Five years ago, when Homebru began, South African publishers submitted 55 titles for selection. For Homebru 2006, 140 books were put forward: two and a half times that number.
This exponential growth in our national literature can be seen in South African bookshops, although it is not as visible in-store as in the Homebru statistics. Clearly, more local stories are being told, published and read, but what does this year’s edition of this annual celebration of South African writing tell us about the state of the nation’s reading habits? (Or publishers’ and booksellers’ aspirations for their customers?)
There are nine fiction, 11 non- fiction, three poetry and two children’s books on the list. It’s encouraging that poetry — never a publisher’s darling in this country — is relatively well represented. Unsurprisingly, non-fiction titles edge fiction: we are still re-examining the past (as in Dan Wylie’s biography of Shaka, Myth of Iron), reconfiguring the past for present and future (Number Four: The Making of Constitution Hill) and exploring the present (Beauty … A Black Perspective).
A number of the novels undoubtedly shade into the area of non-fiction, blending as they do elements of memoir, autobiography and non-fictional material presented using novelistic techniques. Perhaps this particular form of home-brewed genre, in which creative non-fiction plays along as fiction, is the one that most appropriately goes under the Homebru rubric.
Still, one should be careful of making this year’s list sound too serious. “After five years of running Homebru, we are not taking ourselves so seriously,” says Batya Green-Bricker, marketing manager of Exclusive Books (which runs Homebru with Book South Africa).
Green-Bricker believes that “there is a certain lightness, a sense of humour and ease about the books we have featured — we are comfortable in our own skin. In selecting the shortlisted books, our focus was on entertainment and, because entertainment means different things to different readers, we have covered everything from travelogues to romance, historical biography, poetry and even CDs for children. From being books you ‘should read’, Homebru has become books you will simply want to read.”
Homebru, she says, is “a response to readers and their preferences”. Among these reading trends are that 65% of Exclusive’s regular book buyers are female. It appears axiomatic, then, that the chain has experienced “a growth of romance fiction titles, and light romance at that”. Bricker-Green notes that, “According to the Romance Writers of America, romance novels account for 40% of total fiction sold, the highest percentage of any fiction sold. In South Africa, the statistic is similar, so Praba Moodley’s Homebru book, A Scent So Sweet, will hit the mark for these readers.”
Bricker-Green says there is “a fearlessness in many of the books, in the writing and the issues they confront. The two EU Award- winning books [Bitches’ Brew and Ice in the Lungs] are bold explorations of sex and physicality, as is Melinda Ferguson’s Smacked, the story of her addiction to heroin and her harrowing recovery; courageous, raw and bold.”
In a collection that punts so sonorously its home-brewed nature, however, there is a sin of omission, perhaps even one of commission. Two of the country’s 11 official languages are represented — English and Afrikaans — but none of its vernacular tongues. This has to do with many factors: who the book-buying public is, the relative unfashionability of indigenous languages at tertiary level, the imperatives driving commissioning editors, publishers’ eyes on bottom lines, et cetera.
It would indeed be cause for celebration if a future Homebru were to have on its lists books in languages other than English and Afrikaans.
The Homebru 2006 Celebrate South Africa collection will feature at Exclusive Books stores nationally during May. It will be marked by a programme of book launches and in-store appearances by participating writers
On the list: This year’s top titles
FICTION
A Quilt of Dreams by Patricia Schonstein
Bitches’ Brew by Fred Khumalo
Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok
Ice in the Lungs by Gerald Kraak
Kroes by Pat Stamatelos
Rosa’s District 6 by Rozena Maart
The Shadow Follows by David Medalie
The De Villiers Code by Tom Eaton
The Native Commissioner by Shaun Johnson
NON-FICTION
A Daughter’s Legacy by Pamphilia Hlapa
A Game Ranger Remembers by Bruce Bryden
Beauty … A Black Perspective by Nakedi Ribane
Dancing to a Different Rhythm by Zarina Maharaj
Ecological Intelligence (Rediscovering) by Ian McCallum
Myth of Iron by Dan Wylie
The White Africans by Gerald L’Ange
Seven Battles by Greg Mills and David Williams
Number Four: The Making of Constitution Hill by Lauren Segal
Smacked by Melinda Ferguson
Red Car Diaries by Ashley Dowds
POETRY
A Hundred Silences by Gabeba Baderoon
Body Bereft by Antjie Krog
Verweerskrif by Antjie Krog
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Beautiful Creatures by Ed Jordan & Alan Glass
Songs and Stories of Africa by Gcina Mhlophe
Reading matters
