Dayspring by C. J. Driver to be launched at Clarke’s Bookshop

Karavan Press and uHlanga invite you to the Cape Town launch of C. J. Driver‘s posthumous memoir Dayspring, edited and with a foreword by J. M. Coetzee. The book will be launched with a discussion between David Attwell and Maeder Osler.

Tuesday, 16 July 2024, at Clarke’s Bookshop, 199 Long Street, Cape Town. Free entry!

It has been such an honour and joy to work on this stunning memoir with J. M. Coetzee, Dorothy Driver and Nick Mulgrew, and I look forward so much to sharing the book with readers.

I want to thank J. M. Coetzee and the Driver Family for entrusting us with the manuscript. I did not know Jonty myself, but I read his work, and we corresponded occasionally about his New Contrast subscription when I was the business manager and one of the board members of the SALJ. He was always supportive and kind and lovely to engage with. Reading the manuscript he left behind when he passed away last year in May, I knew that I would not be able to do it justice as a publisher without the help and support of Jonty’s last poetry publisher, Nick Mulgrew of uHlanga Press. I cannot thank Nick enough for embarking on this co-publication with me. We have been working together in all kinds of capacities since 2015, but this is the first time that uHlanga Press and Karavan Press are co-publishing a book, and what a special one it is. Beautifully written, tenderly honest, insightful and simply extraordinary, Dayspring is a literary gem.

Read an excerpt here: Johannesburg Review of Books

Join us for the launch on the 16th!