Page 29 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 1 2025

BOOKS
WORLD CHAMPIONS

By Jonty Winch and 2023.
South Africa won the 2023 Rugby
World Cup by defeating New In this way, the Second Edition
Zealand 12-11 in front of more continues to provide both the most
than 80 000 spectators at the relevant and most current history of
Stade de France. As this Second South African rugby and the many
Edition shows, in winning the Webb organisations and individuals that
Ellis Cup for the fourth time, the have contributed to its evolution.
Springboks became the sport’s
most successful team. Back-to- Price: R405.00
back victories in Yokohama in
2019 and Paris in 2023 inspired a
renewed appreciation of the skills
that have always existed across
South Africa’s racial spectrum.
In its telling of this story, World
Champions Second Edition again
offers readers insights that go
beyond the media-led rendition of
South African rugby.

Further additions to this Second
Edition include a revised introduction,
expanded index, updates to the
history of South Africa’s first steps
toward playing international rugby
in the late nineteenth century, as
well as additional content about,
inter alia institutions such as the
SPUD: THE REUNION winning teams in 1995, 2007, 2019
national governing bodies, and the

By John van de Ruit
It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of INTO THE UNCUT GRASS
93 matriculated and the boys went their separate
ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the
Crazy 8 – Rambo, Mad Dog, Vern, Fatty, Garth Garlic,
Boggo, Simon and Spud – have not kept in touch. Or By Trevor Noah
at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives From Trevor Noah, the author of the #1 bestselling memoir Born a
an invitation from the school to attend the Ten-Year Crime, comes a gorgeously illustrated fable in the tradition of The
Reunion weekend, Spud is determined to avoid the Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse about a young child’s journey
event at all costs, but he hasn’t reckoned with the into the world
bombardment of intrusive messages and threatening beyond the shadow
phone calls from his former dorm mates. of home, a magical
landscape where
No one is going to bend his arm, not this time; he is he discovers
immune to peer pressure and wise to Rambo’s devious the secrets
manipulation techniques. Spud has moved on. And, of solidarity,
anyway, he has enough to worry about on the home connection, and
front. At 28 Spud is stuck in a one-third life crisis. finding peace
with the people
Reflecting on a decade of spectacular non-achievement, we love.
at a point where he’s coming to realise that his glittering
stage career might have stalled before it’s even begun, Infused with
casts him into deep gloom. For the former scholarship Trevor’s
kid, the prospect of once again having to measure up to signature
his blue-blooded school friends – and be found wanting wit and
– has him riddled with anxiety. Not only that. imagination, in
collaboration
Spud still doesn’t have a serious girlfriend, which has with visionary
seen him resort to a questionable international bath- artist Sabina
sexting relationship with an old flame. Not to mention Hahn, it's
that circumstances have forced him to move back in a tale for
with his parents and his senile grandmother, Wombat, readers of all
whose walks never end where they began. After a wildly ages – to be
unsuccessful fishing trip with his father, as well as a read aloud or
return to his old way of figuring things out – writing in his read alone.
diary – to his surprise, Spud finds his reunion resistance
crumbling. Curiosity and courage win the day. It’s just a Price:
weekend, after all … what could possibly go wrong? R409.00
Price: R360.00
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