with him. Here’s his chat with Biénne Huisman; and a podcast in which he answers the question, “Were you intimidated, playing Nelson Mandela?”
“Oh my, isn’t it lovely,” he drawled, while brandishing pictures of the seven-seater jet. The SB30 is the flagship aircraft of Emivest Aerospace, and is marketed as “the world’s fastest, longest-range and highest-flying light jet”.
Freeman, who got his pilot’s licence in 2002, flew the aircraft to South Africa last week, and plans to touch down in Botswana and Kenya next.
He said he inherited a Madiba shirt from the Invictus film shoot and intends to wear it in his home town of Charleston, Mississippi.
Podcast: Morgan Freeman answers the SA press’ questions
At the same time, the film has returned many local rugby heroes to the limelight – including Joel Stransky, who kicked the winning drop goal against New Zealand in the world cup’s final match. Aspasia Karras caught up with him:
I am having a surreal moment. Francois Pienaar – or rather Matt Damon channelling Francois Pienaar – is staring directly into the cinema audience and telling Joel Stransky to go home. Sitting directly behind me is Joel Stransky; fortunately he does not obey.
We are watching Invictus – Clint Eastwood’s interpretation of John Carlin’s book about the 1995 Rugby World Cup – and things have taken a decidedly peculiar turn. Will the real Joel Stransky please stand up?
Given that he is one of my all-time favourite Bokke and having the distinction of touring with him (we went to Paris to witness our team’s second World Cup) I naturally want the lowdown from the man himself. How does it feel to be immortalised on celluloid?
Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy will be released in South Africa on 11 December. As the hype around the movie grows, Pan Macmillan author Kevin Bloom wonders how rugby fans will react to the real thing.
Apparently there’s a lot of rugby in Invictus. The first reviews are in, and while the critics have so far said it’s an okay (but not outstanding) film, a lot of them seem to be quite taken with the game. The Huffington Post reviewer reckons the movie’s got more rugby in it than she’s ever seen anywhere. “I’m into it now,” she writes. “Might see some in real life.”
Lovely to hear. But the same reviewer then gives Invictus a six out of ten, which has got to make you wonder how it’s going to be received by South Africans. Ruben Kruger, Kobus Wiese, Naka Drotske, Rudolph Straeuli and Brendan Venter are all listed as dramatis personae, and the local audience is nothing if not wise to the subtleties of these mens’ movements across a rugby field. Can Graham Lindemann really demonstrate the awesomeness of Kobus’s arrival at a ruck? Can Rolf Fitschen throw a lineout ball as straight as Naka?
Exclusive Books and Penguin Books take pleasure in inviting you to the launch of A Million Miles from Normal by Paige Nick. See you there!
Jennifer Crocker learns that Mark Behr’s ambition was to write a “plaasroman [farm novel] for the 21st century” with 
