Tony Leon, joint winner of the 2009 Recht Malan Prize, drew on his admiration for Ernest Hemingway to survive a post-awards interview:
After last Saturday’s M-Net-Via Africa literary prize I found myself in the unexpected position of participating in a post-award interview.
Trying to match the occasion with some book knowledge, I did no better than invoke the character of Robert Jordan in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. He spoke of things “which are worth the fighting for”.
In the dying hours of the constitutional negotiations, back in November 1993 at Kempton Park, I led the fight-back against a National Party-African National Congress deal that would have empowered the president and his cabinet to have effectively hand-picked their own Constitutional Court. The minuscule Democratic Party, sidelined on many other key issues, managed to win this battle.
Book details
Please register or log in to comment
