Franschhoek Literary Festival | From the greenroom with Charlotte and Paige - WRAP

本站添加: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Good morning from the very last day of the French Literary Festival here on behalf of News 24 Charlotte Bar and with Paige Nick and we are wrapping up.

[00:00:11]It's been one of the biggest festivals with the biggest programs ever and it was kind of almost hard to well, you couldn't be in so many places all at one time. I think that was one of the challenges.

[00:00:25]>> terms of the number of events. Like you had so many events to choose from. I think the readers had a really hard had to make some really hard decisions.

[00:00:35]There was a lot about crime. I mean whether it was politicians stealing our money very much non-fiction to crime thrillers to satanic cult.

[00:00:48]Yeah. Yeah, they even added a third News 24 breakfast this year. Those News 24 breakfasts the crime and politics they're the first panels events to sell out. I think they sell out in in minutes and then people beg for tickets. So this year they added actually this morning a third News 24 breakfast which was also a sellout. So that's just going exponentially. I don't know if that's a don't know if that's sad or not that we we have such an appetite for crime. We do have such an appetite for crime and that's maybe says something about us as a nation that this is a reality that [clears throat] we live in and live with and and people are very hungry for insights and knowledge on those subjects whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

[00:01:31]It's true. So to interrupt you I got all excited but we we we get fatigue about some subjects like we got a lot of we had a lot of covid fatigue and but we don't seem to get fatigue about the corruption and the whistleblowing which thank goodness. Well, how can you get tired of something that's just there all the time?

[00:01:48]Okay, sorry. Enough with the cynicism.

[00:01:50]There was so many other wonderful sessions that we went to among us Um, livened livened that a little. Um, I absolutely adored meeting the cookbook writers who started on TikTok and ended up being massive best-sellers. Phumzile, uh, whose pancake recipe got 1.6 million views on Instagram.

[00:02:16]Um, to Siba Mtongana, the cooking husband, who's trying to drag some reluctant South African men into the kitchen. Um, enticing them with uh, good chisa nyama recipes. And, um, I don't know, I think his next book should be the cleaning up husband.

[00:02:34]>> [laughter] >> Anushka Joshi, one of the big international heavy hitters. He was just the warmest, friendliest, most approachable person. Although I was a bit intimidated to meet her. And she had the best jewelry. Yeah, she really did.

[00:02:49]I was also really intimidated to meet her and then was amazed by how down-to-earth and friendly um, and incredibly human she was. And then also I was quite surprised international authors, um, Sam Dullemond, who's an author and historian. And I was expecting this old white guy. And he's like 30 and he looks so incredibly young. So, it always surprises. You never really know what authors look like because obviously you know what their books look like. And then you come here and you meet them and they're larger than life. There's no AI there. Larger than life human beings with great taste and jewelry or much younger than you thought they would be or, you know, much more approachable. So, that's a that's a big >> we'd have to say that Rachel Kolisi probably won the popularity contest.

[00:03:34]I guess.

[00:03:35]I think so. In a way she was she was extremely friendly. There were a lot of There were a lot of Rachel fans here.

[00:03:42]>> Yeah. Um, so so that was interesting. Um, Oh, yeah. The outtakes. The AI was pervasive. The huge is one of the biggest conversations, uh, at the festival was AI. I know I I In just about every single event and panel, even the ones that weren't about AI. AI was huge. That That was one of my >> Absolutely. And there was so much fear about AI now. After hearing some of the stuff.

[00:04:08]>> I'm a little more terrified. I mean, apparently, according to Emma Sadlier, you know, even letting your kids watch Peppa Pig can bring up some terrible things on YouTube. But anyway, that's for another day. Um, but the creative people who were here, the publishers, the authors, these are these are humans.

[00:04:27]These are human beings, charming, approachable, intelligent human beings.

[00:04:32]And I don't think that this kind of creativity that we've seen here this weekend is going to be easily replaced by a robot. Viva, I hope you're right.

[00:04:42]Thank you very much. And for more snippets, you can keep going to News 24 Live and find us on the socials, too.