Three’s a charm

Shadowclub discuss  their back-to-basics approach for ‘Guns & Money’

The reverence with which Shadowclub approach concerts is admirable.

Bassist Louis Roux talks about  crowd ambience and a flow of energy between the band and the crowd, while singer and guitarist Jacques Moolman waxes lyrical about gigging being food for the soul.

Shadowclub’s loyalty to the rowdy frontier that unites fans and performers has stood them in good stead. Not only do they use their gigs as a direct gauge of a song’s success, but they  are also so comfortable on stage that they decided to do a live recording of their album, Guns & Money, without a backing track. 

  

“The brief was basically to get us all in the studio and play as we would a live performance, and then record all the vocals on top of that, without a click track,” explains drummer Isaac Klawansky. “The result is an album that’s very natural and  that breathes easily; the way we recorded gives it a very human element.”

“The live show is really where Shadowclub comes alive,” Moolman chips in. “That’s what people want, and the essence of the album was to catch that live feel.”

The band – which has been together for going on four years now – delivers a bluesy kind of rock ’n roll inspired by the likes of The White Stripes, The Strokes and The Black Keys. Getting Magic Garden Studios’s Brian Lucey

(who’s worked with The Black Keys and Jane’s Addiction fame) to master Guns & Money was something like a dream come true. 

“It’s incredible that he did our album,” gushes Moolman. “That was huge for us, almost like it wasn’t real. But we also need to remember that we’re that good. We belong in a packed Coca-Cola dome one day and we want to be world renowned, because that’s how you make a proper living out of making music.”

For now, the immediate goal is to promote the album by  gigging as much as possible (Roux says he’s aiming for a page-long gig guide on their MySpace page) and distance themselves from the negative reputation that Moolman and Klawansky garnered when they were in the band Airship Orange.

“We’ve learned a lot since those days,” concedes Moolman. “It’s a respect thing and we’re way older now,” he laughs. “There were funny and naughty parts, but we know where we went wrong, and we steer clear of it today.”

“It was all about fun and jamming, it wasn’t about building a career,” Klawansky agrees. “Now, with Shadowclub, we’re focussed as pushing this thing like a business.”

There’s a refreshing simplicity to Shadowclub’s back-to-basics approach in their moody vocals and energetic delivery. Guns & Money  was released this month, and the band say they cannot wait to play it to the world.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 28 July 2011.

Musical mayhem

The ‘Offbeat Broadway’ original cast on remembering and reinvention 

The poster advertising Offbeat Broadway 4 makes the claim: “older, fatter, slower”, but I find exactly the opposite to be true when chatting to bubbly   original cast members Anton Luitingh, Lindy Abromowitz and Paul du Toit in a break from their hectic rehearsal schedule.

For a start, they are all glowing with enthusiasm and energy, so much so, in fact, that they immediately (and delightfully) drive the interview forward with their fond memories of shows long past and their experiences being back together performing  the hugely successful Offbeat Broadway.

“It’s so strange. That first day rehearsing together again was like grabbing that Eighties item of clothing out of the closet and thinking ‘actually, those torn jeans really work’,” quips a laughing Du Toit. “It all just fit and worked together perfectly, and we all remember why we chose to work together.”

In the six years that have passed since their last performance Luitingh jokes that Abromowitz and Du Toit  have been producing children (two each) while he has been forging forth with his career in musical theatre. Their lives and careers may have taken them down different paths – Abromowitz is a medical doctor by profession, Du Toit  is currently shooting a travel show called Rough Or Smooth – but Luitingh says he wouldn’t cast anyone else in the roles.

“It’s our different  personalities and voice types that made the piece work in the first place – that’s the magic that makes the show what it is. Change the cast, and you would have a completely different dynamic. I think that the show’s success is a combination of who we are, and also the fact that  in this day and age, people are looking for a bit of comedy and a good laugh,” he says.

Offbeat Broadway might poke fun at everything from Les Miserables and Phantom Of The Opera to Billy Elliot and Hairspray, but even though the songs are being turned on their heads, the power lies in the fact that they are  beautifully rendered nevertheless. Add to this the fact that SA audiences are more savvy when it comes to musical theatre than ever before, and you have a version of Offbeat Broadway that is stronger than earlier shows.  

"There has really been a shift in our audiences over the years,” Du Toit explains. "When we first started doing this, the Broadway shows weren’t coming to SA. All people knew about musicals was what they’d heard on CD recordings, unless they were fortunate enough to have  travelled to New York or London. Now, people have been exposed to so many Broadway shows – even the more niche market stuff – so it’s actually a lot more fun for us, because our audience has a greater knowledge of the material.”

Expect boisterous banter, local humour, musical genius and the oddball influence of hilarious director Alan Committie. Offbeat Broadway doesn’t miss a beat.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 26 July 2011.

Offbeat Broadway is on at the Studio Theatre in Montecasino from August 19 – October 2.  Visit http://www.montecasinotheatre.co.za/ for more information, or www.computicket.com to book tickets.

Starry night

Living the suite life on floor 23 of the Radisson Blu 

Coastal hotels might serve up  picturesque views of waves and turquoise waters, but an inner city suite revealing  a sea of starry lights, strung along a seemingly infinite skyline, would impress even the most loyal Capetonian or Durbanite.

At R8 400 a night for two people enjoying the luxury of the Sandton Radisson Blu’s single room penthouse suite, you might almost be  paying  R1 000m² per square metre of glass window surrounding you, but draw open the curtains after sunset and suddenly every cent seems well spent. Thousands of twinkling lights are almost eye level from a lofty 23rd floor and keep you company as you lounge around and enjoy the view or put your culinary skills to work in  the beautifully modern open plan kitchen.

True to the no-nonsense attitude that drives the City of Gold forward, the design in the Radisson Blu Hotel Sandton is fearlessly bold. Rich mauves, daring silver and red snake skin patterned wallpaper and brave black shaggy rugs  colour the suite, while the public areas of the hotel present guests with sky- high ceilings, bold metallic silver globes hanging from the ceiling like Christmas baubles and designer furniture coloured in saturated primary blues, yellows and reds.

The reds bleed into the effortlessly chic Vivace Restaurant on the 13th floor (the same floor as reception) which carries the ethos of Italian style and precision right down to the dual Italian and English descriptions of the delicacies on the menu.  I don’t know what the Italian is for deboned veal wrapped in parma ham (served with ossobucco and a smoked garlic parsnip pureé), but in English the word “delicious” will do just fine. And that’s before stealing a bite of the equally delectable  seared kingklip, served with garlic and basil roasted vine tomatoes and a side dish of olive oil mash.

South African elements such as the fresh proteas on the tables or the proudly SA wines on the wine list (the Groote Post 2009 “The Old Man’s Blend” from Darling gets my stamp of approval) add local flavour to the otherwise   European aura that the Vivace exudes, although having said that, the restaurant’s well known “Super Breakfast Buffet” most certainly caters for the hearty SA appetite.

While you’re living the high life, pretending that you own a slice of  everything from the lush  indoor garden atriums and the magnificently luxurious and understated Amani African Spa, you might as well start your day with some delicious and exotic breakfast ingredients, including fresh crushed pistachios and a selection of  berries. Frankly, I cannot think of a better way to wake up, so much so that I’m convinced there is no wrong side of the bed in any of the Radisson’s plush suites.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Friday 22 July 2011.

For more information, visit www.rezidor.com or www.radissonblu.com/hotel-johannesburg.

Riveting rifts

Acclaimed environmental artist Georgia Papageorge on rifts and religion 

“Dramatic” only just begins to describe the power and emotion that Georgia Papageorge’s videos, photos and canvasses evoke in the viewer. Whether it’s the 20 metre long banners of red butcher linen strewn across Namibian sands that demand your attention or the stark “bloodlines” running alongside the icy peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro that stir something within, all her of Papageorge’s artworks seem to elicit a similar response: a mesmerised stare, followed by a moment of awe and wonder.

For  a start, there’s the sheer scale and size of her projects. In the name of art, Papageorge has flown  over the Sowa Salt Pan in Botswana – dropping down her impermanent red marks from a helicopter – and she has even  summited Mount Kilimanjaro while completing her Kilimanjaro/Coldfire series of artworks. Perhaps the energy embodied by the young,  tree-climbing, horse riding  Papageorge still fuels her imagination today and sees her larger than life concepts realised, no matter the obstacle –  or mountain range –  that stands in her way.

Then there are the grand concepts and themes underlying her impressive artworks. Papageorge’s obsession with  geological rifts, she says, is directly born out of an internal rift  within herself. The artist lost her two-year-old daughter to cancer when she was 28 years old, and turned to a degree in Fine Art at Unisa as a means of focusing her emotion.

After doing  a series of politicised pieces at university that dealt with the  barriers that had to be removed between human beings of various different cultures, Papageorge fine- tuned her focus and  turned to the environment to get her messages about  social and political schisms across.

One of her best-known  projects is her Kilimanjaro/Coldfire series, boasting bright red banners streaking across the cold landscapes of Kilimanjaro as a means for Papageorge to  grapple with the weighty subject of global warming and the melting of the ice caps.

“Kilimanjaro has always been chocolate box stuff – you only ever see that type of image of it, but in my work I wanted to take it very seriously,” she explains. “Kilimanjaro was a huge icon in Africa –  a mountain three degrees south of the equator covered in snow. The first time I saw the mountain, people were not that aware of global warming. I did two major projects between 1996 and 2000, and then I didn’t go back for some years. When I went back in 2005,  I was shattered by how much the ice had melted.”

To read Papageorge’s works only for the dominant surface themes, however, is to do her art a great disservice. Beyond the environment and a preoccupation with the damage that man has wreaked on the planet is a driving force as powerful as global warming,  namely the strong religious thread that further binds her concepts together.

“My work is very religious,” she says. “I’m Catholic, and I’m dealing with the trans-substantiation of matter. “I’m taking and applying the idea of  mass –  the body and blood of Christ, which  is transformed into bread and wine – and transforming mere cloth into lines of fire and blood. They are symbolic lines,  symbolic of fire and blood. In my Kilimanjaro works, I see water as the lifeblood of Africa.”

Rifts and religion become one in Papageorge’s riveting artworks, making for a subject matter that crosses countries and continents with its resonance and universality. Her exhibition Bridgeworks is on at the Association of Arts Pretoria, 173 Mackie Street, Nieuw Muckleneuk, Pretoria, until July 27.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Wednesday 20 July 2011.

Breaking the Stig-ma

Ben Collins sets the record straight and chats about being the enigma behind the visor

When Ben Collins first put on the white suit and stepped out into the world as “The Stig” in Top Gear, only two people knew his true identity. Those two people become closer to 150 in the eight years that he worked at the BBC,  making it more and more difficult to  fend off the rumours and leaks that he was in fact The Stig.

Despite the severe criticism he received soon after resigning and “outing” himself, Collins says that he feels good about the decisions he took.

“I knew the end was near, and rather than wait to be let go, I decided it was time to go on my own,” he explains.

He handed in his notice, wrote his book and went out on his own terms. He says that he finds that fact that his employers took him to the High Court “ridiculous”, but the judge ruled in his favour and less than a year later Collins is happy to be burying the hatchet.

“I was back in touch with the producers a few weeks ago. You realise  a lot of the stuff in the press is very theatrical, much like Top Gear the show, and that deep down we were mates and nothing really has changed.”

While the last Stig (the original “black” Stig Perry McCarthy) lasted a total of eight or so months,  Collins lasted an impressive eight years. Besides the obvious having to wear a balaclava  and being careful not to speak in front of people, he also says that part of being The Stig’s duty includes a fair amount of self-imposed isolation. 

“It’s great fun, it’s not like you’re going to get shot if you are revealed, but you might lose your job. It’s good fun and a great game while it lasted, but you know it’s going to end. People start to guess  and try to catch you out, shouting  “Ben” to see if you’ll turn around. The Stig is a media character and the essence is the anonymity, so once that’s gone the character needs to be reborn. I’m very surprised it lasted as long as it did.”

Although motor racing remains his first passion – he says it’s the next best thing after his childhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot  – Collins is incredibly humble about living every man’s fantasy on the Top Gear set and also driving James Bond’s Aston Martin DBS. It’s enough to make one wonder just how alike his life is to that of Ian Flemming’s suave fictional creation?

“Are we talking about the cars or the girls?” he quips, before bursting out laughing. “Sadly for me it isn’t quite as exciting as that in real life. I don’t get to keep the Aston DBS,” he laughs, “but I have an Audi S5 and I love my VW  Transporter van.”

He may navigate downplaying the perks and the glamour like a pro, but there’s no denying that Collins has been fortunate enough to sit behind the wheel of some mighty fine vehicles, some of which he has even crashed.

  

“The most cringeworthy was probably the Ferrari incident,” he admits sheepishly. “I was pushing this Ferrari very hard to set up the lap time and there was an expectation of the time it could do. The expectation was by the producers, not by Ferrari, who later told me that it was on a different set of tyres and couldn’t go as fast as everyone was expecting it to.

“I didn’t know that at the time, and I was pushing and pushing and eventually I swiped the tyre wall going around this corner at 115 miles per hour and I could see it coming, and felt this thing scratch the side of this perfect, polished car.”

Collins will miss these close shaves about as much as he’ll miss the Top Gear banter on set to the likes of the fact that The Stig “drinks a lot of petrol”, “was born in space” and “never blinks”.

“Those comments were all very one sided, because I never said anything back,” he quips good naturedly. “Although that’s actually just the public’s perception – I used to swear at them a lot from behind the helmet!” he laughs.

This article was first published in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 19 July 2011. Photos courtesy of AFP.

Hell and high water

Adventurer Riaan Manser’s latest book documents his epic kayak journey around Madagascar

It’s drizzling, and in half an hour I’m meant to be paddling around Emmarentia Dam with Riaan Manser. Not that a few rain drops would perturb the man who kayaked around Madagascar, braving around 10 hours on the sea every day, with nine-metre high swells and sharks ramming his kayak. In fact, the bigger the challenge the better for Manser, who first satisfied his pioneering spirit in 2004 and 2005 by taking two years out of his life to cycle around Africa.

Before I have a chance to back out I’m greeted by Manser’s toothy grin and infectious enthusiasm and we’re making our way to the water and the K2 kayak awaiting us. There’s very little prep time, because, as the larger-than-life Manser quickly tells me, the best teacher is hands-on experience.

He couldn’t have known the extent of it at the time, but when Manser first set off on August 28, 2008 to circumnavigate all 5 000km of Madagascar’s coastline, he was embarking on an adventure that would prove to be much more of a challenge than his Africa trip.

There are the horror stories (and photos) of blisters, sunburn, dehydration, parasites and even the particularly painful pulling of a tooth with his own Leatherman, but in reading Manser’s latest book , one realises that the solitude he experienced along the way was something far greater than the physical pain and discomfort.

Unlike many other adventurers, Manser travels alone. Apart from having a satellite phone (with sporadic reception) and a GPS to help coordinate landing spots, he was completely cut off from anything and everything secure and familiar.

“I think you’re challenging yourself in another way when you go on your own,” Manser explains. “I like being on my own, and I like tackling the dangers on my own. What would be the real challenge of me circumnavigating Madagascar if there was someone who could pluck me out of the water if it got too dangerous? To help repair the boat, to give me a hot plate of food, to massage me, to tell me where the next landing was, or where the best place was to enter the sea?”

We push away from the bank and soon we’re gliding happily through the water.

Even though it takes us a while to find a rhythm that complements Manser’s quick powerful strokes and my eager but amateurish attempts to keep up, we don’t fall into the water and to me, at least, that makes the challenge a success.

It’s only when we’re back on dry land that Manser laughingly admits that he thought we were going to fall out in the first few minutes after launching.

His calm demeanour didn’t give anything away, but then again, this the man who wrote about having “to change a mountain into a molehill” many times on his Madagascar journey.

You’d think that once he’d achieved two world firsts, Manser’s adventurous spirit would be quelled somewhat, but he’s recently returned from a trip to Greenland where his next challenge is set to take place. Apart from revealing that he’ll be braving the cold and challenging himself in a way he has never done before, Manser is, however, keeping mum. For now.

Riaan Manser is the author of Around Africa On My Bicycle and Around Madagascar On My Kayak. Visit www.riaanmanser.com for more information.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Tuesday 7 December 2010. All photos courtesy Shayne Robinson.

Polar protector

Lewis Gordon Pugh adds writing to his long list of firsts

There’s a wonderful television advert of Lewis Gordon Pugh in Antarctica walking in one direction, with a line of penguins waddling off in exactly the opposite direction. It epitomises his quote about how “going against the tide has never been difficult” for him, and perhaps this explanation in his recently released autobiography is the closest we’ll ever come to understanding the source of Pugh’s determination and his unwavering attitude to attempt what’s never been attempted before.

Some authors might argue that writing a book is every bit as challenging as, say, being the first person to swim at the North Pole or the first to swim the full length of the River Thames, but with the release of the aptly titled Achieving The Impossible, Pugh really can say he’s done it all. Oh yes, he also summited Everest in May.

Just as every challenge Pugh has set himself has taught him something new about himself, so too, he says, has the writing process.

“It’s been a very good, cathartic experience, putting my thoughts down on paper, because I learned a lot about myself in doing so,” he states thoughtfully, before pausing to take a sip of his peppermint tea. “I often say that a good autobiography is like a good fruit salad,” he continues. “There’s got to be the sweet melon, the juicy grapes, and then

there’s got to be some really bitter grapefruit.When you trawl through that bitter grapefruit you realise that there is stuff that has happened many years ago you sometimes haven’t moved on from.”

Pugh’s lists of “firsts”, including being the first person to complete a long distance swim in every ocean of the world, are incredible, to say the least. He attributes a large part of this to never giving up and all of his successes having a kind of a domino effect.

“I’m the only person in history to do an SAS introductory course three times,” he admits. “At the time, I thought ‘why did my body let me down?’ and ‘woe is me’, but I now look back and say thank the Lord I only made it on the third time because that hardship has moulded and created who I am now,” Pugh says.“That adversity was important to be able to show me that I could handle adversity for things that would be even harder, subsequent to being in the SAS.”

The important thing about finishing something, Pugh believes, is that it releases an energy and a power that one has done something and that the next time around, one knows one can do something “a little bit harder and a little bit tougher”. Harder and tougher define most of what he’s done since he left his law career behind him, but Pugh knows he is following his destiny.

“It’s my destiny to be a peace and environmental campaigner, and that view doesn’t come out of arrogance; it comes out of conviction and humility,” he says emphatically. “There’s a direct link between protecting the environment and peace. And conversely, destroying the environment and using up all the resources and conflict.”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 26 August 2010. Photos courtesy Lewis Gordon Pugh and Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Lewis Gordon Pugh’s book Achieving The Impossible (ISBN: 9781868423408, R195) is available now.

Spilling secrets

A bare bones true life account of living with eating disorders

Sarah Claire Picton is the first to admit that bulimics are “great secret- keepers”, yet throughout the entire process of sharing her life story and her ongoing battle with eating disorders,  Picton never once discussed using a pseudonym with writer Joanne Jowell.

Determined to share her  tumultuous journey with the “sneaky and manipulative” disease of bulimia, Picton sought Jowell out and  initiated an introspective and invasive dissection of how she got to this point – a young twenty20-something journalist with a passion for life and work who  is constantly fighting against the impulse to binge and purge.

 “Her frame might be small, but her personality is large. She’s loud, she’s feisty, she’s dramatic and she’s fabulous,” says Jowell of Picton. “Sarah is a writer herself, but she didn’t want to write her own story  because if she spends too much time in her head, it can  actually be quite a trigger. The over-analysis is detrimental.”

And thus began a writing project that will probably forever occupy Jowell’s thoughts; an opportunity to not only extend her fascination with non-fiction, issue driven writing which gets to the heart of a psychological issue, but also to self-reflect on her own dangerous but brief flirtation with weight loss as a young girl.

In its dealings with such a complex disorder, Finding Sarah veers far away from the more obvious self-help approach. A lot of the book feels like Sarah’s own personal journey, a stream-of-conscious kind of metaphorical “purging”  of the whos, whats, whys and hows in Picton’s life.

“I never wanted to write a psychological treatise,” says Jowell. “I am not a psychologist and I’m not a healthcare practitioner. I wanted to write a bare bones true life account which puts you in a position as a reader that you would never otherwise be able to occupy.

“It’s kind of like a morbid fascination –  you’re sitting watching something unfold that you feel kind of like you’re not entitled to be seeing; so secretive, so deceptive, so private. But at the same time you’re gaining understanding and knowledge, and that’s how you help,” says Jowell.

Another unconventional aspect to the book is the fact that it is completely devoid of photographs, apart from a pensive self-portrait of Picton on the front cover. of the book.  This decision stems strongly from Picton’s criticism of certain media as encouraging and even aiding eating disorders.

“The question of media on its own is hugely contested with the realm of eating disorders, which is why we didn’t use any photos,” Jowell explains.

“What people in a lay perspective find difficult to understand about bulimia is that you often cannot tell if someone is bulimic or not by looking at them. You think about an eating disorder and immediately think of a skeletal waif, but bulimics can even be a bit overweight sometimes, because of water retention and so on,” Jowell says.

“So that, coupled with the fact it’s this obsession with what one looks like that gets girls there in the first place, led lead to us to try try very hard for this book not to be a trigger for others, not to be fodder for someone trying to get into an eating disorder.”

Ultimately, Jowell explains that Picton wanted her  to help her write a book that she herself would want to read, detailing thoughts, ideas and emotions that might be helpful when thinking about recovery. It’s not about shock tactics or gruesome truths, but rather the goings on in Picton’s mind about the ugly disorder she is constantly battling.

“The photo on the front cover says: ‘This is the face of a disorder, it’s not the body of a disorder. Get inside the mind of it’. Because it’s really in the mind that it starts and ends,” Jowell concludes.

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 7 July 2011. 

The book Finding Sarah – A True Story of Living With Bulimia (ISBN: 9781770101319) is on shelves now. 

Historical hues

Award-winning author Marié Heese on research and retrospection

It’s a talented author that can write about the past with such ease and accessibility  that it seems as though the plot is taking place in the present.  In her latest historical fiction novel The Colour Of Power, South African author Marié Heese whisks her readers through the incredible rise to power of Empress Theodora, one of the Byzantine Empire’s most powerful women figures.

Her lengthy academic career – including an MA (English) (cum laude) and D Litt et Phil – explains her love of the research element required to write a book of this magnitude, but there’s another reason behind Heese’s choice of the historical fiction genre.

“I like to write about another period that enables one to say things, somewhat obliquely, that are relevant to the present,” she explains.

Some of Heese’s strongest themes are those related to the women’s issues of the time and how her strong female protagonists navigate the constrained and discriminatory societies in which they find themselves in. Whether it’s through the brave female pharaoh Hatshepsut in The Double Crown who ruled over Egypt for two decades, or the determined Empress Theodora in The Colour Of Power who climbed the ranks and went from public entertainer and high-class prostitute to empress, Heese expertly presents the past for its resonance with the present  and  provokes her readers into thought.

Colour and detail make for effortless reading about  eras long gone, although Heese is quick to point out that the seduction of details presents its own challenges.

 “I like to give a visually and sensually rich description of what’s going on, but it’s always driven by the story,” she confirms. “If a character is in a marketplace,  I need to know what would have been in the marketplace, what she would have been wearing, what she might have been eating and so it goes on.

“It’s tricky, because one can very easily get bogged down in it. There is such a thing as telling the reader too much, and it’s a great temptation when one has done a lot of research,” Heese says. “There are all of these lovely things you know and want to include, but it can cause the novel to sag, so it’s a fine line to tread.”

Heese is of the opinion that topics choose writers, not the other way around. While she has always been interested in Egypt (hence the decision to write about Hatshepsut), stumbling upon Theodora’s story was quite accidental. She happened to be sifting through various copies of old National Geographics at her local library when a beautiful Byzantine mother and child icon on one of the 1983 covers caught her eye.

“It’s a fascinating period that people don’t know a lot about it. Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire, and it went on for 1 000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the barbarians,”  Heese says. “Eventually it fell to the Ottoman Turks, but Byzantium is a bridge between the classical civilisation and more modern civilisation.”

Becoming an award-winning novelist might not be quite Heese’s youthful dream of making a career for herself as an actress, but  taking as long as five years to write both The Double Crown and The Colour Of Power (which, incidentally, comes with a sequel due to be published next year) cannot be anything else but a passion.

“It’s great fun,” Heese admits with a shy smile.  “Of course you do get tired, and it’s hard work, especially when you get stuck, but I love doing it and there’s more than enough scope in the facts that one doesn’t know for sure to allow one’s imagination to go wild.”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 14 July 2011.

The Colour Of Power (ISBN: 9780798152808) is on shelves now. Heese won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in the Africa region in 2010 for The Double Crown.