The 2025 Eduvos Durban International Book Fair is set to take place from August 14 to 17 at Eduvos, Umhlanga and on 18 August at The Beach Cafe.
I telephoned God, a 40-minute recording of Gary Cummiskey reading a selection of his poetry and released by Sloow Tapes in Belgium, is available for download on Bandcamp.
Curry and Bread is also available at Clarke's bookstore in Cape Town. It is not on the store's website yet, but it is definitely in stock. I will share the link as soon it as it available on the website.
The book's main seller is Made in Durban.
Please come and join us for the launch of Pravasan Pillay's Curry and Bread at the Durban International Book Fair, to be held from 14 to 18 August 2025, at the Eduvos Durban (Umhlanga) Campus.
Renegade eye is a selection of 18 collages by Gary Cummiskey, published by new imprint Turquoise Press. Renegade eye is available as a flip-book on Heyzine.
You can also download it as a PDF here.
Curry and Bread is available from Made in Durban, and will soon be available from Clarke's in Cape Town and select Exclusive Books branches.
I am honoured to have one of my poems appear opposite a drawing by French poet, artist and publisher Robert Roman in Santanu Ray's poetry journal Barnaperon, published in Kolkata, India.
There is also a reproduction of a Dada 64 cover by late French artist and poet Pascal Ulrich.
Pravasan Pillay is a master of storytelling.
The rare kind of writer who can write a thousand words about an innocuous potato chip and keep you hooked. There’s magic in his writing: deeply human, sharply observant, and often quietly profound.
His latest book, Curry and Bread, is now available at madeindurban.co.za.
If you’re the kind of reader who likes to “taste and buy,” here’s a delicious sample from one of the stories in Curry and Bread…
6 Things You Should Know About Eating a Crab Curry
1. A crab curry – given the per kilo price for crabs – is one of the most expensive Durban-style curries to make. It’s also an intimate dish that involves using your hands and mouth a lot, what with all the loud biting and crunching of shells and the sloppy chiselling out of crab meat with your thumb – i.e. it’s not exactly a first-date dish. So, if someone cooks this curry for you or invites you over to share one, you can be sure that they really like you and are super comfortable around you. You should probably marry this person.
2. Eating a crab curry is, apart from working on an oil rig, one of the messiest activities known to humankind. Crab juice and curry squirts everywhere, into your eyes, onto the person sitting opposite you. It dribbles down your chin, arms, and it stains your clothing. Crab curry stains are harder to get out than an in-form Hashim Amla, so it’s strongly advised that you purchase a special T-shirt, to be used only for eating crab curry. Of course, you could also use a bib or napkin but those items are best left for amateur crab curry eaters. After several years, your crab- eating T-shirt will be a beautiful patchwork of built-up curry gravy stains, a sort of abstract impressionist painting of poor table manners.
3. Warning: no matter how proud you are of your crab curry T-shirt, never ever show it to visitors to your home. It is not, as this author has sadly learnt, the conversation piece you think it is.
4. A perfect crab curry is brown-red in colour and its gravy is thin yet deeply rich in flavour, both sour and spicy at the same time. In fact, a good crab curry is so hot that it should cause your eyes to tear, your nose to run, and your scalp to sweat. Tip: if your wife, husband, or partner is emotionally distant, feed them crab curry every day and they will be bawling their eyes out in no time. That’s right, crab curry could very well save your relationship.
5. In terms of etiquette, it’s acceptable, and indeed expected, to stick a crab leg into your mouth and to loudly suck out the delicious, curried juices. However, it is not acceptable to blow into the crab leg, pretending that it’s a saxophone and that you are John Coltrane.
6. After you have eaten a crab curry, its gravy will have, crab T-shirt or not, left its mark and odour on your body. Thus, it is strongly advised that you take two showers. The first shower should be taken in conjunction with a powerful sheep dip as a disinfectant to get rid of any trace of the curry. Once dried off with a towel, you should take a second shower to rid yourself of the poisonous sheep dip which has now likely seeped into your skin. A little sheep dip poisoning is par for the course when eating crab curry, so ignore the retching and think fondly of your next crab feast.
Anivesh Singh
Good to see that Shafinaaz Hassim, currently in Polokwane, has received her copy of Pravasan Pillay's Curry and Bread, the latest title by Dye Hard Press.
Curry and Bread is available from Made in Durban and will soon be available from Clarke's in Cape Town as well as select Exclusive Books outlets.
Catastrophes choisies et autres poèmes -- selected poems of South African Beat poet Sinclair Beiles, translated into French by Bertrand Grimault, published by Monoquini, Bordeaux, France. Limited to 99 numbered copies.
