Fred de Vries’s voice – his preoccupations, frame of reference and intellectual demeanour – are those of an inside-outsider. He has lived in South Africa for years, but maintains a vital distance from a country on which so many of us battle to keep perspective. It is the unique place from which he speaks that makes his writing so important, persuasive and endlessly intriguing. — Michael Titlestad, Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WISER)

Fred de Vries – bilingual travel writer, journalist, published author, music fundi and coffee shop intellectual – has set a precedent with his interviews, which open up a kaleidoscope of the brave and colourful in the arts, media,
politics and literature. The artists, writers, musicians, activists and entrepreneurs interviewed are representative of the cultural scene, emerging and mainstream, of postapartheid South Africa in the early ‘noughties’.

Features the following interviewees, complete with photos: Abdullah Ibrahim, Gabeba Baderoon, Vusi Beauchamp, Nikiwe Bikitsha, Bok van Blerk, Jeanetta Blignaut, Chris Chameleon, Kudzanai Chiurai, Toast Coetzer, Melinda Ferguson, Fokofpolisiekar, Karl Gietl, Steve Hofmeyr, Japan and I, Jaxon Rice, June Josephs, Ronelda Kamfer, Anton Kannemeyer, DJ Kenzhero, Adam Levin, Eric Mafuna, Rian Malan, Maja Maljevic, Danie Marais, Lodi Matsetela, Benjy Mudie, Jim Neversink, Herman Niebuhr, Marlene Van Niekerk, Prinses Petro, Warren Siebrits, Elinor Sisulu, Yabadaka Shamah, Henri Vergon, Ivan Vladislavić, Ingrid Winterbach and Helen Zille.

Fred de Vries  is a travel writer, journalist and  published author

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