WINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE

The compelling, inspiring, (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politics, race and identity, sharing jokes and insights drawn from the wealth of experience acquired in his relatively young life. As host of the US hit show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he provides viewers around the globe with their nightly dose of biting satire, but here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him.

Noah was born a crime, son of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the first years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, take him away.

A collection of eighteen personal stories, Born a Crime tells the story of a mischievous young boy growing into a restless young man as he struggles to find his place in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Born a Crime is equally the story of that young man's fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother - a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that ultimately threatens her own life.

Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a personal portrait of an unlikely childhood in a dangerous time, as moving and unforgettable as the very best memoirs and as funny as Noah's own hilarious stand-up. Born a Crime is a must read.

In June 1986 Diego Maradona, considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time, proudly hoisted the '86 Mexico World Championship Cup in his hands. Now thirty years on from that magical game, and after a life in sports marked by controversy, Maradona tells, for the first time, the untold stories behind that one-of-a-kind World Cup. Mexico '86 was the pinnacle of Maradona's career, and in this book he will reveal all about every game, what happened afterwards in the locker room, the months leading up to the World Cup, when the team had to go to Mexico City a month early to avoid the overthrowing of the technical director by the Argentine president, Alfonsin, the mystery behind 'El Gran Capitan' Passarella ('78 World Cup Champion), the strategies and tactics that revolutionised the game, training in a country that was recovering from an earthquake, the public's hostility, the jerseys they went out to buy in Mexico City, the meeting in Colombia where the team really came together, his relationship to drugs: the clean World Cup, and the best goal in football history. Mexico '86 is Maradona's World Cup and Maradona is who he is because of that World Cup. Explosive, gritty and unapologetic, Touched by God will tell the inside story of one of the greatest football victories of all time.

THE MASSIVE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. A powerful, heart-warming and inspiring memoir from the UK's most famous and beloved vet, Professor Noel Fitzpatrick - star of the Channel 4 series The Supervet.Growing up on the family farm in Ballyfin, Ireland, Noel's childhood was spent tending to the cattle and sheep, the hay and silage, the tractors and land, his beloved sheepdog Pirate providing solace from the bullies that plagued him at school. It was this bond with Pirate, and a fateful night spent desperately trying to save a newborn lamb, that inspired Noel to enter the world of veterinary science - and set him on the path to becoming The Supervet. Now, in this long-awaited memoir, Noel recounts this often-surprising journey that sees him leaving behind a farm animal practice in rural Ireland to set up Fitzpatrick Referrals in Surrey, one of the most advanced small animal specialist centres in the world. We meet the animals that paved the way, from calving cows and corralling bullocks to talkative parrots and bionic cats and dogs. Noel has listened to the many lessons that the animals in his care have taught him, and especially the times he has shared with his beloved Keira, the scruffy Border Terrier who has been by Noel's side as he's dealt with the unbelievable highs and crushing lows of his extraordinary career. As heart-warming and life-affirming as the TV show with which he made his name, Listening to the Animals is a story of love, hope and compassion, and about rejoicing in the bond between humans and animals that makes us the very best we can be.

A revelatory memoir about sex, oppression, and the universal struggle for justice. From his time as a child in 1960s India, Siddharth Dube knew that he was different. Reckoning with his femininity and sexuality--and his intellect--would send him on a lifelong journey of discovery: from Harvard classrooms to unsafe cruising sites; from ivory-tower think-tanks to shantytowns; from halls of power at the UN and World Bank to jail cells where sexual outcasts are brutalized. Coming of age in the earliest days of AIDS, Dube was at the frontlines when that disease made rights for gay men and for sex workers a matter of basic survival, pushing to decriminalize same-sex relations and sex work in India, both similarly outlawed under laws dating back to British colonial rule. He became a trenchant critic of the United States' imposition of its cruel anti-prostitution policies on developing countries--an effort legitimized by leading American feminists and would-be do-gooders--warning that this was a 21st century replay of the moralistic Victorian-era campaigns that had spawned endless persecution of countless women, men, and trans individuals the world over. Profound, ferocious, and luminously written, An Indefinite Sentence is both a personal and political journey, weaving Dube's own quest for love and self-respect with unforgettable portrayals of the struggles of some of the world's most oppressed people, those reviled and cast out for their sexuality. Informed by a lifetime of scholarship and introspection, it is essential reading on the global debates over sexuality, gender expression, and of securing human rights and social justice in a world distorted by inequality and right-wing ascendancy.

A 14 year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber chanced upon the painting of the Flaming June. He was a budding collector and his hobby was financed by his grandmother, who had just shelled out GBP50 for three huge, beautifully-illustrated volumes of Dugdale's History of Ancient Abbies and Monasteries. The boy described in detail the painting he fell in love with, but his grandmother was adamant: 'I will not have Victorian junk in my flat'. This comes near the opening of the real story of Ada Pullen (Dorothy Dene) who became the favourite model of Lord Leighton who was President of the Royal Academy. This book tells the story of Ada's life, success and Celebrity - and of the painting. Lloyd Webber's grandma was wrong. The current value of the painting is GBP14 million

From the longtime CEO and chairman of Starbucks, a bold, dramatic work about the new responsibilities that leaders, businesses, and citizens share in American society today—as viewed through the intimate lens of one man’s life and work.

What do we owe one another? How do we channel our drive, ingenuity, even our pain, into something more meaningful than individual success? And what is our duty in the places where we live, work, and play? These questions are at the heart of the American journey. They are also ones that Howard Schultz has grappled with personally since growing up in the Brooklyn housing projects and while building Starbucks from eleven stores into one of the world’s most iconic brands.

In From the Ground Up, Schultz looks for answers in two interwoven narratives. One story shows how his conflicted boyhood—including experiences he has never before revealed—motivated Schultz to become the first in his family to graduate from college, then to build the kind of company his father, a working-class laborer, never had a chance to work for: a business that tries to balance profit and human dignity. A parallel story offers a behind-the-scenes look at Schultz’s unconventional efforts to challenge old notions about the role of business in society. From health insurance and free college tuition for part-time baristas to controversial initiatives about race and refugees, Schultz and his team tackled societal issues with the same creativity and rigor they applied to changing how the world consumes coffee.

Throughout the book, Schultz introduces a cross-section of Americans transforming common struggles into shared successes. In these pages, lost youth find first jobs, aspiring college students overcome the yoke of debt, post-9/11 warriors replace lost limbs with indomitable spirit, former coal miners and opioid addicts pave fresh paths, entrepreneurs jump-start dreams, and better angels emerge from all corners of the country.

From the Ground Up is part candid memoir, part uplifting blueprint of mutual responsibility, and part proof that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. At its heart, it’s an optimistic, inspiring account of what happens when we stand up, speak out, and come together for purposes bigger than ourselves. Here is a new vision of what can be when we try our best to lead lives through the lens of humanity.

In this unique and unprecedented study of birding in Africa, historian Nancy Jacobs reconstructs the collaborations between well-known ornithologists and the largely forgotten guides, hunters and taxidermists who worked with them. Drawing on ethnography, scientific publications, private archives and interviews, Jacobs asks: How did white ornithologists both depend on and operate distinctively from African birders? What investment did African birders have in collaborating with ornithologists? By distilling the interactions between European science and African vernacular knowledge, this work offers a fascinating examination of the colonial and postcolonial politics of expertise about nature. It is also a riveting history of the discovery of certain bird species.

'O'Clery takes us into the hidden heart of Soviet Russia... An arresting and evocative story.' Keggie Carew, author of Dadland 'A tour de force ... Love, politics, murder, wars, and the fracturing of ties, personal and ethnic. O'Clery is a gifted writer.' Luke Harding, bestselling author of Collusion The Soviet Union, 1962. Gifted shoemaker Stanislav Suvorov is imprisoned for five years. His crime? Selling his car for a profit. On his release, social shame drives him and his family into voluntary exile in Siberia, 5,000 kilometres from home. In a climate that's unfriendly both geographically and politically, it's their chance to start again. The Shoemaker and His Daughter is an epic story spanning the Second World War to the fall of the Soviet Union, taking in eighty years of Soviet and Russian history, from Stalin to Putin. Following the footsteps of a remarkable family Conor O'Clery knows well - he is married to the shoemaker's daughter - it's both a compelling insight into life in a secretive world at a siesmic moment in time and a powerful tale of ordinary lives shaped by extraordinary times.

'A subtle, moving celebration of place and connectedness . . . The Grassling brings the sounds, smells and sights of the countryside alive like few other books. Burnett stretches the limits of prose, infusing it with poetic intensity to create a powerful, original voice' PD Smith, Guardian What fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That breath is that place and until I get there I will not really be breathing. Spurred on by her father's declining health and inspired by the history he once wrote of his small Devon village, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett delves through layers of memory, language and natural history to tell a powerful story of how the land shapes us and speaks to us. The Grassling is a book about roots: what it means to belong when the soil beneath our feet is constantly shifting, when the people and places that nurtured us are slipping away.

*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller* Rose Tremain (or Rosie as she was then) grew up in post-war London - a city still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. But when she is ten years old, everything changes. She loses her father, her house, her school, her friends and is dispatched to a freezing boarding-school in Hertfordshire. Slowly though, the teenage Rosie escapes from the cold world of the Fifties, into a place of inspiration and friendship, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born. `An evocative, unflinching memoir...electric' Mail on Sunday

'Fresh, gripping and vivid' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Majestically narrated' Dan Jones 'A portrait that chills you to the bone' Leanda de Lisle, The Times A dedicated brother and loyal stalwart to the Yorkist dynasty for most of his early life, Richard's personality was forged in the tribulation of exile and the brutality of combat. An ambitious nobleman and successful general with a loyal following, he could claim to have achieved every ambition in life except one: the crown. By stripping back the legends that surround England's most controversial king and returning to original manuscript evidence, Chris Skidmore's compelling biography reveals Richard III as contemporaries saw him.

Let Me Not Be Mad is an immersive, virtuosic and provocative investigation of madness, love and self-destruction that defies categorisation. 'Exhilarating ... dazzling ... a miraculous feat' Guardian 'I have rarely read a more haunting and enthralling account of a descent into madness' Stephen Fry 'Stunning: clever, troubling, restless, honest, dishonest' Olivia Laing A consulting room with two people in it. One of them is talking, the other is listening. Both of them need help. Throughout his life, A K Benjamin has found himself drawn to extreme behaviour - as a screenwriter, a contemplative monk, a counsellor for addicts, a support-worker for gang-members and ultimately as a clinical neuropsychologist. His book begins as a series of superbly realised clinical encounters with anonymised patients, some recently traumatised, some on the brink of mental collapse, others already in freefall. But with each encounter, it becomes increasingly and disturbingly apparent that what we are reading is not really about the patients at all: it is about the author's own fevered descent into mental illness and mania as he confronts his traumatic past. Layered with twists and revelations, Let Me Not Be Mad challenges the boundary between fact and fiction to provide a thrilling drama of self-diagnosis: a hall of mirrors blazing with energy, intensity, humour and emotion. And though shockingly personal, it also reveals something deep and dark in western culture that is driving millions of us to distraction and collapse.

'Molly Case reminds us that humanity and moments of true care are as healing as the medicine modern science can deliver' Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works 'Beautifully written and passionate tales from the nurse you would choose for yourself' Stephen Westsaby, author of Fragile Lives _______________________________ The hand of a stranger offered in solace. A flower placed on a dead body as a mark of respect. A gentle word in response to fear and anger. It is these moments of empathy, in the extremis of human experience, which define us as people. Nobody knows this better than a nurse and Molly Case has witnessed countless such moments. In How to Treat People, she documents these extraordinary points, when two people truly connect. In rich, lyrical prose, she introduces us to patients with whom we share the pain, but also the experience of illness when life is at its most vivid. And when her father is admitted to the high dependency unit on which she works, Molly confronts care in a whole new way, when two worlds - the professional and the personal - suddenly collide. Weaving together medical history, art, memoir and science, How to Treat People beautifully illustrates the intricacies of the human condition and the oscillating rhythms of life and death. Most of all, it is a heart-stopping reminder that we can all find meaning in being part, even for a moment, of the lives of others. __________________________________ 'A profound reflection on the way we live and die' Bookseller 'How to Treat People gets to the heart of who we are' Nina Stibbe 'Intense, powerful, moving and very enlightening' Gerard Woodward 'Fascinating and erudite' Jo Brand

An intimate and compelling exploration into the unique psyche of the heart surgeon, by one of the profession's most eminent figures. Although Professor Stephen Westaby was born with the necessary coordination and manual dexterity, it was a head trauma sustained during university that gifted him the qualities of an exceptional heart surgeon: qualities that are frequently associated with psychopathy. His thirty-five-year career has been characterised by fearlessness and ruthless ambition; leaving empathy at the hospital door as thousands of patients put their lives in his hands. For heart surgeons, the inevitable cost of failure is death and in The Knife's Edge, Westaby reflects on the unique mindset of those who are drawn to this exhilarating and often tragic profession. We discover the pioneers who grasped opportunities and took chances to drive innovation and save lives. Often difficult, uninhibited and fearless, theirs is a field constantly threatened by the risk of public failure. Like those before him, Westaby refuses to draw the line in his search of a lifetime solution to problems of the heart. His determination is unerring - a steadfastness underpinned by his unusual mind. But as we glimpse into the future of cardiac surgery, for all its remarkable scientific advancement, one question remains: within the confines of socialised medical healthcare systems, how can heart surgeons - individuals often hardwired with avoidance of self-doubt, a penchant for glory and a flagrant disregard for authority - truly flourish?

The authors in "Don't Quit Your Day Job" have tried their hands at some of the same jobs as their readers. They have worked on the railroad, busted rocks with a sledgehammer, fought fires, wiped tables, soldiered and carpentered and spied, delivered pizzas, lacquered boat paddles, counted heads for the church, sold underwear, delivered mail, and driven rubbish trucks. And like William Faulkner before them, they have quit those day jobs. These authors tell good tales - this is the book for those who wonder what work preceded the literary efforts of their favourite authors. This collection allows writers to build a bridge between themselves and their readers, connecting with those who love to read and those who dream about writing while on the job during the day.

Now a major Channel 4 series Rose Cartwright has OCD, but not as you know it. Pure is the true story of her ten-year struggle with `Pure O', a little-known form of the condition, which causes her to experience intrusive sexual thoughts of shocking intensity. It is a brave and frequently hilarious account of a woman who refused to give up, despite being undermined at every turn by her obsessions and enduring years of misdiagnosis and failed therapies. Eventually, the love of family and friends, and Rose's own courage and sense of humour prevailed, inspiring this deeply felt and beautifully written memoir. At its core is a lesson for all of us: when it comes to being happy with who we are, there are no neat conclusions.

Die digter, advokaat, joernalis, avonturier, dwelmverslaafde en natuurkenner Eugene Marais bly 'n boeiende figuur. Die groot verlange bied nie alleen 'n fassineerdende blik op een van die veelsydigste en merkwaardigeste Afrikaners wat ooit geleef het nie, maar gee terselfdertyd ’n panorama van ’n groot gedeelte van die geskiedenis. In hierdie uitgawe word die belangrikste omissie in die eerste drie uitgawes van die teks, naamlik Marais se rol in die ontdekking van die broodboom wat na hom genoem is, reggestel. Die teks bevat ook nuwe bevindinge uit bronne wat vroeer oor die hoof gesien is.

Laat jou terugvoer na die jare van inbly-naweke, studentepret, huis-toe-verlang en troospakkies beskuit onder die enkelbed.

Koshuis, saamgestel deur Erns Grundling van Elders-faam, bevat heerlike lekkerlees-vertellings, komies, verspot én roerend, oor die koshuislewe – op skool én universiteit, selfs oorsee – deur ’n verskeidenheid bydraers, insluitend reisskrywer Dana Snyman, geliefde Weg!-joernalis en -aanbieder Toast Coetzer, akteur en komediant Schalk Bezuidenhout, Huisgenoot-redakteur Yvonne Beyers, oudredakteur van Die Burger Bun Booyens, bekroonde romansiers Harry Kalmer en Kerneels Breytenbach, skrywers en joernaliste soos Celesté Fritze, Theunis Strydom, Leroux Schoeman, Marnus Hattingh en Pieter van Zyl, en vele meer.

Skink ’n koppie koffie, onthou weer die liedjie wat gespeel het toe jy by jou eerste huisdans gesoen is, en laat die jare terugrol!

It’s 1994. South Africa is on the brink of freedom. On the verge of a big break in modelling, Miss SA finalist, 21-year-old Vanessa Goosen is caught up in every traveller’s nightmare. Duped into carrying books with 1.7 kilograms of heroin hidden in them, Goosen is arrested and tried on drug trafficking charges. Deaf to her pleas of innocence, the Thai courts sentence Goosen to death. On appeal her sentence is commuted to life, to be served in Bangkok’s notorious Lard Yao prison. Pregnant, terrified and desperately alone, Goosen begins a harrowing 16-year journey behind bars. Forced to part with her beloved daughter three years later, Goosen’s story traces the joy and hurt of motherhood behind bars, the depression that comes with long-term incarceration and separation, and her return to a hugely changed South Africa in 2010.