Secret Bookshelf
A warm welcome to the temple of Zen Athena, holder of bygone and fresh literary gems of sagacious import, issuing from the guts of bards.
Bookshelf Authors
Introduction:
Spellbinding is the Word, the magical currency of the human mind, the bridge or bane of dreams! I see myself writing this in a dejavu premonition, and am soothed by the mystery. Behold this secret bookshelf! It is a gateway into the unknown, a ticket to ride the love-bug, a call to perpetual awakening!
Feel free to download the books exhibited here, whose respective copyrights are hereby asserted. They are cedar seeds tossed by elves in the eaves of leaves. They are for-giving. They love thems-elves unconditionally. They feel safe NOW.
If you would like to purchase a printed physical version of an ebook kindly contact us at zenolympiad@gmail.com for an affordable quote! Books are custom-print-and-bound by professional printers and bookbinders. You can choose to have your book printed in colour or black and white.
The Bookshelf
1. Egbert van Bart
Interspersed within spacious welcomings
his dedication to her’s
Basho! Goes theGrant’s Gong
There is no right and wrong, binaries and/or duality art
lions, you, me, rightly tightly in humane karossies
come we play noughts an crosses?
How am I to describe him, whose silence is radiant?
You can order a printed copy OR get the free ebook Voetnotas by Egbert van Bart here:
2. Milton Schorr
2.1 The Game of The Heart (a play)
We went to see Mr. Schorr’s play ”The Game of The Heart” in Grahamstown, while still in high school. Jacob’s mom, a teacher, had brought her drama students, and Darren and Roger had joined us for the tour.
Mr. Milton Schorr’s play was inspired. Like life – viscerally lived by actors upon a grand stage saturated with reality. A youthful runaway from Parow named Japie Greyling finds himself staggering among moonlit karoo rocks in exhaustion, finally reaching an old farmhouse manned by an old butler named Clovis Crabbly. In his hunchbacked retreat Clovis’ ways have become warped, and Japie seems to him the perfect candidate for a risky experiment involving the souls of trees. But stout Japie, who is not to be easily overcome, is really the antidote for the soul of Clovis…
Mirthful as a giggling child, The Game of the Heart is a quintessentially Bushmanland play.
You can order a printed copy OR download the free ebook here:
3. Etienne van Bart
The books presented here, for the enjoyment and edification of the reading public, and moreover, for the cause of historical posterity, are the result of a life-long journey in literature that can be traced back to when my parents read stories to me at bed-time, such as Tolkein’s fantastical tales. During High School my friends and I wrote creative essays for the sheer enjoyment of it, and the swelling passion I felt then for the written Word has only deepened. Here, at long last, are the fruits of my literary labours ever since!
Book 1: Another day in Paradox – the early writings of Etienne van Bart and friends.
When he was in early high school Etienne discovered the joy of creative writing. It happened in English class in grade 9, when his friend Jacob’s essay, about a nerve-wracking first swimming lesson, was read out loud by their quirky teacher Mr Graham, to the thraldom and amusement of everyone listening – an astute bunch, I tell ya, oh thou class of 2008, Westerford! In that spell-binding moment Etienne perceived the magic of writing, and has been profoundly engaged with this art form ever since.
Another day in Paradox presents the trajectory of his growth as a writer through a chronological (but non-linear) sequence of short stories and poetry created during the years of high school and early adulthood. With permission, a few pieces of striking writing by close friends and relatives that were of seminal influence on him, such as Jacob’s Swimming Lesson, are included too.
You can order a printed copy OR get the free ebook here: Another day in Paradox
Book 2: The Adventures of Leeu Gamka, bushman! – by Etienne van Bart
In his mid-twenties Etienne van Bart left Cape Town, where he had gone to school and grown up, in search of adventure and authentic experience in the rural hinterland of South Africa. In doing so he was responding to a deep call whose voice was composed of the enchantment of memory and the allure of brave new experiences within a beloved heartland. The story goes:
Etienne’s journey is precipitated by the offer of a teaching post at a school in deep-rural Masemola, Limpopo Province, home to the Pedi-speaking people. Here, within a wistful landscape of undulating lowveld pimpled with cacti koppies, Etienne re-imagines himself as a bushman, Leeu Gamka, and pens his day-to-day adventures, in poetry and prose, in a leather journal that he has brought with him on his travels.
The story continues a season later, once the vicissitudes of fortune have seen Leeu Gamka travelling onwards (but geographically backwards) to refuge in the hamlet of Groot Marico, North-West Province, where his eccentric godparents reside. But Groot Marico has its own brooding bewitchments in store for Leeu Gamka, whose temporary stop-over there soon blurs into the twilight of a long, haunted faery tale.
You can order a printed copy OR get the free ebook here: Leeu Gamka
Book 3: Zorro Rides Again – by Etienne van Bart
Afrikaans writer Pieter Pieterse once remarked, ”Sometimes you have to travel a great distance in order to come a short way.” Mild-mannered Eduard van Delft realizes the deep meaning of these words when, after years “abroad” in the rural north of South Africa where he plied his trade as a maverick educator, artist and tennis coach, he unexpectedly returns home to his immediate family in Redelinghuys, Western Cape.
A succinct and ebullient literary outing, Zorro Rides Again is the story of an artist’s homecoming to a world that he had almost forgotten – but which had not forgotten him. Set in the quiescent hamlet of Redelinghuys on the Verlorenvlei estuary in the foothills of the Cedarberge, this book shines with a voyager’s happiness at having found a place and time he is fully present to.
Zorro Rides Again is the first instalment of Etienne’s Zen Olympiad Trilogy. Stay tuned for the sequels!
You can order a printed copy or download the free ebook here: Zorro Rides Again
Book 4: The Fountain of Memory (anthology of student’s creative writing) – edited by Etienne van Bart
Memory springs eternal, and sometimes it is the most transient of visitors to the Marico who leave the starkest marks. Like the writer Herman Charles Bosman, the original ”teacher in the bushveld”, who in six brief months internalized such astounding folklore from local farmers – the parents of his pupils – that it served as a fountain of literary creation for the rest of his life.
Almost a century later, the teacher Etienne van Bart trekked into the Marico and encountered a similar fairy-tale setup: intending to stop-over for only a few months on his way back to the Cape, he awoke instead seven years later, like Herklaas van Wyk, to find that the dragon of the Marico, the Black Mamba, had at last decreed that his time there was up.
But in the meantime he had learned enough to last him a lifetime.
Arguably, Etienne’s apogee in the Marico was during the last two years he lived there, when he ascended the high rostrum of the schoolmaster’s stage, and taught English Home Language (and all sorts of philosophical ideas with it) to students at an historic high school in Zeerust. It was the high-watermark of his sojourn in District Groot Marico. For though the experience was short-lived he drank, along with his students, at the Fountain of Memory. This is their testimony.
You can order a printed copy or download the free ebook here:
3. Dawn Koshy
Dawn Koshy was born in Mahikeng, the third son of mathematics teachers heralding from Kerala, India. He attended Hoerskool Zeerust, where he excelled academically as the top student in his year. During his grade 10 year his path crossed that of Etienne van Bart, who was his English teacher. Etienne’s passionate approach to literature and creative writing awakened Dawn’s latent abilities as a sublime writer, and by the end of that enthralling year it was clear that creative writing was becoming for Dawn more than simply a frivolous chore.
Dawn has since set out on a blazing path of writing, creating the foundation of an epic fantasy trilogy characterised by a swift cinematic prose style, interspersed with enigmatic poetry – while completing his final year of school. His Defier series is set within and beyond an Obsidian Desert where dragons and ”barbarians” lurk in the shadows of an ambiguous Kingdom, and features the dual heroes Renavar and Kanaan, two Krivann Marauders whose bright swordsmanship and bowmanship are often all that stand between themselves and the abyss of their foes.
Dawn has submitted a short sample, Chapter 1 “Sons of Blood” of Book 1 of his Defier series, while we await the completion of his first riveting novel and upcoming trilogy. For further glimpses of Dawn’s bright talent as a writer, you can also find a selection of his poems, creative essays and literary essays in Etienne van Bart’s high school collection The Fountain of Memory.
You can download Dawn Koshy’s Defier sample here:
5. Classic and Sacred Books
5.1 Bushman Folklore – by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd
Order a printed copy OR download the free ebook:
5.2 The Complete Fragments of Heraclitus – edited by Professor William Harris
Order a printed copy OR download the free ebook:
5.3 The Arabian Nights – Translated into English by Sir Richard Burton
Order a printed copy OR download the free ebook:
5.4. The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words – Edited by Arthur Osborne
Order a printed copy OR download the free ebook:
5.5. The Voynich Manuscript – Author(s) Unknown
This mysterious book requires a brief introduction: found in a medieval-era monastery in Celtic Iberia, this archaic treatise has baffled readers and cryptographers alike because it is written in a completely unknown language! Verily, The Voynich Manuscript is a modern-day enigma! Is it an elaborate hoax, or the careful treatise of a medicine man?
Order a printed copy OR download the free ebook:
5.6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (in three parts)
Ebook Part 1:
Ebook Part 2:
Ebook Part 3:
The Zen Olympiad 
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