The success of Simon’s Town’s inaugural literary festival last year has inspired a knock-out line-up for Books on the Bay 2024. The town is set to host some of South Africa’s most celebrated writers on 22, 23 and 24 March.
More than 40 South African and international writers, and winners of all major literary prizes in South Africa will participate in the Books on the Bay programme, including Ivan Vladislavić, C.A. Davids, Darrel Bristow-Bovey and Margie Orford.
The festival’s 28 events will range from readings, panel discussions, book launches, a poetry soirée, and for the first time two stage performances, one by well-known radio personality John Maytham who draws from outstanding local writing to bring out the beauty and terror of the False Bay coastline, and a comedy revue written by Nicholas Ellenbogen that lampoons Simon’s Town’s baboon troubles, which have residents ready to kill one another.
Highlights of the Books on the Bay 2024 festival
Among the highlights are Darrel Bristow-Bovey’s magnificent and moving account of Shackleton’s adventures in the Antarctic; a conversation between veteran newspapermen and founders of the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad, Anton Harber, Gavin Evans and Max du Preez about the role of the media in the run-up to the elections; Sunday Times award winners C.A. Davids and Mark Gevisser’s discussion about the role of fiction in the making of biography; Megan Choritz interviewed by Karin Cronje on her book Lost Property; an examination at the mosque on the interface between Arabic and Afrikaans; Ashwin Desai and Saleem Badat’s look at the hidden histories of black sport in South Africa; seasoned crime writers’ debate on crime fiction’s continuing relevance, and a poetic conversation between Finuala Dowling and her daughter Beatrice Willoughby. Books on the Bay also launches Ivan Vladislavić’s novel The Near North, and Margie Orford’s Love and Fury: A Memoir.
The festival is set to be another triumph thanks to the tremendous enthusiasm and participation of Simon’s Town residents and businesses. An addition this year is the use of the town’s local tuc tuc service that will ferry festival goers between locations, free of charge, and some events include a free book raffle.
The festival once again has an outreach programme to local schools on developing a reading culture and has also given its support to Panties for Africa, an organisation that strives to supply less privileged girls in rural schools with underwear.
What: Books on the Bay 2024
Where and when: Simon’s Town from 22 to 24 March
Programme: Books on the Bay 2024
WS
