I’m a South African journalist turned novelist inspired to write biographical historical fiction about trailblazing women. As a lover of nature, I’m particularly drawn to characters who love animals and the outdoors and who are driven by curiosity. I’m fascinated not only by individuals but also by my continent and its history. Nothing gives me greater joy than to write about pioneering women from history and the interconnectedness of all living things.
First published in 1948, this book will forever occupy a special place in my heart.
Not only is the book partially set in the very countryside where I was raised in South Africa, but it was also responsible for awakening my young conscience to the harsh realities of what many South Africans endured leading up to and during the apartheid years.
I was forever moved by the story and characters, and discovered the power of fiction by reading it.
It immersed me in a world I know little about with well-drawn diverse characters. It gave me a glimpse into post-Apartheid South Africa when AIDS is rampant, and how it affect(ed) those in different socio-economic situations.
From the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words comes a rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries.
In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, seventeen-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life.
Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's…
I’m from Mauritius, of Indian heritage, and proudly African. I remember reading my first chick-lit romance circa 2001, thinking Mauritius has everything—the drama, the over-the-top characters, love matches, exciting backdrops both physical & cultural—to create great rom-coms & uplifting fiction…but where were such stories? A decade later, I was helping other African authors showcase their feel-good books by creating an imprint dedicated to African romance with a US publisher. I’m an author who loves to write about her country & life experiences, and I have the perfect day job for a bookworm as an editor who specializes in editing romance stories for indie authors & publishers alike.
I couldn’t read fast enough to find out who Zoe really was before her accident and how everything would be revealed. And Jo Watson delivered a rollicking ride filled with feelings–so much feels!–and it just kept getting better, coming together like a tapestry right until the end. It was a journey the heroine went on, and as a reader, I also went along with her, which was magical & so enthralling!
Set in Johannesburg mainly and the South African countryside, it showed normal people living normal lives amid extraordinary circumstances, all with a feel-good, rom-com vibe throughout.
She's starting over. And the real her is letting loose.
From the author of the 100,000+ copy-selling rom-com, Love to Hate You! No one makes you laugh like Jo Watson!
If you love by Mhairi McFarlane, Sophie Ranald, Sophie Kinsella and Paige Toon, you'll LOVE Jo Watson - readers are raving about her glorious rom-coms!
Readers are already WOWED by Just The Way I Am!
'Without a doubt Jo Watson's best book so far, and I've almost read all of them'
'I have read ALL of Jo Watson's previous books and this is quite possibly my new favourite'
Novels are great. I’ve written one myself. I have also written many short stories for major science fiction and fantasy publishing venues—Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Lightspeed, etc. But there is something special about single-author short story collections. They are like tasting platters. They reveal running themes and can be a unique way to explore places—through the imaginations of its authors. For example, many of my stories are set in or feature characters from Nigeria. I hope you enjoy the books on this list and that they show you something new about Africa and what (some) African authors dream about.
Beukes has range and a keen eye, two things that are showcased perfectly in this collection. Experimenting in style, in genre, in tone, in point of view, in everything really. A lot of the stories are overtly speculative, but not all of them are, even though they have a speculative sensibility. Some stories are under 100 words, others closer to 10,000. As someone who enjoys experimental writing, I loved this book. Almost every story features the recurring theme of dehumanization, and they are largely set in South Africa or featuring South African characters. And if that wasn’t enough, there are even 5 nonfiction pieces from her time as a journalist. It's excellent reading.
A Punk Lolita fighter-pilot rescues Tokyo from a marauding art installation. Corporate recruits harvest poisonous plants on an inhospitable planet. An inquisitive adolescent ghost disrupts the life of a young architect. Product loyalty is addictive when the brand appears under one's skin.
Award-winning Cape Town author and journalist Lauren Beukes (Zoo City, Moxyland, Broken Monsters) spares no targets in this edgy and satiric retrospective collection. In her fiction and nonfiction, ranging from Johannesburg across the galaxy, Beukes is a fierce, captivating presence throughout the literary landscape.
I was a bookseller specializing in SFF for around 13 years, during which I wrote two novels and many short stories, and I ran a review blog for many years. My love of SFF and Horror began when I was around nine years old, at which time I read Pet Sematary, which opened up the world of ‘grown-up’ books for me. I’m proud to say that I read more speculative fiction than anything else, and I love discovering new voices and visions in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.
I enjoyed the local setting, the intensity of the novel, and its unflinching exploration of South Africa’s violent crime problems and how crime ties into cultural beliefs.
The novel goes to some dark places, in terms of events and character arcs, and the pacing and well-written scenes keep the reader nailed to the story – you’ll see a side of South Africa which is very real, but perhaps largely unknown to the rest of the world.
Erin du Toit's 9-year old daughter has been kidnapped by Johannesburg's most powerful witchdoctor. Can Erin save her child before she's chopped up for muthi? Erin’s first instinct is to go to the police, but the South African Police Force is paralyzed by corruption and overwhelmed by hundreds of open cases. Cases just like Erin’s. Erin delves into the dark underbelly of Johannesburg to find the man who took her daughter. When she realizes that the police are protecting him, she must decide between disobeying a violent police force and giving up on her daughter. *** "Strong Medicine is an…
I am the author of several works of historical fiction. My writing explores the untold stories of past generations and the impact of their actions and choices on those who follow. All across the country, the landscape is dotted with abandoned farmsteads and buildings whose walls are filled with stories of heartache and happiness. As each generation struggles with the unequal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society, they pave the way for succeeding generations. These are the stories I tell and the ones I love to read.
As an indie author myself, I am committed to supporting other independent authors and Mark Fine is one of the best. Fine has created an epic love story set against the backdrop of South Africa’s apartheid in the 1970s. When a beautiful white model falls in love with a black man, they become prey in a deadly manhunt that stretches from the golden city of Johannesburg to the dangerous wilds of the African bushveld. The author’s compelling characters and vivid descriptions shine a light on the effects of tribalism and social injustice during a dark period in this nation’s history. This story will keep you riveted until the last page is turned.
When affairs of State battle affairs of the heart, ordinary people become heroes! The critically acclaimed novel set in 1976 apartheid South Africa. It tells of the courage of love across the color divide – especially in the face of an unyielding racist police state, and the extreme lengths a man and a woman must go to remain together. When Stanwell Marunda, a proud descendant of the Zulu, meets the beautiful Elsa, the daughter of a white farmer, he is certain his bad luck has just begun. She has just rescued him, bloodied and hurt, from a car wreck.
I moved from Germany to Botswana when I was a fledgling translator and then on to South Africa 2 years later. I fell in love with this part of Africa that had a hand in making me the person I am today. Since I used to travel a lot, not all of my books are set in Southern Africa, but I have a passion for sharing my African stories with the world. My latest project is the Charlie Proudfoot murder mystery series, which is set in South Africa. Being a translator, I also translate books into German/English and four of them so far, are my own.
At the time this book hit the shelves, it was dangerous to write about the facts of state capture in South Africa. The courageous author was meticulous when doing his research and had to be careful at the same time not to be detected. He got the book published despite many threats against his life and attempts to discredit him. I’ll be forever grateful that the South African public was given this opportunity to learn more about corruption in politics. The book was sold out for months for a reason.
Investigative journalist Jacques Pauw exposes the darkest secret at the heart of Jacob Zuma’s compromised government: a cancerous cabal that eliminates the president’s enemies and purges the law-enforcement agencies of good men and women. As Zuma fights for his political life following the 2017 Gupta emails leak, this cabal – the president’s keepers – ensures that after years of ruinous rule, he remains in power and out of prison. But is Zuma the puppet master, or their puppet? Journey with Pauw as he explores the shadow mafia state. From KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape to the corridors of power in…
As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to exploring the teenage experience. Maybe that’s because my experiences in high school and college were rife with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows—everything was intensely beautiful and painful at once. That tension played a major role in my self-discovery process, and story-wise, it makes for a compelling character. But in a lot of literature, I find the depiction of teenage characters to be either sensationalized or infantilizing, melodramatic, or unconvincingly flat. When writing my own adolescent subjects in The Wayside, I turned often toward the rich, complex characters in the stories here.
I can’t talk about notable adolescent protagonists without mentioning Blue van Meer. Marisha Pessl’s cult-favorite debut made an impact on me as a teenage reader, but I recently picked it back up on a whim and was just as enthralled as an adult.
This is a formally inventive novel interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations and pop quizzes. It also defies generic categorization, weaving in elements of murder mystery, campus novel, and coming-of-age saga. It’s a lot to take in (and it clocks in at a door-stopping 540 pages), but Blue’s always-surprising observations keep the pages turning.
The mesmerizing New York Times bestseller by the author of Night Film
Marisha Pessl’s dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of Special Topics in Calamity Physics is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna…
Gail Nattrass was born in Northern Rhodesia. She was educated at Mufulira High School and the universities of Natal, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and UNISA. She relocated to South Africa with her husband in 1967, and subsequently lectured in the history department at the School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand for 20 years. She has written materials for students and presented papers on various aspects of South African and international history at four universities in South Africa. She is also the author of The Rooiberg Story, the co-editor with S B Spies of Jan Smuts: Memoirs of the Boer War, and a contributor to They Shaped Our Century and Leaders of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902.
This book by South Africa’s most eminent historian, Charles van Onselen, tells the story of the night trains which brought poverty-stricken Mozambican men from Rossania Garcia on the Mozambique border to work as migrant labourers on the gold mines in Johannesburg between 1902 and 1955.
The men travelled in appalling conditions and were preyed on by petty criminals, con men, and corrupt officials. The night trains were a transport system run in partnership between the mining houses and the railways and designed to maximise profit at the expense of the health, well-being, and even the lives of the men it conveyed.
At the end of their time in the mines, the trains sent the men back to Mozambique, often ill and broken and even insane after their experiences in the mines and in the trains. The story reflects South Africa’s evolving system of segregation and apartheid and the brutal logic…
This seminal book reveals how black labour was exploited in twentieth-century South Africa, the human costs of which are still largely hidden from history. It was the people of southern Mozambique, bent double beneath the historical loads of forced labour and slavery, then sold off en masse as contracted labourers, who paid the highest price for South African gold. An iniquitous intercolonial agreement for the exploitation of ultra-cheap black labour was only made possible through nightly use of the steam locomotive on the transnational railway linking Johannesburg and Lourenco Marques. These night trains left deep scars in the urban and…
When I was a kid I would cut out graph paper to design my ideal house. When I was in college, I walked into a class called American Material Life and had my eureka moment: “This is how I want to learn about people in the past!” I realized. I’ve been doing that ever since, first as a museum curator and now as a history professor. Houses, furnishings, and the way people interact with the built environment can reveal the complexity, diversity, and beauty of human lives.
OK this book is not about the United States but Rebecca Ginsburg’s incredibly nuanced investigation of the domestic landscape in apartheid South Africa should be required reading for anyone thinking about embodied experience and architecture. Houses built in the twentieth century for White families in suburban Johannesburg featured small rectangular rooms in the back yard for Black domestic workers. Using interviews, site visits, and compassionate storytelling, Ginsburg pieces together the daily rhythms for women who woke up outside, “came in the dark,” and learned the “tempo of kitchen life,” to borrow two of her provocative chapter titles. When people possessing such drastically different levels of social power share spaces built to remind them of their status at almost every turn, the visceral capacity of architecture becomes painfully clear.
Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets of South African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid's most repressive years. In At Home with Apartheid, Rebecca Ginsburg provides an intimate examination of the cultural landscapes of Johannesburg's middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods during the height of apartheid (c. 1960-1975) and incorporates recent scholarship on gender, the home, and family.
More subtly but no less significantly than factory floors, squatter camps, prisons, and courtrooms, the homes of white South Africans were sites of important contests between white privilege and black aspiration. Subtle negotiations within the domestic…
