![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Local Author Showcase > Fiction - adults > Drama
In the Shadow of the Springs I Saw is an exploration, and stories, of people who live in the Art Deco buildings of Springs. It is the imagined lives of those who live in a space that is not theirs historically but one that they have reclaimed. This work, in times of doom and complaint, creates a new narrative: one of revival, vigour and celebration.
1994. The world is about to change. The first truly democratic election in South Africa’s history is about to unite Nelson Mandela’s rainbow nation at the ballot box. And, across the world, those in exile, those who could not return home, those who would not return home, wait. Watch and wait . . . London. Martin O’Malley isn’t one of those watching and waiting. He is too busy trying to figure out if Germaine Spencer really is the girl for him and why his best friend is intent on ruining every relationship he gets involved in. And then . . . And then Germaine is pregnant and suddenly the world really has changed for Martin O’Malley. South Africa. A land of opportunity. A place where a young black man with an MSc from the London School of Economics could have it all, would have it all. But what does Martin O’Malley, London born and bred with an Irish surname, really know about his mother’s country? His motherland. A land he has never seen.
Whiplash is a gut wrenching story of a Muizenberg Sex worker, Tess who Pops painkillers by the handful and sells her body to strangers. When a condom breaks, Tess's life swings one eighty degrees. She gives up her drugs until she can get to an abortion clinic. Her cold turkey opens up a window in her mind, whipping Tess into a shattering understanding of how she got here. Tess's quirky humour, raw honesty and deep love of beauty lead her to find redemption in astonishing places. This book has a huge heart, like Tess, revealing that there is something in everyone that cannot be touched. Not by human hands. Not ever.
Sipho is a “young blood”, a young man of the school-going generation caught up in a world of money, booze and greed. Living in Umlazi, Durban, he is seventeen, has dropped out of school and helps out at his father’s mechanic shop during the day. But odd jobs underneath the bonnets of wrecked cars do not provide the lifestyle his friends have. A fascinating look into the emotional landscape of car hijackers – by a vibrant new voice in South African literature.
Met hierdie klassieke verhaal oor die lewe van ’n mossiegemeenskap skep Hickey ’n werk vir oud en jonk. Kuif Kwaster en sy familie – ’n voorbeeldige en vername mossiegesin in die bodorp – neem die leser op ’n reis wat nie vir mense beskore is nie. Saam met Skeel At en Kuif verdedig lesers die mossie-eer teen die wraaksugtige en rebelse Beatnik-bende; en saam met Meks en Maja word daar vir die mannetjies in die bodorp flikkers gegooi. Oor die ontstaan van hierdie uitmuntende werk skryf Hickey: “Gedurende April 1961 het ek by my skryftafel gesit. Deur die oop venster kyk ek na die doen en late van ’n elftal mossies. Hulle is bra baie vir ’n enkele gesin, maar daar is tog ’n intimiteit wat die indruk skep dat hulle meer is as terloopse kennisse. Die groepie is verteenwoordigend van enige gemeenskap (daardie vaal, verkeerdeveer-wyfietjie lyk juis soos ’n skinderbek!) met die goeies en die minder goeies …” Die sukses van hierdie eiesoortige werk kan gemeet word aan die feit dat die boek vanaf 1961 drie-en-twintig keer herdruk is.
Jock of the Bushveld is the classic and much-loved story based on the true experiences of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and his Staffordshire bull terrier, Jock. The story begins in the 1880s, at the time of the South African gold rush, when a young Fitzpatrick worked as an ox-wagon transport rider in the old Transvaal. There he came across a man who was in the process of drowning a puppy, the runt of the litter. He saved the dog and the story of his ever-faithful and loving companion was born. First published in 1907, Jock of the Bushveld has been reprinted many times since. Now, with a fresh and engaging cover, and in a new handy B-format, this timeless South African classic retains the charm of the original story along with the original illustrations by Edmund Caldwell. It will no doubt continue to be enjoyed by children and adults alike.
When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins. Davíd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, Davíd is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of. In this mesmerising allegorical tale, Coetzee deftly grapples with the big questions of growing up, of what it means to be a parent, the constant battle between intellect and emotion, and how we choose to live our lives.
Nadine Gordimer's subtle and detailed study of the forces and relationships seething in the South Africa of the day. Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm. As the upheaval in Mehring's world increasingly resembles that in the country as a whole, it becomes clear that only a seismic shift in ideas and concrete action can avert annihilation.
Die onweerstaanbare Audrey Blignault het destyds die wêreld van die Afrikaanse vrou óópgeskryf en was haar tyd vooruit. Dié unieke keur bring haar beste werk byeen, van kort sketse uit die vroeë bundels tot langer essays en verhale uit latere publikasies. Hierdie baldadige, skalkse, “onwennige ouma” skryf dalk oor vervloë dae, maar op so ’n unieke, toeganklike manier dat dit vir vandág se leser kraakvars is, en jou ten diepste raak. 'Met my rooi rok voor jou deur: ‘n Keur uit die werk van Audrey Blignault' sal voorgelees word op RSG vanaf einde Mei 2021! Die briljante Rika Sennett sal die voorleser wees.
Born on the cusp of democracy, the crew of young friends in Born Freeloaders navigates a life of drinking, wild parties and other recklessness. The siblings at the centre of the novel, Nthabiseng and Xolani, have been raised in an upper middle-class family with connections to the political elite. Nthabiseng is lauded by her peers as she whimsically goes through life, unable to form her own identity in a world that expects her to pick a side in the fractured classifications of race. Xolani, not having known his late father, longs for acceptance from an uncle who sees him and his generation as the bitter fruit borne of a freedom he and countless others fought for. As the story moves across multiple spaces in the nation’s capital over a weekend, Born Freeloaders captures a political and cultural moment in the city’s and South Africa’s history. Interwoven is an analogous tale of the country’s colonisation and the consequences that follow. And alongside the friends’ uneasy awareness of their privilege is a heightened sense of discomfort at their inability to change the world they were born into.
Geboortereg se tema handel oor die feit dat elke baba die reg het tot ouers, twee oumas en oupas. Ruan die hoofkarakter se grootouers aan vaderskant weier om hom te aanvaar as hul kleinkind. Ruan word groot by sy ma en haar man, wat nie die grootouers se seun is nie. Albei sy ouers sterf. Ruan ontmoet twee vroue tot wie hy aangetrokke voel. Die verhaal stel die leser bekend aan die families en stories van die twee vroue. Die boek is geskik vir manlike en vroulike lesers.
'From the moment you start reading Two Months until the unpredictable end, this is a story that grips and won't let go.' – BERYL EICHENBERGER, Fine Music Radio From the bestselling author of The Park and The Accident comes a new domestic thriller that will keep you turning the pages until the very end. When Erica wakes up to discover that she can't remember two months of her life, she wants to know what she’s missed. She soon realises that she’s lost more than two months. She’s lost her job and her friends. And her husband won’t tell her why. As Erica starts to put together the clues and pieces, a picture emerges of what has happened. A picture that is fatally flawed.
Duma is at a cross roads in life. Living in an informal settlement in Soweto with his father and young sister, Duma is expected to make a contribution to the household since he does not work. The easy way has been to steal electricity cables. But when his friend gets caught, Duma decides to try a new way of life. The road to a new beginning does not come easy as he goes back to the canoe club at Power Park and he quickly learns that paddling a canoe is not as easy as he remembered. He finds himself drawn to the water and is inspired by Steve an experienced paddler who is determined and pushes himself but lately the gold has been out of reach. Duma goes out on a limb and asks Steve if they can train together for the Dusi. Will Duma and Steve's partnership in the water work out? This is an inspirational story of two men from different backgrounds, coming together to tell their story.
In the small rural town of Qonda, South Africa, the power and water supplies are unreliable, property prices are down, and citizens are slowly suffocating in the acrid smoke from the municipal dump. Recently retired English teacher Megan Merton has lived here all her life, most of it at No. 8 Serpent Crescent. So who better than this self-styled pillar of society to shine a spotlight on the decline and dysfunction, not to mention the dubious activities, past and present, of many of her neighbours. Nefarious deeds and bad behaviour deserve harsh treatment and appropriate retribution, if not consignment to one of Dante’s fiendish nine circles of hell. At least that’s what Megan believes – in fact she’s been taking matters into her own hands, unnoticed, for years. And now she has decided to write it all down, to shake all of the skeletons loose, and rejoice in the inventive punishments she devised and personally delivered to the wicked. Then her neighbour Elizabeth Cardew, a lecturer in Classical Studies, suffers a stroke and Megan is entrusted with the keys to No. 9. While Elizabeth begins a long recovery at the local care facility, Whispering Pines, Megan relishes the chance to snoop. Curious as to ‘what a stroke victim looks like’, she decides to visit and see for herself. A bond develops between the two women – one a cold and calculating sociopath, the other a courageous and lonely academic – something that takes both of them by surprise. Vivian de Klerk’s sharp observations and brilliantly acerbic satirical wit make this multi-layered novel at once horrifying, shocking and poignant – and very, very funny.
A story of two passionate people who share a shameful past and a tenuous present, this remarkable narrative follows headmistress Mohumagadi--of the elite Sekolo sa Ditlhora school for talented black children--and Father Bill, a disgraced preacher, as they are brought together again decades after a childhood love affair expelled them from their communities. Much to the dismay of her students, Mohumagadi hires Father Bill as a teacher, resulting in a battle of wills and wits for the hearts and minds of the children living in the shadow of revolution and change. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this unique account offers insight into the workings of African culture.
True Love e ratwa kudu! Ziggy D o tumile ka nakwana – go kwagala morethetho fela diyalemoyeng gomme e galagala le diphatlalatšing tša segwera. Efela katlego ye kgolo e tla le sekgopi, kgononelo le lonya. Le ge a lebane le kotsi, Ziggy D o gapeletšega go šireletša bokgabo bja gagwe le seriti sa gagwe le go lemoga gore tshepagalo e a šomelwa.
Lady Die het huisvesting gevind in die ruïne van ’n kerk, in ‘n
stadsbuurt genaamd Simoelégri. Baie vlugtelinge het hier opgeëindig, ná
eers die virus en toe nog rampe tot sosiale onrus gelei het. In ander
dele van die land is daar nog ’n mate van orde, maar nie in Simoelégri
nie. In Simoelégri is jou beste vriend die straat se dwelmhandelaar, en
jou enigste bron van hitte 'n konkavuur. Oral loop die gerugte van
groter onrus en geweld.
Kaapstadse sielkundige Chris se rustige lewe word bedreig. ’n Trigger-happy vrou uit sy verlede probeer hom afpers, sy pasiënte se koppe haak een vir een uit, en sy dirty little secret begin hom kriewelrig maak. Boonop irriteer sy gay eksvrou hom met haar verhoudingsprobleme, amper net soveel soos sy skoolvriend se skynbaar sorgelose lewe. Op Bella, sy jong Portugese vrou met haar voorliefde vir lawwe YouTube-videos, kan hy darem werklik staatmaak – of hoe? Hierdie genuanseerde, ironiese blik op seks, intieme verhoudings en eksistensiële krisisse word uit die oogpunt van verskeie karakters vertel, en elkeen het ’n kinkel-einde. Besluit self wie s’n is gelukkig en wie s’n nie . . .
A run-down block of flats in central Cape Town, home to refugees and illegal immigrants, becomes a young girl's gallery of self-discovery in this moving story of the emotional carnage caused by Africa's civil wars. Drug dealers from Nigeria, Zimbabwean wire-workers, immigrants from Rwanda and Sudan, a Mozambican refugee - all seeking the peace of a newly democratic South Africa - bear down on her fragile world, then scoop her up into theirs. Skyline is an unflinching look at one girl's coming of age in the colourful and violent streets of a city waking up to the rest of Africa.
Odette is a script writer for a popular TV soap opera. When she moves to the small Free State town of Nagelaten she hopes to leave her problems – of family, fraught relationships and experiences of crime – behind in Joburg. To the dwellers of Nagelaten, Odette appears to be escaping a painful break-up in a place she knows no-one – and won’t have to share her secrets. When Odette begins seeing the local engineer, Adriaan, also an outcast in this small town, secrets begin to surface around the murder of Adriaan’s wife. Odette’s world begins to unravel, when her ‘troubled’ daughter, Mandy, is suspected of killing the baby she was au-pairing in the UK and soon comes to live with Odette, who has a secret of her own. It isn’t until Mandy befriends a strange man named Wolfie that Odette finally begins to question the mysteries of the small town. Odette is forced to face her mistakes of the past and the truth of a murder long since buried with the dead. The Imagined Child is a carefully plotted ‘whodunit’ that combines Jo-Anne’s trademark lyrical style with tight suspense and will keep you guessing until the last page.
In a moment of weakness, lawyer Ian Brand sends out a tweet; it changes his life irrevocably. Thuli Khumalo, Fallist leader on a campus that stinks of petrol and teargas, must choose between betraying her father and forsaking her principles. Snaar Windvogel, once the little violin girl of Matjiesfontein, is now in transition under the knife of Piekenier Leqluerck, plastic surgeon and fossa impresario. These colourful characters populate a carnivalesque landscape where the only certainty is that the Mother City’s mysterious crossbow killer will strike again . . . while Twitter gangs spread suspicion, truck drivers are attacked on national roads, and Number One meets with gang leaders – all under the watchful eye of the Institute for Encouragement in a nameless city in China. An astonishing novel documenting the turbulent time in which we live, where issues such as privacy and identity, fake news and fact, and race and ethnicity inflame passions. Translated by Henrietta RoseInnes.
Nozizwe and her mother, sister and aunt escape a group of rebels that have captured them to be sold into slavery. In their escape they end up in the clutches of human traffickers, imprisoned on a farm. Nozizwe escapes, pretending to be a boy, and makes her way to Johannesburg to become a street child. No one she approaches believes her fantastic tale and they ignore her appeals for help.
With a rich vocabulary that is poetic and uncluttered, this debut novel is nothing short of a masterpiece. It is both a well-written and philosophical book. The story begins with Nokwakha giving birth at her village home, and when it is discovered that the child is an albino the midwife convinces her that it is a curse and she should snuff the life out of it before it takes another breath. The dreadful deed is done by the river, but the all-knowing one’has other plans... With an assured voice and eloquent prose, Magubeni invites us into the life of this extraordinary being, Nwelezelanga, the child who should not have been, contrasting the themes of darkness and light, embracing the unknown and unseen in a way no one else has – or can.
Italiaanse sywurmboere word ingevoer om 'n sybedryf te kom vestig in Gouna se boswereld, maar moerbeibome verseg om in die potklei te groei. In die strawwe boswinter word die verwarde immigrante geteister deur reen, koorssiekte en onbegrip, en raak hulle al meer verbitter teen die goewerment wat hulle onder valse voorwendsels in die wildernis afgelaai het. Die man wat hulle tot hulp kom, is 'n bosmens met 'n onregeerbare dogter en 'n kop vol planne - die eiesinnige Silas Miggel. Hy wil hulle op 'n skip kry, terug Italie toe. |
You may like...
The Brothers Karamazov - A Novel in Four…
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Paperback
|