Crime novelist Margie Orford recently launched her latest hit thriller, Daddy’s Girl, in Sandton - where she had much to say about crime in the province. The Times columnist Laurice Taitz was there; here’s her amusing take:
Crime Writer Paints Joburg Red - Read Daddy’s Girl, the third book in the Clare Hart series written by Cape Town author Margie Orford who came all the way to Sandton City [with its ambience of "hell"] last week to launch it.
“Crime is like hair in Joburg — big and bling,” Orford said. In Joburg it takes 25 men with machine guns to rob the Spar; in Cape Town it takes one guy with a knife.” She described Cape Town as South Africa’s intellectual centre, and Joburg as its money capital.
So what turned Orford to crime? “I am properly educated and went through the JM Coetzee school.” [That would be the University of Cape Town, an institution that can truly claim its status as SA’s literary factory after having produced dozens of award-winning writers]. She then studied in the US returning to South Africa in 2001.
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October 28th, 2009 @19:18 #
Laurice, Mandla, Zuki, Kevin and all the rest of the Joburg writer/thinker/cheap wine drinking set - it was SO nice to have you there. Sandton City is like Dante's inner circle of hell (EB books excluded, natch) but like so many Vergils you were there to guide and comfort. So hopefully Jonathan Ball will send me up north again to hang out some more in some of the new book shops that seem to be spreading up there. The Book Lounge/Kalk Bay virus is spreading delightfully. So thanks for coming to hang out with me....