Reading Matters (week 038) 16 Sept 2025

Remember the 1970s ‘scissors murder’ in which teenager Marlene Lehnberg stabbed to death the wife of her 40-something lover, Christiaan van der Linde?  Author David Cornwell has taken that as the basis of his poetic novel, Hell of a Country (Kwela).

This extraordinary true-crime story will have you on the edge of your seat. Maybe you’ll Google Marlene Lehnberg as I did, to recall that hell of a murder.

Life Itself (Reaktion Books / Blue Weaver) chronicles a photographic history of SA from colonial times to the present. Simon A. Clarke is a senior lecturer at Falmouth University, West Cornwall, England and his excellent text is illustrated with pictures by photographers whose names will ring bells for you – such as Gisele Wulfsohn, a dear friend of mine.

Alistair Mackay is fast becoming a SA author of note. Some of his wry, insightful short stories have been put together in The Lucky Ones (Kwela Books). In it, he travels from New York to Jo’burg, and the Tsitsikamma – and across centuries.

We’re back to our sleeping brains and what they reveal about our waking lives in This is Why you Dream (Cornerstone Press / PRH) by Rahul Jandial. This time I concentrate on why we need nightmares.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall