Raw, beautiful prose exposes a world in which humour and despair exist in equal measures, a world where the need to succeed, to strike it rich, brings out the best and the worst of human nature. Room 207 takes the reader to a Johannesburg that is the very heart of South Africa, to a room in which six young men struggle to make their dreams come true in the “dream city”.

For more than ten years, they have lived in Room 207 of a dilapidated block of flats in Hillbrow. By day, they are hustlers – they hustle production companies, they have their own music company, they survive. At night, they party. Room 207 paints a vivid, engrossing picture of their lives and their sense of hopelessness of having to compromise their lives.

They are artists, these men, but have to make a living. Otherwise, fate would call them back home – not driving their own BMW, but leaving the way they arrived: in a taxi, with empty pockets, and nothing to show for their years in Johannesburg.

Turning her back on what is considered conventional, Makhosazana Xaba engages with her subject-matter on a revolutionary level in Running and Other Stories.

She takes tradition - be that literary tradition, cultural tradition, gender tradition - and re-imagines it in a way that is liberating and innovative. Bracketed by Xaba's revisitings of Can Themba's influential short story, The Suit, the ten stories in this collection, while strongly independent, are in conversation with one another, resulting in a collection that can be devoured all at once or savoured slowly, story by story.

By re-envisioning the ordinary and accepted, Xaba is creating a space in which women's voices are given a rebirth.

Ek is gebore by kerslig, op ’n plaas, Vaalhoek, naby Keimoes en Kakamas! Op ’n jong ouerdom begin ek onder andere Rooi Jan en Swart Luiperd lees. Ek begin ook stories vertel. Ek lees graag en skryf graag. Ek het ’n onderwyser, dominee en kliniese sielkundige geword met ’n D.Litt in kliniese sielkunde en werk nog as kliniese sielkundige. Ek verwerf jaarliks ’n diploma in sielkunde. Ek is ’n wewenaar en het van Upington na Pringlebaai verhuis.

Vir my is dit belangrik dat verhale dadelik vrae moet laat ontstaan soos, “Wat gebeur volgende?”en eindig met onverwagse bevredigende gebeure. In my eie stories pas ek hierdie metode toe.

Van die stories het heelwat humor in en is vir oud en jonk. Genotvolle verhale wat jy nie kan mis nie. Sommige verhale is kort en lekker leesstof vir mense wat haastig is en sommige langer vir bedtyd. Elke verhaal is uitstekende vermaak en laat mens na die ligter kant van die lewe kyk.

Daar’s ’n muis wat kan praat, ’n Ou wat dink hy kan ’n rivier in vloed klop, ’n man wat alles kan regmaak, behalwe ’n kar se ratte wat agtertoe inspring in plaas van vorentoe, ’n lekker polisiestorie, ’n vroutjie wat mediese verteenwoordiger speel, liefde en hartseer, ’n geheimsinnige vrou met asemrowende lippe en nog sulke stories.

Lees en geniet hulle!

A young man makes three journeys that take him through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way – including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge – he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man’s best intentions, each journey ends in disaster.

Together, these three journeys will change his whole life.

A novel of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion, In a Strange Room is the hauntingly beautiful evocation of one man’s search for love, and a place to call home.

Life wasn't always this hard for fourteen-year-old Mvelo, who lives with her mother, Zola in the shacks on the margins of Mkhumbane township.

There were good times when they lived with Sipho, Zola's lawyer boyfriend. But when the beautiful and mysterious Nonceba Hlathi arrives, Zola has to make a choice. She also has her pride. Now their social grants have been discontinued: the one for Mvelo being underage reared by a 31-year-old single mother, and the other for Zola because of her status. And there is also an elephant growing in their shack as the terrible thing that happened that night in the revival tent remains unspoken.

In her second novel, Futhi Ntshingila once again introduces us to a cast of strong women who have little, but are determined to shape their own destinies.

"I wrestled with life and lost." So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering way – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and anger, humility and ambition, trust and distrust, selfishness and selflessness. A flawed individual with an acute understanding of the roads that must be navigated to achieve even the slightest insight into the human condition.

In this study in introspection, embroidered with lyrical prose and astonishing intuition, the hero, meditative and melancholic, is at once both tragic and comic.

“disruption[noun] - Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.”

The title and topic chosen for our seventh collection of stories from around Africa, decided before the world as we knew it changed, turned out to be eerily prescient. Drawn from the four corners of the continent, from Libya and Sierra Leone to Kenya and Botswana, these twenty-one stories serve up an imaginative feast, many unfolding the consequences of the environmental degradation of the planet.

But the contributors have not parroted the doom and gloom often found in dystopian or apocalyptic fiction. Instead, they have opted for wildly original narratives featuring sea monsters, zombies, time and space travel, cyborgs, immortals, gods and goddesses both benevolent and terrifying, and even a one-eyed octopus. This riot of colour and creativity offers fierce and rich allegories of colonial conquest and late capitalism, and probes patriarchal family and social structures with deft fingers.

The reader will find comedy, the absurd, and the surreal in these pages, as well as lovingly drawn and often valedictory accounts of the natural world and its denizens. Above all, these stories tell of human connection in the face of impossibly difficult circumstances, providing much-needed comfort and inspiration.

Prepare to be disturbed, moved, and entertained. This is the disruption you’re really looking for.

Set in the taxi industry, the story's main characters are a poor taxi driver, a wealthy taxi owner and the taxi driver's girlfriend.

Crime fiction featuring paranormal elements, The Last Stop combines gritty realism with the magical. It shows what happens between people in times of taxi violence and deals with themes of lust, betrayal and revenge.

The Last Stop is an engaging, clever, interesting and darkly enjoyable read with an incredible plot twist at the end.

ʼn Feministiese roman vir konvensionele vroue Kantelpunt is die boekstawing van Nellie van der Merwe (gebore Petronella Jacoba van Aarde) se wederopstanding. Nellie is pas 50, ʼn konvensionele, wit, Afrikaanse vrou wat haar lewe lank gedoen het wat almal van haar verwag – sy het stilgebly. Met haar stilte het sy haar plek gekoop in haar huwelik, haar gesin, haar familie, haar werk, in die kerk, in die land, in die samelewing. Maar dan ondergaan sy ʼn histerektomie, en haar wêreld kantel. Sy is losgesny van die ding wat van haar ʼn vrou gemaak het, en daarmee saam raak sy bevry van die stilte.

Sy begin haar stem terugeis, soms met verreikende gevolge, soms teen ʼn ontsettende prys. Sy word gedwing om alles wat sy tot dusver as gegewe aanvaar het te ondersoek, en in die proses moet sy nie net die mense naaste aan haar se aandeel in haar stryd erken nie, maar ook haar eie aandadigheid aan haar lot bepaal. Met elke insident, elke veldslag en elke gesprek tree sy verder weg van die geskiedenis en die konvensies wat haar stom gehou het, en kom sy nader aan die vrou wat sy van die begin af veronderstel was om te wees – die een met wie sý in vrede kan saamleef.

“Daar bestaan by my geen twyfel dat Kantelpunt nog meer suksesvol as Oorlewingsgids vir ’n bedonnerde diva sal wees nie. Dis die soort verhaal wat elke Afrikaanssprekende behoort te lees – vroue en mans.” – Chanette Paul

Nie vir sensitiewe lesers nie.

Dis twee jaar ná ’n oudkollega Julia en haar seun Rudi se lewe hel gemaak het. Maar die inwoners van Kosmoslaan het herstel en aanbeweeg. Dit blyk op die oppervlak asof dinge weer vreedsaam is in Kosmoslaan.

’n Knorrige man met ’n fyn meisiekind en ’n hartseer verlede trek in Ida se huis in. Vanaf die eerste oomblik wat hy trompop in haar vasloop, ontwrig hy Julia se lewe. Watse verspottigheid laat haar nou skielik op twee-en-veertig in vervoering raak oor ’n befoeterde man? En wie saboteur haar en Rudi se eiendom skielik?

Ida voel en lyk soos ’n ou en halwe vrou na ’n ontdekking. En Alma se Jurie is deesdae so omgekrap dat niemand met hom kan huishou nie. Ellie en Justin smag steeds na ’n baba van hul eie na haar vorige miskraam, terwyl hul grootste wens soos ’n ryp perske in Hugo en Claire se skoot val. Ellie smee egter ’n onverwagse band met ’n kinderhuismeisie wat gereeld by Marella se teruggetrokke seun, Bouwer, kuier. En Bouwer is nie Marella en Lourens se enigste bekommernis nie. Marella voel deesdae nie haarself nie ... Boonop kom Klein-Lourens met groot nuus wat sy en Sabina se lewens kan verander.

Daar is dinge wat broei in Kosmoslaan en die vriende en families tot hulle uiterstes toets. Gelukkig is daar ook engele in Kosmoslaan.

Dit is 1950 en Pasgatyd in Oudtshoorn. Leah Abrams, ’n jong entoesiastiese navorser in antieke tale, kuier by haar Joodse rabbi pa en sy tweede vrou, Daniela. Hulle is albei navorsers oor, onder andere, die geskiedenis van Israel. Maar daar heers konflik in die huis want Leah wil gesels oor die Messias wie sy leer ken het in haar studies, en haar Joodse gesin is nie ontvanklik daarvoor nie.

Diverse kultuur- en geloofsgroepe en na-oorlogse politieke kwessies skep ook probleme vir die Abrams-gesin en hul tuisdorp. ’n Sluipmoordaanval krap wonde en geheime in die dorp en Leah se gesin oop en die plaaslike polisie se vooroordele help nie die ondersoek na die skuldige aan nie …

Leah is oorweldig deur seer en onsekerheid. Maar sy begin stadig maar seker by mense wie sy nooit sou verwag het leer dat vergifnis, verhoudings en liefde die dinge is wat mense bymekaar bring, ongeag van hulle stand of kultuur. Sy besef ook met die hulp van ander dat God nie tussen die blaaie van ’n boek leef nie, maar in jou hart. Dalk het die Here nog heeltyd ’n ander plan gehad vir die mense in Die huis op die hoek.

The unnamed protagonist of Perfect Hlongwane’s second novel, Sanity Prevail, is admitted to the Psychiatric Ward of a government hospital.

There, he meets an assortment of characters, his fellow patients, and narrates their hilarious, horrific and ultimately tragic stories as relayed to him by themselves. His conflicted feelings about being in the treatment facility, and keen curiosity with regard to the admission stories of his fellow patients, serve as the unfolding plot for his stay in the Psychiatric Ward.

The protagonist agonises about what it means, to be adjudged mentally unwell, by a society whose very foundations seem to him unjust and unhealthy to the point of being bizarre.

A story that seeks to explore what sets individual stories apart, how they converge and collide and ultimately, the dilemma of being alive in the world today, such as it is. A riveting tale about the struggle of a mental patient to wrestle hope from the deepest pit of despair.

In the spring of 1970, a Pretoria schoolboy falls in love with Muhammad Ali. He begins to collect cuttings about his hero from the newspapers, an obsession that grows into a ragged archive of scrapbooks. Forty years later, when Joe has become a writer, these scrapbooks both insist on and obscure a book about his boyhood. He turns to his brother Branko, a sound editor, for help with recovering their shared past. But can a story ever belong equally to two people? Is this a brotherly collaboration or a battle for supremacy?

This is an intricate puzzle of a book by a writer of lyrical power and formal inventiveness. Against a spectacular backdrop, the heyday of the greatest showman of them all, Vladislavić unfolds a small, fragmentary story of family life and the limits of language. Meaning comes into view in the spaces between then and now, growing up and growing old, speaking out and keeping silent.

This is a trilogy of Olive Schreiner's farm novels, Undine, The Story of an African Farm and From Man to Man.

The author was pitch-forked into prominence by the publication in 1883 of The Story of an African Farm, originally published under the pseudonym 'Ralph Iron'. The other two novels were published posthumously. Undine was in fact completed before The Story of an African Farm, and many consider From Man to Man, the book she cherished most, to be her best novel.

Karoo Moon is classic Africana by South Africa's first internationally recognised author; and each of the novels has strongly autobiographical elements, helping the reader to understand a remarkable woman who went on to become an outspoken anti-colonial, pro-Boer campaigner during the Anglo-Boer War, South Africa's first feminist, and a prescient supporter of her disfranchised fellow citizens.

Winner of the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award.

Since coming of haemorrh-age, Frith must wear a LipService patch to write or speak. The words the patch produces are not her own. Scripted by copywriters, they promote one sponsoring brand or another. With them, ‘You’ – a voice in her head that is the patch’s brand persona and her conformist alter ego – appears.

Through the noise of You talking a variety of different LipService brands, Frith struggles to find her way back to speaking for herself. She believes her tastures – her ability to taste things she touches – are the key. But other elements of this consumerist society are equally interested in tastures for commercial gain.

Petrus wil sy kleinseun opspoor sodat hy sy geliefde plaas aan iemand kan nalaat.

Anina is ’n maatskaplike werker wat as kind al deur mans seksueel misbruik is.

Petrus vertrou nie jong vroue nie. Anina haat ou mans. Tog besluit hulle om mekaar te help.

Maar hoe oorkom jy jare se seer en wantroue? En hoe vind jy ’n aangenome kind as die ma doelbewus haar spore doodgevee het? Kan twee generasies wat op verskillende maniere en plekke mishandel is, mekaar ooit daarvan oortuig dat vergifnis die enigste weg na vryheid uit hul wrokkigheid is?

Who can ever understand the heart of a mother when she is forced to abort her baby. Furthermore, who can ever understand the emotions of that baby when she finds out thirty- five years later, that she survived three attempted abortions. And then the final discovery: whó is really the Sustainer of Life and Death?

“Tell it just as it happened, Mommy!” Lodene’s urgent voice pleaded with me and I was transported to the events of thirty-five years ago. There is a saying, “The truth shall set you free.” “Does it?” I had to ask myself as I battled through every word. The story is a truly captivating novel of suspense from the pen of a mother who begged the life of her baby from the hand of God. It will enthral readers and you will experience fierce emotions of love, disappointment, pain and hate. Thís true story took place in 1983, when abortion was illegal.

Lonika, a young woman, lost her heart to a respected businessman, Wilhelm. “Lost in love,” is what Stephan would call it with a shrug of his broad shoulders, as he helplessly watches his brother, Wilhelm, change into a cruel, cold hearted spouse who tries his utmost to end the life of his unborn baby in underhanded ways. Lonika’s life becomes a treacherous journey between lies and heartless brutality. She escapes and flees to safety. Enough is enough! A life is taken. A life is given – but at a price. Once again Lonika must stand naked in the face of fierce negotiations.

Samuel has lived alone for a long time; one morning he finds the sea has brought someone to offer companionship and to threaten his solitude …

A young refugee washes up unconscious on the beach of a small island inhabited by no one but Samuel, an old lighthouse keeper. Unsettled, Samuel is soon swept up in memories of his former life on the mainland: a life that saw his country suffer under colonisers, then fight for independence, only to fall under the rule of a cruel dictator; and he recalls his own part in its history. In this new man’s presence he begins to consider, as he did in his youth, what is meant by land and to whom it should belong. To what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?

A novel about guilt and fear, friendship and rejection; about the meaning of home.

Willem is ‘n eenkantkind. Sy pa, die formidabele dominee Riaan Cronjé, is die trots van Bijlstad se Moedergemeente. Sy woord is wet; dit bepaal dat Willem in sy voetspore sal volg en ook die kansel bestyg.

By die seunskool tel al die Bybelstudie egter vir niks. Daar is Willem omring deur ’n spul Filistyne wat die see nie kan skoon was nie; tieners met seks op die brein en ’n dialek wat die verf van die mure af laat dop.

Te midde ’n eensame uur in ‘n koffiewinkel, kom sit ’n aantreklike ouer vrou oorkant die kerkseun. Sonder om ’n woord te sê, neem sy ’n hap van sy beskuit, ’n sluk van sy koffie, en verdwyn so gou soos sy verskyn het.

Willem, te oorbluf om enige rooi vlaggies op te let, is natuurlik die volgende dag terug.

Sy ook.

Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in Foe. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe. In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London. Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the world. But with Cruso dead, Friday incapable of speech and Foe himself intent on reshaping her narrative, Barton struggles to maintain her grip on the past, only to fall victim to the seduction of storytelling itself. Treacherous, elegant and unexpectedly moving, Foe remains one of the most exquisitely composed of this pre-eminent author's works. 'A small miracle of a book. . . of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' Washington Post 'A superb novel' The New York Times South African author J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice for his novels Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K. His novel set during the South African apartheid, Age of Iron, winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award is also available in Penguin paperback.

Jou buurman dink hy besit die polisie ...

Petra Smit erf onverwags haar oupa se ou werkswinkel in ʼn klein Vrystaatse dorpie. Daar is gelukkig kopers wat tou staan vir die gebou, maar Petra gaan, heel nuuskierig, kyk na hierdie eiendom waarvan sy nie glad nie geweet het nie. Daar aangekom, ontdek sy die erf vol motorwrakke wat aan die plaaslike slagter behoort. Dié einste slagter is ook die buurman, hy is 'n vroueslaner en hy skeep sy seun, Monty, af, maar hy het kontant en staan gereed om Smit Motors te koop. Petra, wat baie lief was vir haar oupa, wil nie die erflating aan so 'n persoon verkoop nie en 'n mini-oorlog breek uit. Dinge word nog moeiliker toe Arno, 'n reus van 'n man met die psige van 'n kind, aan haar deur kom klop. Hy wil help. Die reus maak homself tuis en word vriende met die slagter se seun, Monty. Petra hoort nie in hierdie dorp nie. Sy mis haar mooi meisie en die roman wat sy wil skryf, bly tweede kom in die oorlog met die slagter. Die slagter hoort wel op die dorp. Hy ken die polisie en intimideer almal. Sal die vreemde Petra en haar twee nuwe maats, Arno en Monty, die oorlog kan wen?

Die boek word uit verskeie perspektiewe vertel. Petra is een perspektiefkarakter, so ook is die Johanna, Monty se oppasser. Aan die ander kant van die wêreld bly Susan, ʼn kunstenaar, vasgevang in ʼn luukse Sweedse kunstepark, nog 'n perspektiefkarakter. Wat het hierdie vroue met mekaar in gemeen? Hoe bind Smit Motors hulle almal? Smit Motors is toeganklike literêre fiksie. Réney Warrington slaag daarin om die spanning snaarstyf te hou, terwyl die leser die speurwerk moet doen, wetende dat iemand se bloed sal moet vloei. Die vraag is: Wie s'n?

Hierdie boek is ’n hersiene weergawe van Emma is g’n engel nie (2011).

Emma dra verskriklike verwyte in haar binneste rond. Sy het iets vreesliks gedoen en dit kou aan haar. Sy voel al klaar moeilik om lief te hê met haar mollige lyf en haar vaal gelaatstrekke. Miskien as sy ook funky en blond en pret kon wees sou sy liefde kon vind. Sy wil ook weet hoe dit voel om iemand se arms styf om jou te voel … iemand soos Burger Botha.

Dis ’n eensame pad wat sy stap en die laaste mense by wie sy kan troos soek is haar ma en suster. Die Bybelversies van haar kindertyd weergalm in haar kop en herinner haar dat sy eintlik maar ’n closet Christen is. Sy weet wat sy verkeerd gedoen het, wat sy aangevang het, maar hoe gaan sy dit regmaak? Waar begin sy om na vergifnis te soek?

As ’n mens nie van jouself hou nie is dit moeilik om te glo dat iemand anders van jou sal kan hou. En as Emma nie haarself kan vergewe, of vir haarself lief kan wees nie, wie sal ooit kan? Sy voel allesbehalwe soos ’n engel, eintlik meer soos ’n duiwel, om die waarheid te sê. Haar skuld is te swaar om alleen te dra.

Emma het gehoor dat bevryding jou vlerke gee, en daar is soveel engel-vroue rondom haar met vlerke. Dalk kan hulle haar help om haar eie vlerke te kry sodat sy uiteindelik vry en haarself kan wees.

For the first time, K. Sello Duiker’s well-known The Hidden Star is now available in isiXhosa.

This is a book of questions and answers. But you already know what you want to ask, which is why you are reading. In fact, the truth is that you already know the answer to your question – you just have to listen to yourself.

Eleven-year-old Nolitye’s granny used to say: if you mess with a woman, you mess with a stone. When Nolitye finds a magical stone on the dusty streets of Phola, her granny’s words take on a new meaning. Along with her two friends – the somewhat pampered Bheki, and Four Eyes, a reformed member of the Spoilers gang led by Rotten Nellie – Nolitye puts the powers of the stone to good use: for the first time the threesome can stand up to the Spoilers; Nolitye can save the life of Rex, the leader of a pack of talking township mutts; and dare to look scary MaMtonga with her living brown-and-green snake necklace in the eye.

But soon Nolitye finds out that the purplish-blue magic stone is but five stones needed to put right things that started to go wrong the day her father died in a mining accident when she was five years old. Or so she was told by her mother ...

By merging a cast of characters straight out of African myth folklore with everyday township life, K. Sello Duiker created a magical world and a truly wondrous quest, a timeless tale that will appeal to an ageless audience.

Bongani and Thando are a loving couple, wonderful parents and each running their own successful businesses. They have it all until one chance encounter with a business associate changes the entire course of their lives.

It forces them to question the status quo and make drastic changes that end up having a great impact on those closest to them.

Will they stay and try to figure out how to exist in the new normal? Or do they follow their hearts and live their Truth.