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Books > Promotion > Pre-Orders > Biography
'Only the second teenager to have scored a goal in a World Cup Final! Welcome to the club - it's great to have some company!' - Pelé This was the praise lauded upon Kylian Mbappé who, at just 19 years of age, led France to triumph at the 2018 World Cup. As golden confetti rained down, millions across the globe watched as the young man kissed the iconic trophy; the heir to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the best footballer in the world had announced himself. It was his crowning moment. In Kylian Mbappé: The Definitive Biography, Julien Laurens, the world's leading French football journalist, paints a vivid portrait of Mbappé's meteoric rise to global stardom. After a decade covering Kylian's career, Julien has had unprecedented access to the player's friends, coaches and teammates past and present. Exploring Mbappé's humble upbringing in the suburbs of Paris and schooling at the famed Clairefontaine academy, his peerless rise with AS Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain, as well as his dream move to Real Madrid where his career has reached new heights, this extensive biography crafts an intimate account of Kylian's life. Julien takes us into the inner workings of Mbappé's psyche, as we witness how becoming a world superstar at just 19 affected the young Parisian. From the complex relationship he had with his boyhood club and its hierarchy to valiantly losing against Lionel Messi's Argentina in the 2022 World Cup Final, and becoming the new face of Real Madrid's galácticos, Julien shows us how the Mbappé that stars for club and country today is unrecognisable from the one who won the World Cup with France in 2018.
A memoir that spans three generations of one South African family, beginning in the erased neighbourhood of Wittebome in Cape Town and unfolding through the forced removals of apartheid, the intimacy of township life in Gugulethu, and the hidden truths that reshaped a child's understanding of love, belonging, and survival. At its heart, this is the story of a girl raised by her grandparents in a house where politics co-existed with the daily rhythms of survival, and where abundance was measured not in wealth but in ritual, memory, and care. It is also the story of her mother, Nokhephu—first believed to have died in a tragic accident. The truth would turn her childhood upside down: the sister she thought she had was, in fact, her mother—and she had not died. Both personal and political, it is a meditation on memory, silence, and inheritance. It asks: what does it mean to be held—by grief, by history, by love—and what happens when the truths that bind us finally come undone?
In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain. For the last decade, as she’s spent countless hours in doctor’s waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of Lena Dunham’s body has felt, as she puts it, 'like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight.' It’s not easy dragging a wrecked car anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lamé corset. Or to the set of the hit show that you – as a twenty-five-year-old – are writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House, the Golden Globes, or your publicist’s office to discuss the latest internet disaster. But Dunham does it – even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she’s meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her – because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again – if only she could remember who that self was. As Dunham takes us through her journey, tracking her rise to fame – from selling the pilot of Girls to the present – in three acts, it becomes clear that the spotlight casts long shadows, distorting the relationships she once held dear and isolating everyone in its glare. When an endless supply of drugs can’t protect you from pain – and begins to control your every move – being famous doesn’t stand a chance against the darker corners of the human experience. In Famesick, Dunham asks herself what the cost of fulfilling her dreams has really been, and whether it was worth it. What she finds is deeper than physical relief, and more lasting, as she learns to live with what she can’t change and turn her regrets into wisdom that can carry her forward, as she reconnects to what, and who, she loves.
From the golden beaches of Durban to the thunderous waves of Hawaii’s North Shore, Godfather of the Waves charts the extraordinary life of Mike Larmont – the man who shaped South African surfing in every sense of the word. Raised on South Beach, Larmont’s ocean odyssey began with borrowed surf mats and a dream. By the time he was a teenager, he was hand-shaping boards with a breadknife, launching a movement that would define a generation. His story surges from the heady surf culture of the 1960s and ’70s – a time of wild waves, wild parties and fierce freedom – through the challenges of sporting isolation in the 1980s, to the renaissance that followed. Along the way, Larmont became a world traveller and entrepreneur: making connections with local and international legends, manufacturing boards and other surfing gear, running the local franchise of global brands such as Rip Curl, co-founding Zigzag magazine, spearheading the rise of windsurfing in South Africa, and coaching South African surfers in world championships. His journey is one of grit and grace – from underground shaper to international icon, surviving shootouts, wipeouts and the relentless tides of change. Told with honesty, humour and heart, Godfather of the Waves captures the untamed spirit of surfing and the soul of a man who never stopped chasing the next perfect ride.
On 16 June 1976, thousands of Black South African school children took to the streets of Soweto in protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction under apartheid education. Met with brutal police force, many never returned home. This pivotal day, now remembered as the start of the Soweto Uprising, also reverberated through the walls of 6001, Lebo Diseko’s family home in Orlando East. In The House at 6001, Diseko traces the intertwined lives of her parents and her aunts and uncles who gathered, organised and resisted within their four-room Soweto house. From banning orders and exile to late-night parties filled with music and defiance, their story captures both the intimacy and the enormity of South Africa’s struggle. Drawing on unsealed government documents, interviews and her own personal journey to revisit her family history and home, Diseko offers a moving memoir of resistance, secrets and the lasting cost of freedom.
When the body breaks and the mind spirals, this is what it takes to fight your way back. Born with a congenital aortic valve defect, Brandon Fairweather was always destined for open-heart surgery but never expected to need it at just 28 years of age. He shares his encounters with gripping spells of physiological and medical-related anxiety on his journey to, and beyond, the life-changing surgery. After years of struggle, and determined to no longer let the crippling disorder rule his life, he resolved to document the process as a form of therapy, but also in the hope that it might help others battling similar mental turmoil. Following successful heart surgery in 2011, Brandon experienced several further complications, including a stroke ten years later, followed by a devastating, life-threatening loss of blood in the same year. Adding insult to injury was a brutal cancer diagnosis in 2023, after a misdiagnosis the year before. The Hell Inside Our Heads is an inspirational journaling of thoughts and a discovery of meaning and happiness born from the depths of severe anxiety. Readers are encouraged to flip the narrative from pain to purpose and to use adversity as an advantage. The ambition in this book is simple: to feel healed, healthy and stronger, while offering practical, effective lessons to navigate mental health struggles with greater ease. This deeply personal account of life at the height of severe anxiety combines vulnerability, authenticity, humour, and practical solutions to help manage day-to-day anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. It’s a patient’s perspective, filled with golden nuggets of coping mechanisms and processes aimed at short- to medium-term peace and recovery.
Fifty years after the Soweto Uprising, little is known about its most iconic youth leader, the elusive Tsietsi Mashinini, who instigated the schools protest which changed South Africa forever, only to flee the country, shun the ANC, hang out with Miriam Makeba, marry Miss Liberia – and be mysteriously murdered. Now, in time for the anniversary, Sowetan author and social historian Sam Mathe tells Tsietsi’s full story for the first time.
Growing up queer, brown and ambitious in a conservative South African Indian household comes with rules, expectations and a lot of things no one is allowed to say out loud. In Qualified Disappointment, comedian and actor Prev Reddy turns that silence into comedy. From choreographing braai dances to surviving family WhatsApp groups, Prev learned early how to perform, deflect and entertain his way through a world obsessed with appearances and the fear of becoming a disappointment. Prev delivers a moving memoir about tradition, taboo and the pressure to live a life that looks respectable from the outside, charting his journey from a glitter loving child in Durban to an internationally recognised social media star and stage performer. Hovering over it all is his alter-ego, Aunty Shamilla. She is opinionated and watchful – the familiar voice of community judgement, reluctant affection and unsolicited advice. Deeply honest and unapologetically bold, Qualified Disappointment is for anyone who has felt like an outsider in their own home and fought to stay soft, funny and powerful anyway.
Single mother and small-business owner Judy Henderson's world fell apart when she was sentenced to life in prison for a crime she did not commit, separating her from her three-year-old son and thirteen-year-old daughter. During three decades in the inhospitable prison system, she faced violence, mistreatment, and even live snakes and scorpions, all the while pleading her case to the legal system and passionately parenting her children from a prison phone. Never giving up hope that she would be set free, she committed to self-education and self-healing, worked with nonprofit prison programs, earned her GED then paralegal degree, participated in the passing of the first battered women's bill in MO, and shepherded women and mothers through the clemency process. With the help of the prosecutor on her case and the Missouri governor, Judy was granted clemency and received a full pardon after almost thirty-five years behind bars. Filled with keen insights into how Judy overcame incredible obstacles, the power of faith and the "coincidences" that fortified her, When the Light Finds Us is compelling narrative nonfiction from an award-winning writer that will motivate readers to persevere through hard times and bolster their confidence in redemption, faith, and the power of a mother's love.
The Unlikely Candidate is the astonishing story of a boy from Kuruman, a boy no one expected anything great from whose life became evidence that God writes the most beautiful stories with the most least expected beginnings. The rejected boy became a builder of people. The one who struggled to speak became a communicator. The insecure child became a leader of leaders. The boy without a father became a father to many. The broken became a healer. Today, Koketso travels the world speaking hope, truth, and courage, reminding thousands that God does not choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen. This book is not just a memoir, it is a testimony that reminds you that your failures do not disqualify you. Your wounds can become weapons in God’s hands. It is a story of pain and redemption, insecurity and calling and a story of how God takes the unlikely and turns them into instruments of impact.
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