Book reviews: Red Dog & What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey's experiences are covered in 'What I Know For Sure', along with some of her visions and revelations.
Picture: iStock
Red Dog
Historical Adventure
Hayden Horner
Rating: ★★★★☆
Author: Willem Anker
Released by: Kwela Books
Year: 2018
Pages: 427
ISBN: 9781534308718
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoyQCpVFJLa/
A larger than life figure
Giants once walked in southern Africa, but less than 200 years later their trails have gone cold, with just sketchy hints of their existence sprinkled across our history books.
Until award-winning author Willem Anker’s literary incantations raised one of these gargantuan spirits and gave him free reign over his pen.
Red Dog is the part fact, part fiction incredible journey of Coenraad de Buys, the most dangerous man in the Cape in the 1700s.
He moved east to become an advisor to the Xhosa king, before bedding the king’s mother.
An impressive figure of nearly 2.1m with enormous self-confidence and an insatiable sex drive (allegedly fathering 315 children across the region) he was the proud king of bastards, vagabond, smuggler, pillager and the bane of governments.
Published in Afrikaans, as Buys in 2014, the book has been masterfully translated for English readers.
What I Know for Sure
Self-help book
Tshepiso Makhele
Rating: ★★★★☆
Author: Oprah Winfrey
Released by: Flatiron Books
Date: September 2, 2014
Pages: 240
ISBN: 1250054052, 9781250054050
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp5PHKoASM3/
Inspiration from an icon
Subsequent to being asked by film critic Gene Siskel: “What do you know for sure?” Oprah Winfrey started writing the “What I Know For Sure” column in O, The Oprah Magazine, elaborating that the question forced her to “take stock of her life”.
She has penned one column a month over the past 14 years, a time in which she retired from The Oprah Winfrey Show; the highest-rated programme in TV history.
As a champion of living the life one wants, over the years Winfrey has launched her own television network, become the state’s only African-American billionaire and been awarded an honorary degree by Harvard University and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
These experiences are covered in What I Know For Sure, along with some of Winfrey‘s visions and revelations.
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