Book Launch of "The Afrikaner" in Vancouver - April 6

The time has come for my novel "The Afrikaner" (Guernica Editions, Toronto) to be launched.
In a nutshell, The Afrikaner is an on-the-road adventure story (from Cape Town to the Kalahari Desert) that covers the terrains of race, love, cultural survival, and historical guilt. 
The book draws upon the five years (1996-2000) I spent in newly post-apartheid South Africa as an international reporter for the Italian press. 

The event will be held in downtown Vancouver at Massy Books (229 E. Georgia Street, Vancouver) on April 6, at 7.00 pm and will be part of a group launch with other three Guernica authors, whose books I find particularly in tune with mine, since they all deal with issues of cultural/ethnic conflict, mediation and reconciliation  (see attached flier).

Please, mark the date in your calendar and, hopefully, I will see you there!
Also, feel free to share this invitation with friends, colleagues and anyone who might be interested.

Here is:
• the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXmKFWMLgKM
• the book’s website: https://blogs.ubc.ca/afrikaner/  
• the Facebook Page with the invitation to the event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/2385165691511896/

For those interested, there will also be a book signing on March 29 at 6.00 pm at the opening night of the Vancouver South African Film Festival (Simon Fraser University’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings Street), with part of the proceedings going to the charity Education Without Borders, https://www.educationwithoutborders.ca.
 

To Google Glass or Not?

In Seattle, which is just a couple of hours from Vancouver across the US border, they have started warrying about the use of Google Glasses (with their live-recording option) in public spaces, which might lead to the nth breach of privacy.

As the Seattle-based writer-cum-blogger Jason M. Thornberry explains, the "5 Point," a legendary watering hole near the Seattle Center, became the first establishment in the country to outlaw Google Glass from their premises. Read the whole story here:

UNPLUG ME! “The 5 Point and The Museum of Privacy”

Of secret memories, secret agents and secret gardens

I've just finished reading Warlight, the latest novel by the Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje.
In a nutshell, Warlight is a post-war tale that mixes a coming-of-age kind of story with some intriguing spy-thriller elements.
The writing is crystal clear, perhaps sometimes too much “crystal ” – bordering on “glacial."

It almost feels “cold-blooded” (the perfect adjective for the perfect secret agent). But perhaps this was Ondaatje's real intention, after all: to show how a kid (Nathaniel) deprived of the presence of warm and loving parents grows into a person who has learned to keep all his emotions in check, never let any of the inner turmoil and humane weaknesses show through. “With my silence I was probably a nightmare to her. She must have thought I was born with distance in me, secretive about what I feared, secretive about my family (p. 108). We could even enlarge the picture and see in Ondaatje’s story an illustration of the cultural milieu represented by the British upper classes, with their uptight boarding schools and old boys’ networks: “‘Mr Rattigan was overheard saying that le vice Anglais is not pederasty or flagellation, but the inability to express emotion” (p. 22).
Or we could read this post-WWII war tale as an expression of the need to look back at what our life has been to make sense of it. In other words, Ondaatje seems to tell us that we can discover the true plot of who we have become and make sense of all the characters involved in our development only once we have lived through it (life) and through them (the people who were close to us or with whom we dealt at large). “Is this how we discover truth, evolve? By gathering together such unconfirmed fragments? Not only of my mother, but of Agnes, Rachel, Mr. Nkoma […] Will all of them who have remained incomplete and lost to me become clear and evident when I look back?” (p. 114).
This is even more so in the aftermath of war, of any war. The winners rewrite hi/stories, identities, wrong/doings and everyone has to adapt to the new map of life.
So, looking back, how would you map your life? Would you try to faithfully retrace the main facts and data, or would you change them and their interpretations (as a revisionist would do), in order to satisfy your self-portrait – so that everything will “rhyme” in your “small hall of mirrors”? (p. 135).
The ultimate question being: how honest are we with the memories of ourselves and of the others?

And here are my thoughts on the “garden”, again inspired by Ondaatje’s reading:
Everyone should have access to a garden (physical or imaginary) in which to take refuge – a patch of natural beauty, however small this might be: “The afternoon light filled the walled garden, built to hold back tradewinds from the east coast. I had thought of this place so often. The warmth within its walls, its shaded light, the sense of safety I always found here” (p. 126).
This is where we can recover our mental and physical wellbeing and, ultimately, find again our dignity and humanness. No one should be deprived of this.
And, by the way, there would be no need for the garden to be “private”: it might as well be a “public” park, a community garden within our own suburb. There is beauty and value in the Commons, in the green spaces of the soul.