In 1978, the activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925–1985) published A Soviet Journey, a memoir of his travels in the Soviet Union. Today it stands as one of the longest and most substantive first-hand accounts of the USSR by an African writer. La Guma’s book is consequently a rare and important document of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Cold War period, depicting the Soviet model from an African perspective and the specific meaning it held for those envisioning a future South Africa.

For many members of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, the Soviet Union represented a political system that had achieved political and economic justice through socialism – a point of view that has since been lost with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. This new edition of A Soviet Journey – the first since 1978 – restores this vision to the historical record, highlighting how activist-intellectuals like La Guma looked to the Soviet Union as a paradigm of self-determination, decolonisation and postcolonial development.

The introduction by Christopher J. Lee discusses these elements of La Guma’s text, in addition to situating La Guma more broadly within the intercontinental spaces of the Black Atlantic and an emergent Third World. Presenting a more expansive view of African literature and its global intellectual engagements, A Soviet Journey will be of interest to readers of African fiction and non-fiction, South African history, postcolonial Cold War studies and radical political thought.

Alex La Guma was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa.

As Samsung Africa’s former President and CEO, Sung Yoon was a first-hand witness to the company’s journey to becoming a global brand. Despite challenges, he turned Samsung’s Africa business into a success over four years.

In a career spanning more decades, he contributed in numerous capacities, heading up sales not only in Africa but in three different overseas assignments.

Yoon offers insights that shed light on the challenges of making business decisions and taking calculated risks.

In Seven Khoi lives Karel Schoeman writes about seven Khoi men and women whose lives became inextricably linked to the VOC’s settlement at the Cape in the seventeenth century. Chiefs and servants, enemies and interpreters; none of them escaped unscathed as their people were marginalised and their stories reduced to mere footnotes in the annals of history. These biographies were first seen in Kinders van die Kompanjie: Kaapse lewens uit die sewentiende eeu and have now been reworked for the benefit of a non-South African readership. Schoeman paints a vivid picture of life at the southernmost point of Africa at a time when the Khoikhoi believed they could find a way of living with these foreigners and their unceasing appetite for cattle – or free themselves forever of this unasked-for presence.

Dare To Believe is a poignant narrative of resilience, courage and hope in the face of adversity. Mmusi Maimane invites readers on a journey through his personal experiences, from the hardships of Apartheid-era Soweto to the corridors of power in post-liberation South Africa.

With insights drawn from his political career and a deep commitment to justice, Maimane shares the travails of party politics, the difficult task of transforming the DA, and his vision for a South Africa where all races can live and prosper together.

This book challenges us to confront the realities of inequality and division while daring to envision a nation united in prosperity and peace. It is a call to restore democracy back to the people and a compelling articulation of Maimane's belief in the transformative power of unity and the promise of a better tomorrow.

An inspirational and truly intersectional memoir from global humanitarian and social justice advocate Eddie Ndopu-a queer, Black wheelchair user and one of the UN Secretary-General's 17 Advocates for the SDGs.

A memoir, penned with one good finger, about being profoundly disabled and profoundly successful.

Global humanitarian Eddie Ndopu was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a rare degenerative motor neuron disease affecting his mobility. He was told that he wouldn't live beyond age five and yet, Ndopu thrived. He grew up loving pop music and haute couture, lip syncing to the latest hits, and was the only wheelchair user at his school, where he flourished academically. By his late teens, he had become a sought-after speaker, travelling the world to give talks on disability justice. When he is later accepted on a full scholarship into Oxford University, he soon learns that it's not just the medical community he must defy - it's the educational one too.

In Sipping Dom Perignon Through a Straw, we follow Ndopu, sporting his oversized, bejewelled sunglasses, as he scales the mountain of success, only to find exclusion, discrimination, and neglect waiting for him on the other side. As he soars professionally, sipping champagne with world leaders, he continues to feel the loneliness and pressure of being the only one in the room. Determined to carve out his place in the world, he must challenge bias at the highest echelons of power and prestige.

Searing, vulnerable and inspiring, Ndopu's remarkable journey to reach beyond ableism, reminds us never to let anyone else define our limits.

As grootoog seun in die ou Oos-Transvaal het Louis Jansen van Vuuren nooit kon dink dat hy eendag die Franse kunswerke in ’n ensiklopie in sy pa se studeerkamer in lewende lywe sou sien nie, wat nog te sê dat hy ’n château in die Franse platteland sou besit.

Louis se liefde vir alles wat Frans is, is so aansteeklik dat ’n rits ander Suid-Afrikaners die afgelope paar jaar ook blyplekke in die Boussac-omgewing gekoop het. In Biltong en Dior deel hy kostelike vertellings oor hoe inkommers in ’n vreemde land met ’n haas onleerbare taal en eiesoortige gewoontes moet oorleef.

Hulle tel baie op oor Franse styl en kultuur, maar die Franse leer ook iets oor Suid-Afrikaners se onblusbare ondernemingsgees en gasvryheid. Sy stories word verryk met boeiende brokkies oor die Franse geskiedenis, taal en kultuur.

Uiteindelik gee hierdie Afrikaanse Fransman se lewe in die vreemde gee hom ook ’n nuwe waardering vir dit wat hom uniek en trots Suid-Afrikaans maak.

'It is through that choice of taking a resistance road, the one less travelled, that I got to experience a liberated life.'

Patric Tariq Mellet took his first steps on this road at the tender age of 8 and by 13, he engaged in his first consequential and difficult political act. He organised a fast in his high school to protest the killing of anti-apartheid cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron in detention. The match had been lit. Arbitrarily classified as 'white' despite his heritage and family, he was ordered to join the armed forces. He refused as he could not take up arms against his own people. Instead he heeded the call of OR Tambo and joined resistance as an MK in exile.

Mellet's autobiography demonstrates a spirit of innate and unbridled resistance, in small and major ways, that liberated Cleaner's Boy from an unpromising and tragic early life to a life of influence driven by a deep understanding of identity. A freedom fighter, a mystic and always a firebrand.

Mapetla Mohapi was a leading member of the Black Consciousness Movement, and the first to die in detention in 1976. Police produced a 'suicide note'. The note was later confirmed by a British expert as a forgery. Since then, his wife Nohle has worked tirelessly for justice.

Zikhona Valela traces the politics of the time, the convergence of biographies that led to the brutal and tragic death of Mapetla Mohapi, and the effects on Nohle and the Mohapi family.

A shocking and necessary book.

A moving journey of discovery into the unexplored continent that is often our families’ past. It can be read as a reconstruction of one’s own Jewish and at the same time European-South African roots, but through these micro-histories we arrive at the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust to the level of macro-history.

Egonne Roth’s work brilliantly illustrates the complex mechanism of intergenerational, communicative memory and cultural memory (described by Jan and Aleida Assmann, among others). On a feminist level, it is also a personal history of the daughter-father relationship, leading to a kind of purification, a catharsis.

The detective-like reconstruction of the multi-ethnic segments of the family’s history has as its backdrop the arduous completion of one’s own biography from scraps of documents, accounts of the now few witnesses, secrets, and traumas hidden for decades.

Yusuf Daniels brings this book to life with some epic stories from falling in love for the first time, parading in his orange Speedo on Clifton Beach to travelling the world as a flight attendant, experiencing life like you have never seen before.

"We are all different and we all have been through many experiences in life. Some good and some not so good. What I have discovered is that this journey which is filled with laughter, tears, regrets, mistakes, and multiple chapters in our life, prepares us for later in life. If all of this didn’t happen to me, I would not have finished my second book. If you told me this just over a year ago, that I would be releasing my second book, I would have told you that you are crazy. It is our legacy and we need to leave it behind so it can be told by our great grandchildren one day. Don’t be scared to tell your story, don’t be scared to write it the way you feel it should be written. You don’t need a degree to be able to write your stories. Just look at me. There is no ONE way of writing, as we are all individuals and all unique. Don’t listen to the naysayers as they are just there to stall your growth and take you with them on their negative path. Stay positive, be true to yourself and just be you, because there’s only one of you. So, make the best of you and keep on LIVING LEKKA."

Once in a while a publisher receives a book submission that makes them sit back in their chair, read out loud what is in front of them and laugh at the pure joy the writing and imagery evoke. This was the case with the first three short stories author Yusuf Daniels submitted to Jacana Media.

They were instantly recognisable. They were funny as hell. The nostalgia, triggered by the mere mention of a sight, sound or smell, instantly transported the reader to a time and place that spoke to Coloured culture and lived experiences on the Cape Flats and surrounding townships. There was something magical about the way Daniels recollected his memories from his childhood in those first three stories, which he had also posted on Facebook, eliciting a slew of likes, shared experiences and feedback from his followers to “write more” and “do you remember, Yussie …”.

Living Coloured (because Black and White were Already Taken) is a compilation of short stories that is an ode to an era all Cape Coloured people will instantly recognise – from the nightclubbing at Space Odyssey and the shenanigans at the Mitchells Plain public swimming pool, to the traditions of delectable food exchanges during Ramadan among Muslims and Christians, alike. This book truly is a tribute to all that the Coloured community holds dear and sings of the spirit which helped them eek out an existence on the dusty flat plains of the Cape.

But as you read story after story, you will also be confronted with the blatant racism that was the Group Areas Act, the legacy of a people removed and dumped in this windswept place that wasn’t of their own making, and the constant forging ahead to make life worthwhile under very harsh political and economic circumstances. The stories will also leave you seething with anger at the sheer brutality of what this community had to endure (and still do), while their black counterparts in the township next door lived even harsher realities.

Everyone is programmed a little differently, and Bill Gates' unique insight led to business triumphs that are now widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.

Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.

Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.

Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune. This science fiction epic combines politics human evolution and ecology and has captured the imagination of generations of readers. It is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, has won awards, sold millions of copies around the world and spawned multiple motion-picture adaptations.

Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father's extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert's life that would find their way into speculative fiction's greatest epic. From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, through his time at university and in the Navy, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965.

Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father's brilliant, and sometimes troubled, genius to full light. Insightful and provocative, containing family photos never published anywhere, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert's unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time.

Tracy Going‘s powerful memoir, Brutal Legacy (originally published in 2018), was first adapted for stage by the award-winning theatre maker, Lesedi Job, with a cast including Natasha Sutherland, Charlie Bougenon and Jessica Wolhuter, and it has now inspired a documentary, That’s What She Said – A social inquiry: in it, Tracy offers up her story to be scrutinised by a random group of men in the present. They watch her account as it is displayed in a theatre production adaptation of her book. The film documents this process and the frank discussions that follow the performance. Offering a unique social dialogue, to bring an important message across as a relatable film without diminishing the abused, or men / women in general.

When South Africa’s golden girl of broadcasting, Tracy Going’s battered face was splashed across the media back in the late 1990s, the nation was shocked. South Africans had become accustomed to seeing Going, glamorous and groomed on television or hearing her resonant voice on Radio Metro and Kaya FM. Sensational headlines of a whirlwind love relationship turned horrendously violent threw the “perfect” life of the household star into disarray. What had started off as a fairy-tale romance with a man who appeared to be everything that Going was looking for – charming, handsome and successful – had quickly descended into a violent, abusive relationship.

“As I stood before him all I could see were the lies, the disappearing for days without warning, the screaming, the threats, the terror, the hostage-holding, the keeping me up all night, the dragging me through the house by my hair, the choking, the doors locked around me, the phones disconnected, the isolation, the fear and the uncertainty.”

The rosy love cloud burst just five months after meeting her “Prince Charming” when she staggered into the local police station, bruised and battered. A short relationship became a two-and-a-half-year legal ordeal played out in the public eye. In mesmerising detail, Going takes us through the harrowing court process – a system seeped in injustice – her decline into depression, the immediate collapse of her career due to the highly public nature of her assault and the decades-long journey to undo the psychological damages in the search for safety and the reclaiming of self. The roots of violence form the backdrop of the book, tracing Going’s childhood on a plot in Brits, laced with the unpredictable violence of an alcoholic father who regularly terrorised the family with his fists of rage.

“I was ashamed of my father, the drunk. If he wasn’t throwing back the liquid in the lounge then he’d be finding comfort and consort in his cans at the golf club. With that came the uncertainty as I lay in my bed and waited for him to return. I would lie there holding my curtain tight in my small hand. I would pull the fabric down, almost straight, forming a strained sliver and I would peer into the blackness, unblinking. It seemed I was always watching and waiting. Sometimes I searched for satellites between the twinkles of light, but mostly the fear in my tummy distracted me.”

Brilliantly penned, this highly skilled debut memoir, is ultimately uplifting in the realisation that healing is a lengthy and often arduous process and that self-forgiveness and acceptance is essential in order to fully embrace life.

Yusuf brings another epic book to life with some hard-hitting stories with his usual craziness added. From gold deals at KFC to hustling in China, not forgetting his near-death experiences. Stories that you feel like you were there. Following on his previous best selling books Living Coloured: (because Black and White Were Already Taken) and Living Lekka: (from Mitchells Plain to Aeroplane).

Lew Geffen is destined to have an eventful life. Driven by a maverick spirit, he embarks on a wild ride of success, securing the local Sotheby’s International Realty license to become a major player in the property market.

Along the way he's fired by his mother, sells Mandela's house and navigates the fallout of a murder at his company's annual convention. Lew's extraordinary life is told with candour, warmth and laced by his wicked sense of humour.

Geffinitely a business memoir like no other.

When he died in 2014, author Chris van Wyk left behind an impressive literary legacy. The scope of his work was broad – poetry, children’s books, short stories and biographies. But perhaps he is best remembered for his memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy, which chronicles his growing up in Riverlea and introduces us to the colourful characters who helped to shape his life and inform the stories he wrote.

The public persona of this witty and wise raconteur was well known, but behind it was a family man, who liked nothing better than to spend time with his two sons Kevin and Karl, his wife and childhood sweetheart Kathy, and the friends and family who were his primary sources of inspiration.

Using the unique vantage point of oldest son, Kevin van Wyk’s astute observations of his father and the strong bond they enjoyed throughout Chris’s life have resulted in a memoir that is as affectionate as it is entertaining. In taking us behind the scenes into the Van Wyk household, we witness the inner workings of the mind of a storyteller, from the flowering of his father’s activism, wit and wisdom to the sources of his occasional quirky outbursts. If storytelling runs in the genes, Kevin may just be proof that his father’s spirit lives on.

The great leader of the women's suffrage movement tells the story of her struggles in her own words. Emmeline Pankhurst grew up all too aware of the prevailing attitude of her day: that men were considered superior to women. When she was just fourteen she attended her first suffrage meeting, and returned home a confirmed suffragist. Throughout the course of her career she endured humiliation, prison, hunger strikes and the repeated frustration of her aims by men in power, but she rose to become a guiding light of the Suffragette movement. This is the story, in Pankhurst's own words, of her struggle for equality.

Kha bugu iyi yavhudi i neaho mafulufulu, Mufumakadzana wa lunako wa Afrika Tshipembe, Shudufhadzo Musida, u ri anetshela tshiori tsha he a thoma hone; tsha u imba na u tshina na musidzana a ambesaho a bvaho kusini ku vhidzwaho nga la Ha Vhangani, o tangwaho nga lufuno nahone zwihulusa nga mme awe na makhulu wawe.

Zwithu zwo khakhea kha Shudu musi a tshi pfulutshela doroboni ntswa he a do tambudzwa nga vhane a dzhena navho kilasini.

Vhalani uri Shudu o kunda hani matungu awe na dzikhaedu, na uri a vha musidzana, mualuwa, we a guda u difuna ene mune!

Gender based violence is widely prevalent in South African society, but male rape is often a neglected area. According to The Conversation, in an article by Prof Louise Du Toit, men make up around 10% of victims of sexual violence.

The group South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse says one in six adult males in the country have been victims of sexual offences in their lifetimes and, in 2012, almost 20% of all sexual abuse victims were male. But men are up to 10 times less likely than women to report sexual violence against them. Frequently men who report sexual assault are accused of being gay. In addition, according to Prof Du Toit, “Some feminist activists are reluctant to focus on the male victims because they think it will undermine long-fought-for attention for female victims.”

Silent Scream is a refreshing acknowledgement of this disturbing picture, told firsthand by a survivor of multiple instances of sexual violence, including gang rape and other forms of physical and sexual violence.

The author is a man in his fifties, intelligent and multifaceted, who carried the weight of the ages on his tattooed shoulders. Following a childhood marred by distant parents, he was assaulted in his late teens.

This is a book filled with hurt, with anger, with events that should never occur, but that the author has been able to rise above. It’s also a book about recovery, redemption, and the power of healing. No punches are pulled. It’s a very necessary book for our country and our time.

You may have read GG Alcock’s books about the kasi economy; now follow his journey to the dynamic world of KasiNomics and learn about the tribal forces that shaped him.

Born White Zulu Bred is the story of a white child and his brother raised in poverty in a Zulu community in rural South Africa during the apartheid era. His extraordinary parents, Creina and Neil Alcock, gave up lives of comfort and privilege to live and work among the destitute people of Msinga, whose material and social well-being became their mission. But more than that, this is a story about life in South Africa today which, through GG’s unique perspective, explores the huge diversity of the country’s people – from tribal Zulu warriors to sophisticated urban black township entrepreneurs. A journey from the arid wastes of Msinga into the thriving informal economies of urban townships.

GG’s view is that we do not live in a black and white world but in a world of contrast and diversity, one which he wants South Africans, and a world audience, to see for what it is without descending into racial and historical clichés. He takes us through the mazes of township marketplaces, shacks and crowded streets to reveal the proud and dignified world of township entrepreneurs who are transforming South Africa’s economy. This is the world that he moves in today as a successful businessman, still walking those spaces and celebrating the vibrant informal economies that are taking part in the KasiNomic Revolution.

GG’s story is about being truly African, even as a white person, and it draws on the adventures, the cultural challenges, the informal spaces and the future possibilities of South Africa.

"His ability to overcome adversity and pain, even in the face of death, is what makes Grant truly unique." – Edwin Moses, Olympic Gold Medallist

He was told he would never cycle again. But South African ultra-endurance cyclist Grant Lottering doesn’t take no for an answer.

In 2013, Lottering’s heart stopped after a gruesome accident in the Italian Alps. Doctors said he would never ride again. Since then, he has completed many gruelling rides through some of the toughest terrain on the planet. The first South African to complete a solo, non-stop 420-kilometre ultra-endurance ride through the northern French Alps in under 24 hours, Lottering has endured numerous rides previously thought to be impossible, while raising millions for charities.

Grant Lottering is a highly regarded motivational speaker and ambassador for Laureus Sport for Good. His story – proving that the human body can achieve the near impossible if you have the right mindset – is an inspiration to millions.

"Perseverance, resilience and determination personified". – Bryan Habana

Toe die eerste bomme op Februarie 2022 Kijif aan flarde skiet, was Kobus Olivier gereed. Maar om te vlug was bloot nie ’n opsie nie – wat sou van sy vier geliefde honde word?

In Met my honde word Kobus en sy vier brakke se verhaal vertel.

Die angswekkende nagte terwyl bomme om hul neerreën, die verhaal van onvoorwaardelike liefde tussen mens en dier, en hoe jy selfs tydens ’n oorlog op die hulp van vreemdelinge kan staatmaak.

From the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Judging You, a hilarious and transformational book about how to tackle fear--that everlasting hater--and audaciously step into lives, careers, and legacies that go beyond even our wildest dreams

Luvvie Ajayi Jones is known for her trademark wit, warmth, and perpetual truth-telling. But even she's been challenged by the enemy of progress known as fear. She was once afraid to call herself a writer, and nearly skipped out on doing a TED talk that changed her life because of imposter syndrome. As she shares in Professional Troublemaker, she's not alone.

We're all afraid. We're afraid of asking for what we want because we're afraid of hearing "no." We're afraid of being different, of being too much or not enough. We're afraid of leaving behind the known for the unknown. But in order to do the things that will truly, meaningfully change our lives, we have to become professional troublemakers: people who are committed to not letting fear talk them out of the things they need to do or say to live free.

With humor and honesty, and guided by the influence of her professional troublemaking Nigerian grandmother, Funmilayo Faloyin, Luvvie walks us through what we must get right within ourselves before we can do the things that scare us; how to use our voice for a greater good; and how to put movement to the voice we've been silencing--because truth-telling is a muscle.

The point is not to be fearless, but to know we are afraid and charge forward regardless. It is to recognize that the things we must do are more significant than our fears. This book is about how to live boldly in spite of all the reasons we have to cower. Let's go!

‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt

For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.

The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal.

Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe – whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.

War Doctor is his extraordinary story