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.

Johannesburg was - and is - the Frontier of Money. Within months of its founding, the mining camp was host to organised crime: the African ‘Regiment of the Hills’ and ‘Irish Brigade’ bandits. Bars, brothels, boarding houses and hotels oozed testosterone and violence, and the use of fists and guns was commonplace.

Beyond the chaos were clear signs of another struggle, one to maintain control, honour and order within the emerging male and mining dominated culture. In the underworld, the dictum of ‘honour among thieves’, as well as a hatred of informers, testified to attempts at self-regulation. A ‘real man’ did not take advantage of an opponent by employing underhand tactics. It had to be a ‘fair fight’ if a man was to be respected.

This was the world that ‘One-armed Jack’ McLoughlin - brigand, soldier, sailor, mercenary, burglar, highwayman and safe-cracker – entered in the early 1890s to become Johannesburg’s most infamous ‘Irish’ anti-hero and social bandit. McLoughlin’s infatuation with George Stevenson prompted him to recruit the young Englishman into his gang of safe-crackers but ‘Stevo’ was a man with a past and primed for personal and professional betrayal. It was a deadly mixture.

Honour could only be retrieved through a Showdown at the Red Lion.

After many years of serving the country and doing his part to help rebuild South Africa, Dr Peter Friedland was given an opportunity to serve as a member of Nelson Mandela’s medical team and helped to monitor his hearing.

Over the years they built a rapport and their conversations regularly veered towards politics. Mandela often gave Peter perspective and would push him to examine his reasons for supporting specific causes and holding particular views.

As an ENT specialist, Peter regularly treated victims of violent crime.

He also lost colleagues and friends to hijackings and other crimes. But when his daughters were exposed to a robbery, he had to make a lifechanging decision.

This book examines the powerful forces that push people away from South Africa and those that pull them back in. It is never as simple as merely staying or going – it is an emotional tug of war that continues until something snaps.

Through many conversations had with Mandela and lessons he learnt from his life, Peter worked through some of his PTSD, his fears and the deep sense of hopelessness he felt as he came to terms with his decision to emigrate to Australia.

His story beautifully captures the tension between an uncertain future that is out of your control and the fear that you might not survive.

A business biography that follows the life of Alan Knott-Craig as a serial entrepreneur in the telecoms and tech spaces, tracking his wins and losses, and the lessons along the way for both business and life. Known in Stellenbosch business circles as the ‘Weapon of Mass Financial Destruction’ after a major flop at Mxit, he was able to rebuild his own confidence and that of his peers by becoming a shrewd, highly innovative and successful businessman, true to his own principles and convictions.

Hack With A Grenade: An Editor's Backstories of SA News is a newspaper editor's perspective on the characters that shape South Africa's psyche.

The author, Gasant Abarder, is a journalist who worked in print, radio and television newsrooms in both Cape Town and Johannesburg for 21 years. Along the way, he encountered homeless people, reformed prison gangsters, struggle heroes, artists and sports personalities. In Hack With A Grenade, Abarder uses the stories of these characters to provide social commentary on issues like religion, prejudice and injustice - all with a healthy dose of humour.

It is a book about journalism but also about South African life. It is also a social commentary that begins to strip away our prejudices as South Africans and to shine a light on our common humanity.

Stefaans Coetzee se pa was ’n alkoholis. Toe hy ses was, het sy ma hom kafee toe gestuur. Met sy terugkoms was sy weg. Van kleins af moes Stefaans veg vir aanvaarding en liefde, by die huis en in die kinderhuis.

Sy storie begin in die Vrystaat, loop deur donker dade in Worcester, via verskeie tronke, tot op Klerksdorp. Dit is die verhaal van ’n seun wat die heel ergste sou doen, vir aanvaarding.

Dit is ook ’n verhaal van hoop, genade, en tweede kanse. Dit wys dat enigeen kan verander. Jy ook.

Join Ivan Johnson in this memoir of an identity crisis as a high-spirited boy from a close-knit family on the Cape Flats becomes a man amid the turmoil of The Struggle.

Joining the lily white advertising industry, he ghosts from group to group, fitting in everywhere but belonging nowhere.

Told with flair and irreverence, Ivan’s sharp eye and zest for life gives both food for thought and great entertainment.

From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue by one of the most decorated journalists of our time.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s work has been recognized by prizes including the Orwell Prize and the Baillie Gifford for his meticulously reported and engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from the New Yorker. As Keefe observes in his preface: ‘They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies'.

Keefe explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines; examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a liar; spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain; chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black-market arms merchant; and profiles a passionate death-penalty attorney who represents the ‘worst of the worst’, among other works of literary journalism.

The appearance of his byline in the New Yorker is always an event; collected here for the first time readers can see how his work forms an always enthralling yet also deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up to them.

Mosibudi Mangena has been a life-long member of the Black Consciousness Movement, which led to his incarceration on Robben Island from 1973–8. After his release, he went into exile in 1981, spending time in Botswana and Zimbabwe, before returning to South Africa in 1994.

Triumphs & Heartaches provides fascinating insight into Mangena’s varied life, including his time as the leader of AZAPO and his service in government as the deputy minister of Education and then the minister of Science and Technology.

Mangena provides an insider’s view of life in exile as a political refugee, followed by the hardships of repatriation and the hard-won successes of democracy. He reflects eloquently on the role of Black Consciousness and its potential place in the future of South Africa, and does not flinch from exploring the disappointments of the liberation struggle and the challenges that lie ahead for the country.

Sydney Kentridge carved out a reputation as South Africa’s most prominent anti-apartheid advocate – his story is entwined with the country’s emergence from racial injustice and oppression. He is the only advocate to have acted for three winners of the Nobel Peace Prize – Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Lutuli.

Already world-famous for his landmark cases including the Treason Trial of Nelson Mandela and the other leading members of the ANC, the inquiry into the Sharpeville massacre, and the inquest into the death of Steve Biko, he then became England’s premier advocate.

Through the great set-pieces of the legal struggle against apartheid – cases which made the headlines not just in South Africa, but across the world – this biography is a portrait of enduring moral stature.

Op skool was ôs gelee met patrone om cursive te skryf. En gelee tel sône om ôs vinges te gebryk. En kyk nou vi ôs, ôs met ôs nommes en somme wat meer veloorit as wat ôs ooit kan tel, ôs met ôs mooi handskrifte en nieman om voo te skryfie.

In haar verrykende memoir skryf Charmaine Africa op narratiewe wyse, en in Kaaps, oor haar grootwordjare in Bishop Lavis. Haar lewensverhaal, wat verras met humoristiese oomblikke, sentreer op die alledaagse bestaan van haar familie vanaf die 1960’s: haar ma, Amma, wat spartel om haar werk en gesin bymekaar te hou; haar alkoholis-pa; haar susters wat ook ’n verbete stryd in hul eie huwelike voer; haar broers wat uiteindelik voor die drankduiwel swig; en haar eie ontwikkeling as kind tot ’n jong vrou wat ’n onvermydelike siklus probeer veg.

Amma gee ’n stem aan die oorlewingstryd op die Kaapse Vlakte en ’n eerlike blik op die kringloop van kru armoede. Die vertelling is onopgesmuk, hartverskeurend en meesterlik.

1960s Rome. As teenage André stands on the dock, his mother fusses over their luggage - 32 suitcases, trunks and tea chests that contain their world. The ship will refuel and return to Alexandria, the home where they have left their father, as the Aciman family begin a new adventure in Rome. André is now head of the family, with a little brother to keep in line and a mother to translate for - for although she's mute, she is nothing if not communicative.

Equal parts transporting and beautiful, this coming of age memoir shares the luminous, fragile truth of life for a family forever in exile, living in Rome, but still yet to find a home

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a deeply intimate memoir of discovery, found family, and self-acceptance. The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. “I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life—as RuPaul Andre Charles,” says RuPaul.

If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

This story of a middle-class white South African family unfolds between the years 1939 and 1964 - a transformative period in South Africa’s political landscape.

It is told through the eyes and experiences of the younger son and his rite of passage into a country of racial segregation that gradually opens his eyes to the many injustices imposed upon the majority of the country’s population, coupled with a realization that his white privileges are sustained at the brutal expense of others.

Made into a major motion picture, this moving memoir written by Stephen Hawking’s first wife covers the turbulent years of her marriage to the astrophysics genius, her traumatic divorce, and their recent reconciliation

Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and remarkable scientists of our age and the author of the scientific bestseller A Brief History of Time, which has sold more than 25 million copies. In this compelling memoir, his first wife, Jane Hawking, relates the inside story of their extraordinary marriage. As Stephen's academic renown soared, his body was collapsing under the assaults of a motor neuron disease. Jane's candid account of trying to balance his 24-hour care with the needs of their growing family reveals the inner strength of the author, while the self-evident character and achievements of her husband make for an incredible tale presented with unflinching honesty.

Jane's candor is no less apparent when the marriage finally ends in a high-profile meltdown, with Stephen leaving Jane for one of his nurses and Jane marrying an old family friend. In this exceptionally open, moving, and often funny memoir, Jane Hawking confronts not only the acutely complicated and painful dilemmas of her first marriage, but also the relationship's fault lines exposed by the pervasive effects of fame and wealth.

The result is a book about optimism, love, and change that will resonate with readers everywhere. readers everywhere.

‘There are moments in life that are pure, and which seem to hang in the air, unhitched from the everyday world as we know it. Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’

For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment.

The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed.

Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.

When Gail Gilbride is diagnosed with breast cancer, she experiences the full range of emotions. There’s disbelief, anger, confusion, fear, bargaining and, why, yes, indeed, of course she wants to talk to the manager! But then Gail settles on resolve. She’s ready to fight. Not only will she follow her doctor’s instructions and march with the big guns in the oncology centre, but she’ll also tip her helmet to her late mother’s inclination for alternative treatments.

Gail is ready to give her body everything it might need to conquer the disease, recover and live a long life of joy. She nourishes it, meditates, exercises, rests, and explores parts of her consciousness she’s previously pushed to the far corner and ignored. Determined not to be a passenger, Gail hops behind the wheel and embarks on a journey like no other. What she doesn’t anticipate is that she’ll have a furry, ginger wingman for company.

Archie is the irredeemably part-feral tomcat who, when it suits him, moves in the same circles as Gail – and it suits him when he decides she needs the kind of therapy only he can give. In many ways, Gail and Archie are opposites. Where she’s amiable, he can be bellicose. Where Gail is gentle, Archie has claws. Where she is considerate, he is self-serving. And yet Archie brings to Gail camaraderie and healing in the dark hours when, alone, she cannot keep the dread at bay. He’s the remedy she didn’t know she needed.

Written by two award-winning reporters with unprecedented access, this is the only definitive biography of George Floyd.

The murder of George Floyd sparked a fiery summer of activism and unrest all over the world in 2020, with peaceful protests sometimes erupting into violent clashes. From Shetland to Sao Paolo, from Honolulu to Hobart, people marched under the Black Lives Matter banner, decrying Floyd's death and demanding an end to racial injustice. The movement has led corporations to redouble their efforts, universities to refocus on inclusion, and government officials to examine the causes of systemic inequality.

Drawing on The Washington Post's unrivalled archives, in-depth reporting and award-winning series on Floyd, His Name Is George Floyd is a definitive biography that dives deep into the myriad ways that structural racism shaped Floyd's life and death. Telling his personal story within the context of America's troubled race history, it features fresh and exclusive reporting as well as unparalleled access to Floyd's family and the people who were closest to the man whose name has become one of the most recognized on the planet.

By zooming in for an intimate portrait of this one, emblematic life, while also pulling back to profile the institutions that shaped it, the authors deliver a powerful exploration of institutional racism and of a public reckoning of unprecedented breadth and intensity.

When Rael Levitt stepped onto the podium at Quoin Rock Wine Estate in December 2011, he was CEO of the industry-pioneering Auction Alliance and at the pinnacle of a glittering 20-year career. But then disaster struck. After being accused by a powerful billionaire of using a ghost bidder to inflate the bid price, Levitt’s reputation was obliterated.

In an echo of the Boxing Day tsunami that he survived in 2004, the self-made entrepreneur was overwhelmed by a media-driven scandal that came at him like a train of killer waves. Once the face of South African auctions, he seemingly sank without a trace. But he was not beaten.

A decade later Levitt has a thrilling rise-and-fall-and-rise-again story to tell. The lessons he learnt from suffering catastrophe and finding the tenacity to survive have laid the foundations for new success. At once candid and controversial, Levitt’s story is ultimately an uplifting one, revealing that the greater the tsunami, the greater the lesson.

Musical Echoes tells the life story of the South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin.

Born in Cape Town in the 1930s, Benjamin came to know American jazz and popular music through the radio, movies, records, and live stage and dance band performances. She was especially moved by the voice of Billie Holiday. In 1962 she and Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) left South Africa together for Europe, where they met and recorded with Duke Ellington. Benjamin and Ibrahim spent their lives on the move between Europe, the United States, and South Africa until 1977, when they left Africa for New York City and declared their support for the African National Congress.

In New York, Benjamin established her own record company and recorded her music independently from Ibrahim. Musical Echoes reflects twenty years of archival research and conversation between this extraordinary jazz singer and the South African musicologist Carol Ann Muller.

The narrative of Benjamin's life and times is interspersed with Muller's reflections on the vocalist's story and its implications for jazz history.

The explosive new book from Britain’s leading investigative biographer, Tom Bower

As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated alongside the image of a strong marriage.

When the much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams would like the world to believe?

Through extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand Beckham’. Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and power.

‘Sharing food is one of the purest human acts'

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.

Now, in What I Ate in One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.

Ranging from the mouth-wateringly memorable, to the comfortingly domestic, to the infuriatingly inedible, the meals memorialized in this diary are a prism through which he reflects on the ways his life, and his family, are constantly evolving. Through food he marks – and mourns – the passing of time, the loss of loved ones, and prepares himself for what is to come.

Whether it’s duck à l’orange eaten with fellow actors and cooked by singing Carmelite nuns, steaks barbecued at a gathering with friends, or meatballs made by his mother and son and shared at the table with three generations of his family, these meals give shape and richness to his days.

In 2003, Thabo Jijana's father was gunned down in a scrap between rival taxi associations who had been forced to operate from a single rank. A decade later, Thabo faces up to South Africa's most violent industry to try to figure out how and why his father was murdered.

In this searing first-person investigation, Thabo puts a face behind a recurrent tragedy that plagues South African working class communities. By speaking to the people who knew his father best he tries to fill in the blanks that are the years that have followed his father's death.

He begins by trying to reconstruct the night the murder took place, but what he uncovers about the ongoing strife that has plagued government's consistent attempts to formalise this multi-million rand industry comes with more baggage than he expected.

As ’n jong seun wat kaalvoet en vry grootgeword het op sy ouers se sitrusplaas in die Oos-Kaap, sou Ian Roberts nooit kon dink dat hy eendag ’n ikoon van die silwerskerm sou word nie. Vandag nog herken mense hom as die taai Bittereinder Sloet Steenkamp van
Arende of as Boet van die gewilde Castrol-advertensies.

Ian se loopbaan strek van Langstraat in Kaapstad tot Los Angeles en van Shakespeare-produksies in die teater tot die Oscarwenner Tsotsi. In sy outobiografie verklap hierdie briljante storieverteller met ’n stoute sin vir humour meer oor wat alles agter die skerms op televisie- en rolprentstelle gebeur.

Hy beskryf ook die hoogbloei van Afrikaanse televisie- en rolprentvervaardiging toe hy saam met legendariese regisseurs soos Manie van Rensburg en Dirk de Villiers gewerk het. Sy lewensverhaal is ’n meesterklas in die kuns van toneelspel.

So outentiek, vreesloos en onkonvensioneel soos wat talle van sy karakters was, só is Ian ook in die regte lewe. Hy trap sy eie paadjie en was nog nooit ’n tropbok nie. Hy deel sy lewensverhaal met soveel humor, patos en insig dat dit nie anders kan as om die leser te ontroer nie.

Welcome back to Clarkson’s Farm.

So, that went well …

The spring barley crop failed. Just like the oil seed rape. And the durum wheat. Then the oats turned the colour of a hearing aid and the mushrooms went mouldy. Farming sheep, pigs and cows was hardly more lucrative. Jeremy would be better off trying to breed ostriches.

But in the face of uncooperative weather, the relentless realities of the agricultural economy, bureaucracy, a truculent local planning department and the world’s persistent refusal to recognise his ingenuity and genius, our hero’s not beaten yet. Not while the farm shop’s still doing a roaring trade in candles that smell like his knacker hammock, he isn’t.

On the face of it, the challenges of making a success of Diddly Squat are enough to have you weeping into your (Hawkstone) beer, but misery loves company and in girlfriend Lisa, Farm Manager Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald his Head of Security Jeremy knows he’s got the best. And it’s hard for a chap to feel too gloomy about things when there’s a JCB telehandler, a crop-spraying hovercraft and a digger in the barn.

Because as a wise man* once said, ‘there’s no man alive who wouldn’t have fun with a digger …’

*Jeremy