A tribute to Nadine Gordimer

The fifth M&G Literary Festival will be held at the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg, on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 August.

The festival will be book-ended by two events that form the Friday Festival: a jazz concert at the Orbit Jazz and Bistro on Friday evening (29 August) and a Meet the Authors cocktails and Fine Art event at David Krut Bookstore on Sunday 31 August, after the Literary Festival's final session.

This year's Literary Festival is dedicated to the memory of Nadine Gordimer, who made such memorable appearances at the 2012 and 2013 festivals. In her Nobel prize acceptance speech, Gordimer noted: "Being here: in a particular time and place. That is the existential position with particular implications for literature." The panels and the themes at the festival will draw on that notion, as well as being inspired by Gordimer's short fiction, her nonfiction essays and her many campaigning causes for freedom of speech and expression.

The festival's special guest is Okwiri Oduor, the winner of the 2014 Caine prize for African writing, who will be a panellist in the session on The Short Story.

The session Why Gordimer is essential to South Africa today will open the festival on Saturday 30 August. It will begin with a reading of Gordimer's famous short story "The Train to Rhodesia", performed by Fiona Ramsay.

Other session topics include Political Memoir, New Fiction, Looking back, looking forward: 20 years of democracy and Academic feedom of ideas.

Books by authors on panels at the festival, as well as other new and recent fiction and nonfiction titles, will be on sale at a stall run by Bookdealers.

The annual event is in its fifth year under the directorship of Darryl Accone, the M&G's books editor, and Corina van der Spoel.

The festival is made possible through partnerships between the M&G, the Market Theatre, SAfm, Jacana, Jonathan Ball, NB Publishers, Pan Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, UKZN Press, Unisa Press and Wits University Press.

Tickets are R50 a session. Booking is open at: www.redballoon.biz/mglitfest/

The Friday section of the M&G will carry more on the festival in coming weeks and a festival supplement was published on August 22.

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