This year’s Franschhoek Literary Festival (FLF) has a notable selection of international and pan-African authors taking part in the programme’s 80 plus sessions.
Among the authors from across the continent who will be in Franschhoek over the weekend of 19-21 May is award-winning Zimbabwean author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu. Her best-selling novel The Theory of Flight won the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize, followed by The History of Man (2020) and The Quality of Mercy (2022), which completed the trilogy. Ndlovu also won the prestigious Wingham Campbell Prize in 2022, administered by Yale University. She will be in conversation with Pumla Dineo Gqola on 21 May in the session “The practice of flight”. She will also take part in “Pens of Power” (20 May), where she will be joined by Sue Nyathi in a discussion with Joanne Joseph on whether storytelling can serve as a weapon of hope and change, within the context of the authors’ fictional visions of Zimbabwean history.
Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi, author of four novels – The Polygamist (2012), The Gold Diggers (2018), The Family Affair (2020) and An Angel’s Demise (2022) – also takes part in “Why fiction?” on 19 May. In what promises to be an intimate and inspiring session, Gail Schimmel will explore the social roles and personal motivations of creating fiction with Nyathi, Rachel Joyce and Margie Orford.
Rwandan author Pie-Pacifique Kabalira-Uwase shares his astonishing story of fleeing tragedy in Rwanda in the session “Unstoppable” on 21 May. Sihle Khumalo delves into Kabalira-Uwase’s journey from car guard to receiving a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship and starting a thriving company.
Two pan-African authors join the festival via Zoom. In the 20 May session “Trap of the Past”, Joy Watson meets Nigerian writer Aiwanose Odafen whose debut novel Tomorrow I Become a Woman, – a gripping exploration of patriarchal violence, forbidden love and cultural conflict – has been acclaimed as “searing and beautifully rendered”. On the same day, in the session “Continental draught”, Jonny Steinberg goes myth busting with Dipo Faloyin (via Zoom), author of Africa is Not a Country, an irreverent celebration of the African continent and its dizzying diversity.
Booker-long-listed Rachel Joyce is part of an impressive contingent of international writers heading to the Franschhoek Valley. She is the author of several Sunday Times and international bestsellers, including her trilogy – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy & Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North. Festivalgoers can get to know Joyce in three sessions at the FLF – “Time travel 101”, “Read it and weep” and “Why fiction?”
One of this year’s most powerful sessions is likely to be “The release”, which sees Marina Cantacuzino, author of Forgiveness: An Exploration, in conversation with former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.
Cantacuzino spent 18 years learning about forgiveness, and the backlash that may accompany what is often a very challenging process. She will also participate in the two other sessions on apology and forgiveness, “Sorry beyond words” and “Letting it go”.
Are today’s literary novelists too safe and genre-bound? In a thought- provoking session entitled “Unheard of”, Margie Orford (on Zoom) talks creative rule breaking with the risk-tolerant Maddie Mortimer (UK), author of Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize and was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2022. Also joining the festival from her home base in London via Zoom is celebrated comedian Ruby Wax, who talks to Sarah Bullen in “Ja well, not fine” about her latest and most significant book yet on mental health, I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was.
Poetry lovers will not want to miss “Plath, beyond the myth”, which sees Dominique Botha talk with Heather Clark (via Zoom) about her biography of an American poetic genius reduced to being the sum total of her suicide in contemporary culture. Clark’s Red Comet:The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, magisterially corrects the picture.
In the session “Hidden hero”, on 20 May, Tony Leon interviews Jonathan Freedland (via Zoom) about his gripping new book, The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, and asks how the incredible story of Rudolf Vrba deepens humankind’s comprehension of the Holocaust. Rounding off the list of international authors is Ann Cleeves, whom Pippa Hudson meets via Zoom in the session “Adaptability”. Cleeves’ acclaimed novels have given the world three compelling TV sleuths – Vera Stanhope (Vera), Jimmy Perez (Shetland) and Matthew Venn (The Long Call), and the discussion will touch on why her thrillers are so perfectly suited to the screen.
For more info about the sessions, events and the 2023 list of authors and facilitators visit www.flf.co.za. Bookings via Webtickets.
