NOVEMBER BOOK

Our November selection is Dusklands (link) by South African author J.M. Coetzee, who has collected a Nobel Prize and two Bookers  amongst his roomful of awards.  Note:  as the second Tuesday of November falls on the 11th (Remembrance Day), we've pushed next month's meeting to Tuesday, November 18th.  No changes otherwise:  our usual 7pm start time at the cozy Zawa Restaurant (link) at Commercial Drive & Venables.  All and sundry welcome to join the usual suspects.

A shattering pair of novellas, Dusklands probes the links between the powerful and the powerless.  'Vietnam Project' is narrated by a researcher investigating the effectiveness of United States propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam.

The question of power is also explored in 'The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee', the story of an eighteenth-century Boer frontiersman who vows revenge on the Hottentot natives because they have failed to treat him with the respect that he thinks a white man deserves.

OCTOBER BOOK

Our October book is Barchester Towers (link) by the prolific Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope.  It's back to indoor dining as autumn is upon us, so come and enjoy some fine food and drink, and literary palaver (as well as the comforts of central heating) this Tuesday, October 14 at our usual spot, Zawa Restaurant (link) on Commercial Drive.  Start time is 7pm and all are welcome.

After the death of old Dr. Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the decision is finally made to appoint the evangelical Dr. Proudie, rather than the son of the old bishop, Archdeacon Grantly, resentment and suspicion threaten to cause deep divisions within the diocese. Trollope's masterly depiction of the plotting and back-stabbing that ensues lies at the heart of one of the most vivid and comic of his Barsetshire novels, peopled by such very different figures as the saintly Warden of Hiram's Hospital, Septimus Harding, the ineffectual but well-meaning new bishop and his terrifying wife, and the oily chaplain Mr Slope who has designs on Mr Harding's daughter.