Skyways – August 2019

Herman Bergman: Mahai –

Guitar Compositions

Johannesburg guitarist and

composer Herman Bergman has, in

Mahai – Guitar Compositions, created

a musical travelogue. His sleeve

notes explain the inspiration and

genesis of each piece, giving each

instrumental composition context

and helping listeners to consider

the style and atmospherics used in

each case with more insight than

simply appreciating the melodies

would have allowed. Happily – and

interestingly – while the classical

guitar interpretations of each location

Bergman has put together here

are fully-formed encapsulations

of time and place, it’s likely that

each listener will experience their

own feelings of nostalgia and

connections to different memories.

South Africans Versus Rommel

by David Brock Katz

David Brock Katz is an accomplished

military historian. Despite its title, the

book is a history of South Africa’s

involvement in the war right from its

beginning until the end of the First

Battle of El Alamein in July 1942.

Known as the ‘Desert Fox’, Rommel’s

military cunning as well as the fact

that he was involved in the plot to

stage a coup to overthrow Adolf Hitler,

have earned him lasting respect.

Rommel’s reputation has survived

substantially intact. That the South

Africans succeeded in bringing him

to the brink of nervous breakdown

is high credit indeed. A fascinating

aspect in Katz’ book is how history,

experience and culture shaped the

attitudes of the professional military

leaders on the different sides.

Our Kind of Traitor (16VLDNS)

As is par for the course in John Le

Carre’s work (this is an adaptation

of his book of the same name),

the plotting is layered and the

pacing necessarily measured,

with the relatively small scale

of the action sequences in this

spy thriller being another facet

of a piece that is dense rather

than explosive. Ewan McGregor

and Naomi Harris play Perry

and Gail, a British couple on

holiday in Marrakesh, who

meet a charismatic Russian

traveller named Dima (Stellan

Skarsgard), whose largesse and

exuberance make him a likeable

and unpredictable diversion for

them. Skarsgard is the highlight,

making the most of Dima being

loud and cheerfully obnoxious.

Based on the series of novels by English

author, wit and casual surrealist Douglas

Adams, this Netflix series is, from the

outset, considerably more intense than

many of the writer’s fans might’ve

anticipated. That applies on a number of

levels, from the fractal density of the plot

layering to the often extraordinarily messy

violence. Adams’ deliriously extravagant

imagination has always required a similar

sensibility to get it anywhere close to

making sense in the final retelling, and

writer and producer Max Landis, on the

evidence of the first season of this series,

is an excellent match. Elijah Wood as

slumming loser Todd Brotzman rejuvenates

his reputation after a number of years

of diminishing returns, career-wise, and

Samuel Barnett as the titular investigator

is wonderfully and consistently kooky. This

is a show that requires close attention

in terms of keeping up with the many

details packed into each episode, many

of which only prove to be of importance

many instalments later. Attempting to

explain the overall storyline is, as a result,

rather challenging, but suffice it to say

that the series opens with a profoundly

bizarre murder and then spirals way out

of control as Dirk, Todd and a coterie of

peculiar allies – including a van-full of

whack-job anarchists and an unstoppable

assassin – do their best to avoid dying

as a myriad threats come their way.

Dirk Gently’s

Holistic Detective

Agency: Season 1

Media

This month: surrealist slayings, economics, desert wars, spies and travels through music

travel leisure | lifestyle

REVIEWS

Guns, Germs and Steel by

Jared Diamond

Why are some nations rich and others

poor? What are the factors that explain

why some succeed in raising the

standard of living and improving the

quality of life of their people, while

others do not? These are big questions

that have concerned the educated

public since at least the time of the

first publication of Adam Smith’s

The Wealth Of Nations in 1776, the

year in which the USA declared

its independence from Britain.

Guns, Germs and Steel deserves a

re-read because it not only illuminates

how complex the issues are but

also, as Diamond’s own Afterword

in the book written in 2017 so

clearly illustrates, our knowledge

and understanding have developed

enormously in a mere 20 years.

The figure at which bidding was stopped when an

eBay user put New Zealand on sale in 2006.

R45,000

90