Browsing by Author "Fox, Justin"

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    'The art of forgetting' : a novel in progress
    (2008) Ball, Kathryn E; Fox, Justin
    'The Art of Forgetting' is a novel in progress. It can be classified as a work of psychological fiction which adopts the form of a circular narrative. The story is set in Northern Wisconsin, USA. Part One takes place in a mental institution and examines the psychological landscape of Kai Hawkin, the protagonist, in response to events in her life; the precise nature of these events is not elaborated upon. Part Two traces her recent history and ends where Part One begins, thus giving background as to why Kai has been committed to psychiatric care. The setting for Part Two alternates between a Native American Indian reservation and a holiday town close by.
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    By hotter winds : the road to Samarkand
    (2014) Tait, Brian; Fox, Justin; Van Heerden, Etienne
    We decided to go to Samarkand. Why Samarkand? No-one was certain, but it sounded exotic, and that was good enough for the four of us. We packed up our lives in London, bought a hardy vehicle, learnt some Russian, obtained letters of invitation from ministries of the interior, and set off. Along the way we ran into some trouble: treason in Croatia; psychosis in Serbia; sedition in Azerbaijan; starvation on the Caspian. And we weren’t even in Central Asia yet. We still had to negotiate desert roads and traverse the Pamir Highway, second-highest in the world. Before reaching Samarkand we’d have lost ten kilogrammes each, seen a hundred busts of Lenin and been harried by a thousand officious border guards and ex-KGB policemen. We discovered a region that is as beautiful as it is mystifying. Stranded ideologically between the Kremlin and the Koran, Central Asia is a baffling league of rival states. Held together loosely by the accident of geography and a common hatred for Russia, the alliance goes no further than that. Turkmen oil and gas merchants, Uzbek nationalists, Kyrgyz mountain folk and Tajik peasants all live in close and unfriendly proximity. Stalin pencilled in their borders on a whim, and with the fall of communism in 1989, many were left stranded, minorities under foreign rule. This is the world of Robert Byron, Colin Thubron, Fitzroy MacLean and Marco Polo; the Samarkand of Omar Khayyam, Timur the Lame, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan; the fantasy of Christopher Marlowe, Edgar Allan Poe, Wole Soyinka and James Elroy Flecker. We wanted to see the land and its people through their eyes, but also through our own. Our journey took us through a land of extremes: over the snowy peaks of the Hindu Kush and through the parched Karakum Desert; across the ancient Amu- and Syr-Darya Rivers, known in the West as the Oxus and Jaxaertes; and ultimately to our destination – the great Silk Road capitals of Bukhara and Samarkand. The last, sad caravanserai had made their final journeys from the turquoise gates many years ago. What would the cities be like now? When the journey was over, and I’d experienced the road to Samarkand for myself, I put my version of it in writing. By Hotter Winds captures the exhilaration and tedium of travel and the shared experience of a journey by car. At the same time it offers narrow glimpses into the history of the faded Silk Road, its cities and its people.
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    Crossing borders: conscious journeys with my family
    (2015) Kamies, Nadia; Fox, Justin; Coovadia, Imraan
    This work of creative non-fiction encompasses episodes of travel motivated by the author’s desire to expose her children to different cultures and philosophies as an antidote to her own experiences of growing up during apartheid. The journeys are undertaken over a period of 18 years, starting in 1993, just before the birth of a democratic South Africa. Crossing borders refers to both personal and physical expansion, juxtaposing the isolation of apartheid with the freedom to explore that which was foreign. The main theme is that of leaving home to extend one’s view of self in relation to the world, inculcating the possibility of a global community of mutual respect. Minor themes are identity and searching for roots and a sense of belonging; religious tolerance, equality, respect, climate change and children’s rights are some of the issues grappled with in countries as diverse as Cuba, Greenland and Sweden. Although each chapter focuses on a different country, themes of dispossession, discrimination, colonialism and struggle run throughout. The author uses travel as the vehicle to educate her children beyond the borders of a family and a country emerging from a repressive past , teaching them to challenge stereotypes and showing them that people are not that different on the other side o f a man -made divide. Underpinning this family memoir is the joy of travel and discovery of a wealth of culture, history and mythology through the children’s eyes. The children’s development is traced from infancy through adolescence to early adulthood and concludes with the hope that the foundation has been laid to make a constructive contribution to a more empathetic society.