Main working desk in the nonfiction room of Late Imperial Library, with a laptop, printer, dictionaries and thesauruses, and tchotchkes, in front of a 1980s student desk, and shelves of nonfiction volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname. Post quotation from Toni Morrison's "The War on Error", Amnesty International Lecture, Edinburgh, 29 August 2004. Republished in THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD: SELECTED ESSAYS, SPEECHES, AND MEDITATIONS (Knopf, 2019).

Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from S. S. Abdool Karrim through David Crystal.

Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Frederic Jameson through David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen.

Shelves of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Antonio Negri through Philippe Sands.

I think it is time for a modern War Against Error. A deliberately heightened battle against cultivated ignorance, enforced silence, and metastasizing lies.
▪️Toni Morrison, 2004

Saturday morning in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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#BookSky 📚💙 📚🖋

Cluttered desk with dictionaries and thesauruses, stationery, a printer, knick-knacks, photographs, and beyond it a student desk with a laptop.

Late evening tea in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary; it is 19 ⁰C at 22h00 in #NorthJozi, which feels unbearable . . .

Tropical nights on the Highveld.

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Two rows of bookcases arranged perpendicularly, the volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Benedict Anderson and Perry Anderson and Kwame Anthony Appiah on the left through Leslie Fiedler and Eva Figes and Shulamith Firestone on the right.

Two rows of bookcases arranged perpendicularly, the volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname, from A.C. Grayling and Stephen Greenblatt and Elizabeth Grosz on the left through Audre Lorde and Isabel Lorey and James Lovelock on the right.

Two rows of bookcases arranged perpendicularly, the volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Karl Marx and André Maurois and Kobena Mercer on the left through David Roediger and Jacqueline Rose and Philip Roth and Sheila Rowbotham on the right.

Two rows of bookcases arranged perpendicularly, the volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Adam Smith and Susan Sontag and Wole Soyinka and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on the left, to the poetry shelf on the right witb T.S. Eliot and Odyseus Elytis and Robert Frost and Eduardo Galeano and Allen Ginsberg and Nikki Giovanni.

A day on which a life comes to an end is still far from being the end of days.
▫️Jenny Erpenbeck, 2014 [2012; translated by Susan Bernofsky]

Morning in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi — 24 December 2025.

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Duplicate volumes culled from the shelves of the Nonfiction Room of the Late Imperial Library stacked on the main desk.

The first cull of duplicates in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary is done. One is tempted to return some items to the shelves but one shall be strong. Now the fiction from Lehmann through Prawer Jhabvala needs pruning . . .

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The DVDs of BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID in front of a laptop and a tablet device.

We settle into the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary for an evening of gazing in awe at and remembering the talent of Robert Redford: in memoriam.

Self-photograph in the Nonfiction Room of the Late Imperial Library in North Jozi, surrounded by bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by author and editor surname.

At night in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary, the Don of #NorthJozi focuses on reading not-quite-through the unfolding apocalypse.

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View of a cluttered flat desk with a portable typewriter, a stack of books (Aimé Césaire on top), a printer, various dictionaries and thesauruses, style guides and encyclopaedia volumes, a tablet, and assorted bibelots, as well as a red fez and a framed photograph.

View of a laptop on the work surface of a 1980s upright student desk, framed photographs, and volumes of nonfiction including Gibbon to Gordimer and Grosz to Hausgaard.

Shelves of nonfiction from Tariq Ali through Umberto Eco.

Shelves of nonfiction from Pablo Iglesias through Thomas Pakenham.

Cataloguing new inductees into the #LateImperialLibrary in the #NonFictionRoom on a Sunday afternoon in chilly, wintry #NorthJozi.

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Photograph of a cluttered flat desk in front of which is an upright student desk with bookshelves, and bookcases of volumes alphabetised by author and editor surname.

Early evening tea in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary, hearing children's voices playing out the last of their winter school holidays after sunset in #NorthJozi.

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Cluttered flat desk with laptop, printer, tablets, books, stationery, CDs, DVDs, dictionaries, thesauruses, style guides, binelots, a bakelite rotary telephone, and a mug of hot chocolate.

Upright student desk with shelves (volumes alphabetised by author or editor surname, from Gibbon through Gordimer), a Yugoslavia made Olivetti Lettera 31 portable typewriter, notebook, binelots, framed photographs, text markers, and a dried protea. The bookcase to.the right of the desk has volumes from Elizabeth Grosz and Jerzy Grotowski through Herman and Chomsky.

The bookcases behind, to the left, and in front of the flat desk.

The bookcases to the right, behind, and in front of the flat desk.

Sunday night in the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi begins in the #NonFictionRoom with a mug of hot cocoa and a film. Perhaps some early Almodóvar . . .

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Cluttered flat desk in front of an upright student desk surrounded by bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by the surnames of the author(s) or editor(s).

Volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Margaret Atwood through Rebecca Fraser.

Volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Alberto Manguel through Salman Rushdie.

Volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Studs Terkel through Robert Young, and poetry from Geoffrey Chaucer through Oswald Mtshali.

A very cold Saturday afternoon, midwinter in #NorthJozi, cocooned in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary.

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Photograph of an upright student desk from.the mid-1980s next to a bookcase; on the desk there is a notebook, a portable typewriter, framed photographs, postcards, and stationery, alongnwirh various bibelots. The shelf above the work surface has books alphabetised by author or editor surname from Gibbon through Nadine Gordimer, and the bookcase next to the desk volumes from Elizabeth Grosz and Jerzy Grotowski through Dick Hebdige and Hegel.

Two shelves on three bookcases with volumes from Tariq Ali through Thpmas Aquinad on the left, from John Berger through Karl Dietrich Bracher in the centre, and from Noam Chomsky through Hélène Cixous on the right.

Three shelves on two bookcases adjacent to one anothee, with volumes from Iris Murdoch and Thomas Nagel through Vance Packard and Camille Paglia on the left, and from Plutarch and Neil Postman through Philip Roth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sheila Rowbotham on the right.

Main desk with bibelots, thesauruses, dictionaries, a printer, tablets, and a notebook. Bookcases surround the desk but onlynthe shelves to the left and in front of the desk are visible here.

Midnight, midwinter, in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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Desk with laptop and other electronic devices.

Large mug of hot chocolate with Philip Glass CDs and book of Dutch art from a Rijksmuseum exhibit feom the early 2000s.

Bookcases of nonfiction.

Bookcases of nonfiction.

Friday night with hot chocolate and pre-millennial Jennifer Ehle in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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Two mugs of tea on a cluttered flat desk with laptop and tablets, dictionaries, printer, notebooks, bibelots, and against the walls bookcases of nonfiction organised alphabetially by author or editor surname, and an upright student desk with a still-functioning Yugoslavia-made Olivetti Lettera 31 typewriter from 1989.

View of trees in autumn colours surrounding a swimming pool on a brightly sunny but cool autumn day.

Wispy clouds in the autumn sky, looking northwards across the tree canopy and the lift towers of the art deco block downslope.

The sun flaring in the blue sky over #NorthJozi; true rain clouds not likely to return until September, if not later. Winter will be dry but bright and sunny.

The bane of official electronic correspondence—recall Sisyphus—is the equivalent of HPV to the intellect . . .

Typing away in the #NonFictionRoom of the #NewImperialLibrary in autumnal #NorthJozi.

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Main desk, laptop, tablet, printer, dictionaries, DVDs, CDs, framed photos, tchotchkes, spectscles, surrounded by bookcases.

Upright 1980s student desk with Olivetti Lettera 31 (made in Yugoslavia in 1989), framed photos and postcards, brick-block mugs, a 1930s glass vase from the late empress's childhood, notebooks, and bookcases of nonfiction, volumes from Freud through Kapuściński.

Bookcases, nonfiction volumes from Samir Amin through Albert Einstein.

Bookcases, nonfiction volumes from Luce Irigaray through Christopher Norris and Aletta J. Norval.

Teatime: at night in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi; contact lens fatigue . . .

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Facing northeast, the view is of a cluttered main desk with a laptop, tablet, printer, dictionaries, framed photograph, CDs, stationery, tchotchkes, and against the far walls, a 1980s upright student desk, and bookcases with shelves of nonfiction.

Bookcases and an upright student desk from the 1980s flank a closed glass door onto the balcony on which a table handmade by my father in 1952 can be seen (facing north).

Bookcases on three sides of the flat desk in the first photograph (facing west).

Facing east, the bookcases to the right of the flat desk if you are seated at it facing north.

Sunday night tea in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in a very chilly #NorthJozi.

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Cluttered main desk with laptop, tablet, dictionaries, a mug of tea, a printer, stationery, and various tchotchkes; a second, upright student desk and bookcases holding volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname surround the desk.

Bookcases of nonfiction along two perpendicular walls, with other bookcases reflected in the glass of the door to the balcony.

Bookcases at right angled with nonfiction on the left of the frame, and poetry on the right facing fhe observer.

View into the room from the balcony side, showing framed images in the foreground backing onto the flat desk in the first photograph, behind which are arranged two sets of bookcases at right angles, and through the door into the passage, another smaller bookcase of fiction can be seen. Several tchotchkes are arranged around various parts of the room.

Evening tea in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary, #NorthJozi, contemplating a film or a visit with The Master to mark the day of his birth.

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View of the main working desk with laptop, tablet, printer, dictionaries and thesauruses, CDs, stationery, notepad, pens, moneyboxes, framed photographs, and beyond these, an upright student desk with shelves and bookcases.

Opposite view of the room from that in the previous photograph, showing the edge of the main desk with tablet and frqmed photograph and games and dictionaries, and on three sides of the desk, bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname. Tariq Ramadan, Rudolf Rocker, David Roediger, Salman Rushdie, and Bertrand Russell can be seen on the shelves on the left; Tariq Ali, Theodore W. Allen, Althusser, Perry Anderson, and Margaret Atwood through Brink, Butler, Chomsky, Cixous, Coetzee, Collini, and Patricia Hill Collins are on the far wall; De Beauvoir, De Lauretis, Deleuze and Guattari, Didion, and Durkheim are on the shelves on the right.

Photograph of the 1980s upright student desk next to and perpendicular to bookcases of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname; on the desk a Yugoslavia made Olivetti Lettera 31 typewriter, framed photographs and Van Gogh and Rembrandt prints from the Rijksmuseum shop, and a desk lamp. The shelved volumes range from Freud through Gibbon and Giddens to Grayling and Havel and Hazan and Herman & Chomsky; Locke, Berkeley, and Hume can be seen in the foreground on the right.

Vire of the back of the flat desk, looking into the study from the balcony, showing the backs of the dictionaries, a large framed photograph of a group of people celebrating on a beach, CDs, and shelves in a passage through a door. Bookcases line three sides of the frame.

Early autumn Monday mid-morning in #NorthJozi: working up towards focus on the first full day in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary during this recess.

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Photograph of bookcases ateanged along two perpendicular walls, with nonfiction alphabetised from S.S. Abdool Karim & Q. Abdool Karim through Richard Dawkins on the left, to Margaret Daymond et al througg Sigmund Freud on the right.

The chaos of misshelving: bookcases along two perpendicular walls, nonfiction from Sigmund Freud through Aldous Huxley on the left, and from Pablo Iglesias througg Amin Maalouf against the far wall in the centre, and on the right stacks of books by authors later in the alphabet unorganised.

View (from the garret) through a rain spattered window of a swimming pool surrounded by the trees of the garden.

View of the neighbouring building's art deco lift shafts beneath grey sky, seen through a rain spattered window pane.

One got as far as Maalouf in alphabetising the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary on this miserably wet and cold Sunday in #NorthJozi – all the weather but none of the eros of Amsterdam – when one discovered missing Ds and Gs and Hs.

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Photograph of the main desk surrounded by bookcases.

This apartment with three rooms and a hallway has absorbed more grief, inspiration, reproaches, arguments, and memories than Yasnaya Polyana.
▫️Viktor Shklovsky, 1931

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Sunday night in the #LateImperialLibrary's #NonFictionRoom; heading for 18 ⁰C at midnight in #NorthJozi.

Photograph of piles of books on various surfaces (including a big desk in the centre of the room) and bookcases flanking a door leading into a naturally lit enclosed balcony.

To shelves on two bookcases with volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surname from Aristotle through A.J. Ayer on the left to Braxton & McLaughlin (eds) through Albert Camus on the right.

Two shelves on two bookcases with volumes of nonfiction alphabetised by author or editor surnname from Roland Barthes through Norberto Bobbio on the left to Noam Chomsky through Ta-Nehisi Coates on the right.

Thunderclouds rolling across the north of Johannesburg.

Sunday shelving in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary as thunder rolls across #NorthJozi.

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Photograph of the main desk in the study.

Half a litre of late night hot chocolate in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

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Photograph of a desk in a study; stationery, desklamp, printer, laptop, tablet, mini Zen garden, Rudolf Rocker's "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism", framed photograph, dictionaries and thesauruses, DVD, CD, and beyond the desk, bookcases of nonfiction.

Bookcases of nonfiction and framed photographs.

Bookcases of nonfiction.

Portable typewriter on a cloth-covered table below windows open to patches of blue sky behind clouds on a sunny day.

Catching up on electronic correspondence in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi, and longing for the days of handwritten epistolary exchanges.

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Work desk in the study, with two Friesian cow print mugs of herbal tea at the end of a long day takingg a group of young people around the Constitution Hill complex in Johannesburg, site of South Africa's highest court, which was in session to hear arguments about the validity of a lower court's judgment on customary marriage recognition. A notebook and pen can be seen in the foreground; around it are other notebooks, dictionaries and thesauruses, a tablet, a printer, a CD, a DVD, stationery, a rotary pencil sharpener, various books (including a pile of volumes which have to be read for two panels at a book fair in late March), a framed photograph, and an external DVD player.

Two shelves of two bookcases.

Two shelves of two bookcases.

An upright student desk with a Yugoslavia made Olivetti Lettera typewriter, framed photos and postcards (one of "De Nachtwacht"), stationery, a desklamp, and cards with Ursula K. Le Guin's personal inscription to the account holder. Next to the desk is a bookcasenon which various volumes can be seen (including the JACT textbooks for Ancient Greek, some Luce Irigaray, Ilan Pappe, Orhan Pamuk, and some Derrick Jensen) and a soapstone box in the shape of Africa.

If human life is not to become dusty and uninteresting it is important to realise that there are things that have a value which is quite independent of utility.
▫️Bertrand Russell, 1949

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#CerebralRinse at night in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi.

Photograph of two desks surrounded by bookcases of non-fiction in the process of being organised. The flat office desk in front has a manual portable typewriter, various dictionaries and thesauruses, stationery, a printer, a tablet, a framed photograph, notebooks, a desklamp, and two cups of espresso on a tray with the Mozambican map printed on it. The upright student desk behind the flat desk has another portable typewriter, a desklamp, various framed photographs and postcard sides prints, stationery, two toy brick mugs, a Paddington money box, two containers of 1990s computer disks, and above the work surface, shelves of non-fiction.

Noontime in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary in #NorthJozi: technically too late for coffee, but the imperious will is weaker than the imperial addiction, so one shall be awake for longer later.

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Photograph of espresso in two Ethiopian cups in front of three bookcases of unorganised non-fiction.

Photograph of two cups of espresso on a desk.

Photograph of a swimmjng pool in a garden shades by trees catching the morning sunlight.

Photograph of the blue skt with scattered cirrus clouds in Johannesburg.

Morning coffee in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary on a crisp morning in late summer. Duty is indeed a hard taskmaster. Time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

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Photograph of the work surface of an upright student desk, with an Italian branded Yugoslavian made portable typewriter, notepad and pen, a copy of Multatuli's "Max Havelaar", a red teapot, tea poured into a white cup resting on a saucer, various framed photographs and postcard sized prints, a desk lamp, a paper clip dispenser, a 1930s white glass vase, and volumes of non-fiction not yet alpbabetised by author or editor surname. A Paddington Bear money box, and a brick-block mug with Lego figurines attached to it can also be seen next to the desk lamp.

Thee in de namiddag in de #LateImperialLibrary #NonFictionRoom, herlezen over koffie. Zomer in #NorthJozi.

#CerebralRinse #LongDaysJourneyIntoNight

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Photograph of a flat desk in front of an upright student desk and against the wall behind, bookcases of non-fiction yet to be organised alphabetically by author and editor surnames. On the desks are typewriters, a tablet, desk lamps, dictionaries, thesauruses, pencils and pens, notebooks, framed photographs and prints, and a laptop computer.

Yes; home library, 40 years in the making, but only six weeks in its current location. Currently in the #NonFictionRoom or study, awaiting the link for an online meeting, and there is a loud and very wet thunderstorm raging in #NorthJozi.

View of a student desk (from 1984) on the left with two portable typewriters, a tablet, a framed photograph, and various volumes of non-fiction not ordered yet; to the right are two bookcases perpendicular to one another, also with stacks of non-fiction not yet ordered.

View across a flat desk of bookcases perpendicular to one another with empty shelves and various volumes of non-fiction stacked but not ordered yet.

View of bookcases perpendicular to one another with empty shelves and various volumes of non-fiction stacked but not ordered yet.

View of bookcases perpendicular to one another with empty shelves and various volumes of non-fiction stacked but not ordered yet.

Now we need to wrestle order from the chaos, and we shall begin in the #NonFictionRoom of the #LateImperialLibrary this coming weekend . . .

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