Hier is dit nou! Riaan klim uit die TV-kas! Sy langverwagte outobiografie met die ware Riaan gaan elke mens laat regop sit.

Gou word die leser in hierdie kostelike, gemaklike en informatiewe biografie ingetrek, sodat jy later absoluut meegevoer word deur die welkome inligting. Dit voel eintlik asof jy vir ete by die Cruywagens genooi is en jy in 'n diep gemakstoel na daardie welluidende mooi stem sit en luister wat op 'n boertige en gesellige manier onthou. Hy bring al vir die afgelope 47 jaar vir ons die nuus in ons huis en lyk sowaar nog presies dieselfde. Vind uit hoekom hy die geloofwaardigste Suid-Afrikaner naas Nelson Mandela is. In hierdie boek wys ons jou wie Riaan werklik is. 'n Familieman wat ‘n passie het vir Afrikaans en wat mal is oor 'n goeie grap.

Hierdie boek gaan jou laat skater van die lag en jou hart laat warm klop na jy dit gelees het.

Met haar innemende en boeiende vertelstyl teken Dot Serfontein in Systap onder die juk verhale oor die lewens van ’n versameling merkwaardige mense op.

Die leser leer ken ’n groep Noord-Vrystaters wat aan dié wêreld sy sonderlinge geskiedenis en karakter verleen het. Dit is ’n distrik “lankal reeds bewoon deur verantwoordelike, stoere mense wat hulle deur niemand laat voorsê nie”, soos dit in die titelverhaal gestel word.

Van hierdie stoere mense is byvoorbeeld die unieke tant Hannie Wolmarans. Die staaltjies oor haar het vir die skryfster as kind so onwaarskynlik geklink dat hulle in dieselfde klas as sprokies geval het. Daar is byvoorbeeld ook oom Lood, wat selfs in die eienaardige Serfontein-familie, hom kon onderskei as ’n eienaardige mens. Die luimige aard van die vertellings word ook in hierdie bundel deurweef met waardering en deernis, veral vir haar ma Boeta en pa Oupats.

An astonishingly brave and moving book from Caroline Darian, daughter of infamous Dominique Pelicot, detailing how her mother rebuilt her life as the world follows a trial that will go down in history.

The trial of Dominique Pelicot, which began on 2 September 2024, has captured the world's attention. Behind the haunting details of Pelicot's unthinkable crimes are a mother and daughter who were forced to rebuild their lives. This is their story.

In November 2020, Caroline Darian received a call from the police in Carpentras. Her father was in police custody. The seizure of his computer equipment revealed the unthinkable: since 2013, he had drugged his wife before handing her over, in a state of unconsciousness, to men, from all ages and stages of life.

With exceptional courage, Darian recounts the earth-shattering discovery that a loved one, her own father, is capable of the worst. But more importantly, she shares the remarkable story of her mother Gisèle and how she carried on living, without self-pity, while learning to manage all of the things her husband once took care of. She shares how her mother managed to maintain her joie de vivre in circumstances none of us could imagine.

Gisèle has won acclaim around the world after she gave up her right to anonymity and opted for a public trial, a trial in which Caroline herself has testified, turning the tables: the shame no longer borne by the victims in silence but directed, at last, to the abusers. Together, mother and daughter reveal another side to the violence committed against women, as they bravely transform their private trauma into a collective fight.

A quest is never what you expect it to be.

Elizabeth Madeline Martin spends her days in a retirement home in Cape Town, watching the pigeons and squirrels on the branch of a tree outside her window. Bedridden, her memory fading, she can recall her early childhood spent in a small wood-and-iron house in Blackridge on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. Though she remembers the place in detail – dogs, a mango tree, a stream – she has no idea of where exactly it is. ‘My memory is full of blotches,’ she tells her daughter Julia, ‘like ink left about and knocked over.’

Julia resolves to find the Blackridge house: with her mother lonely and confused, would this, perhaps, bring some measure of closure? A journey begins that traverses family history, forgotten documents, old photographs, and the maps that stake out a country’s troubled past – maps whose boundaries nature remains determined to resist. Kind strangers, willing to assist in the search, lead to unexpected discoveries of ancestors and wars and lullabies. Folded into this quest are the tender conversations between a daughter and a mother who does not have long to live.

Taken as one, The Blackridge House is a meditation on belonging, of the stories we tell of home and family, of the precarious footprint of life.

The journal of Harvey G. Meyer, relating his adventures and observations while in the merchant marine immediately after the close of World War I, on a trip from New York to Argentina.

In America, as in Britain, the Victorian era enjoyed a long life, stretching from the 1830s to the 1910s. It marked the transition from a pre-modern to a modern way of life. Ellen White's life (1827-1915) spanned those years and then some, but the last three months of a single year, 1844, served as the pivot for everything else. When the Lord failed to return on October 22, as she and other followers of William Miller had predicted, White did not lose heart. Fired by a vision she experienced, White played the principal role in transforming a remnant minority of Millerites into the sturdy sect that soon came to be known as the Seventh-day Adventists. She and a small group of fellow believers emphasized a Saturday Sabbath and an imminent Advent. Today that flourishing denomination posts twenty million adherents globally and one of the largest education, hospital, publishing, and missionary outreach programs in the world. Over the course of her life White generated 50,000 manuscript pages and letters, and produced 40 books that have enjoyed extremely wide circulation. She ranks as one of the most gifted and influential religious leaders in American history, and Ellen Harmon White tells her story in a new and remarkably informative way. Some of the contributors identify with the Adventist tradition, some with other Christian denominations, and some with no religious tradition at all. Taken together their essays call for White to be seen as a significant figure in American religious history and for her to be understood her within the context of her times.

Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War.

Duduza. Bopha. Imbiza. Phapha. Asixoliseni. Amapopeye . . . What is the power of a single word?

Six days a week, advertising creative Melusi Tshabalala posts a Zulu word on his Everyday Zulu Facebook page and tells a story about it. His off-beat sense of humour, razor-sharp social observations and frank political commentary not only teaches his followers isiZulu but also offer insight into the world Melusi inhabits as a 21st century Zulu man.

Over the past few months he has built up a big and a loyal following that include radio host Jenny Crwys-Williams and Afrikaans author Marita van der Vyfer. He pokes fun at our differences and makes us laugh at ourselves and each other.

Melusi asks critical questions of everyone, from Aunty Helen, Dudu-Zille to Silili (Cyril Ramaphosa) and even Woolworths (why are their aircons always set on ‘jou moer’?). His fans love him for his honesty and commitment to pointing out subtle and overt forms of prejudice and racism.

Melusi’s Everyday Zulu holds up a mirror that shows South African society in all its flaws and its sheer humanity. Most importantly, he shows the power of words and that there’s umzulu in all of us!

Imagine what it would be like to walk in freedom, to break through past pain and trauma, to become whole and healed? What if your broken marriage could find strength for tomorrow, hope and healing like never before?

Lucy shares her own broken journey, traveling through the pain and trauma of some of life's most difficult trials - persevering through sexual and verbal abuse, bullying, chronic illness and pain, a marriage torn apart, a life and death diagnosis, and even terrifying natural disasters. This book was written for those who are seeking to become whole again, longing for restoration and clarity, ready to break free and find healing. Is this you? What do you do with your broken heart? Through Lucy's story, you will discover hope and witness the healing power of God's love through Jesus that she experienced exploring her own broken road and path to restoration.

Lucy set out to write her story, isolated in the woods at her cabin, when a forest fire broke out. The fire raged closer and closer as she alternated between fire updates and her writing. Who knew this was supposed to be about the past and the here and now? God knew...he had a plan. After a terrifying night with the wind howling and shaking the windows, the smell of smoke filling the house, she was evacuated with the fire just a half mile away. The title to the book emerged; Through the Fire, Traveling the Broken Road to Hope and Healing.

Let Lucy's inspiring story open your heart and eyes to the healing power of grace and redemption through walking hand in hand with Christ. Rejoice with Lucy at the healing and wholeness found in Him alone. In Him all is made new, in Him nothing is impossible, in Him we find healing and wholeness.

In this captivating collection of essays, Tinyiko Maluleke invites his readers on a journey that begins with his eventful boyhood in Soweto and his life-changing sojourn in Limpopo. His reflections on the roles of his mother, maternal grandmother and aunts in his upbringing will melt many hearts. In a deep sense of the word, this is a ‘feminist’ book with large sections profiling and promoting the contribution of women in national development.

Included in this memoir is the story of Maluleke’s journey through academia, his rise through the ranks, and the many lessons he learnt along the way. All the while, Maluleke presents his story as a microcosm of the human story of all South Africans, challenging his readers to rethink the history of the country, villages, townships and their own selves.

Maluleke does not pull any punches in the essays where he provides analysis of critical issues facing the country. Deploying solid scholarship, to undergird a variety of literary genres and writing strategies, Maluleke’s book is also a compendium of and an ode to the moments, places and people – celebrated and ordinary – who have shaped and continue to shape his outlook. His profiling of a few fellow university leaders is particularly riveting.

Faces and Phases of Resilience will make you think, laugh, yell and cry. In a way, this book is not merely an individual memoir, it is the memoir of a country, a memoir of a historical epoch and a memoir of a people – it is an invitation to the tragedy, the beauty and the hope that define South Africa.

The book ends, forty-nine chapters later, with a heart-rending essay on the bane of xenophobia, foretelling the death of Maluleke, chillingly titled, ‘The Day I Die’.

Everett M. Bennett grew up in the Penn's Store community of Henry County, Virginia. He graduated from Spencer-Penn High School before joining the U. S. Army and finding himself in occupied Berlin in 1947, where Life Magazine photographer Walter Sanders made him the cover image of the February 10, 1947, Life Magazine. Bennett returned to Martinsville and Henry County before returning to active service Korea. He returned to Martinsville and spent the rest of his life. This book tells his story, the times he lived and the images he saved along the way.

Each year brings a glut of new memoirs, ranging from works by former teachers and celebrity has-beens to disillusioned soldiers and bestselling novelists. In addition to becoming bestsellers in their own right, memoirs have become a popular object of inquiry in the academy and a mainstay in most MFA workshops. Courses in what is now called life-writing study memoir alongside personal essays, diaries, and autobiographies. Memoir: An Introduction proffers a concise history of the genre (and its many subgenres) while taking readers through the various techniques, themes, and debates that have come to characterize the ubiquitous literary form. Its fictional origins are traced to eighteenth-century British novels like Robinson Crusoe and Tom Jones; its early American roots are examined in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and eighteenth-century captivity narratives; and its ethical conundrums are considered with analyses of the imbroglios brought on by the questionable claims in Rigoberta Menchu's I, Rigoberta, and more notoriously, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Alongside these more traditional literary forms, Couser expands the discussion of memoir to include film with what he calls "documemoir" (exemplified in Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect), and graphic narratives like Art Spiegleman's Maus. In sum, Memoir: An Introduction provides a succinct and comprehensive survey to today's most popular form of life-writing.