’n Beter lewe iewers anders?

Terwyl hy sit en teug aan ’n negroni op ’n terras, skryf die skrywer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer ’n lang brief aan ’n vriend in sy tuisland. ’n Brief waarin hy rapporteer oor sy lewe as ontdekker in die labirintiese Italiaanse hawestad Genua (“La Superba”).

Migrasie is die hooftema in hierdie outobiografiese roman waarin die lot van ’n immigrant uit die noorde van Europa gekontrasteer word met die lotsbestemming van die arm immigrante uit Afrika wat gedisillusioneerd sukkel om kop bo water te hou.

Die mooiste meisie van Genua, wat die skrywer aanvanklik vanaf ’n afstand af betrag, word sy vlugtende Ariadne deur die labirint van stegies waar hopeloosheid, prostitusie en verlore drome die botoon voer. Net soos die ander immigrante raak Ilja verlore in die fantasie wat hy rondom die stad opgetower het, met verbysterende gevolge.

The year is 1986. While most of Duggart’s mentally afflicted inhabitants are scattered in mental hospitals, traditional healers’ quarters and churches’ healing quarters, Dooks , like an uncomfortable number of other mentally ill people, is singing to a different tune . Dooks Digame is in a class of his own. Funny, witty, scary, wise,spooky , weird, creepy, sick, intense, psychic, shrink, dangerous: all these labels have been used to describe Dooks . He has as many labels as he has fans ... and enemies. He is quite simply a special, unique case. While many people fantasise about being rich and famous one day, and occasionally imagine what their lives would be like once they had hit the jackpot, Dooks doesn’t waste his precious time with such wishful thinking. In his dreamy world, he is already a multimillionaire. But who cares about money if it cannot buy one a sound mind?

* The million-copy bestseller*
* National Book Award finalist *
* One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 *
* Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club *

'This is a captivating book ... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.

Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story.

Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.

Have you ever had a terrible boss? Maki dreads the alarm clock a bit more than for the extra five minutes of sleep. Her work troubles follow her home like shadows that unwittingly creep on to the quality of her life. Can she find the courage to stand up to her boss or will she collapse under the weight of the boss lady’s words? “Making Life and Lemonade” is a novel about the story of a hard working career woman, Maki Mako, as told by herself (in other words, written in first person). Maki takes the reader through her experiences as an unhappy employee, and the complications of also being a mother, and a wife.

Toe Daan van der Walt, 'n eerstydse Kalahari-boer, 'n vertigo-aanval kry, laai sy vervreemde seun hom by 'n monnikeklooster in China af. Onder leiding van Meester Yang moet Daan tai chi doen in 'n poging om sy balans te herstel. Maar daar is ook iets anders wat aan Daan vreet, iets wat hy van sy hart móét afkry voor hy sy weg na die hiernamaals kan vind. Dalk is dit tyd dat hy aan Magrieta, sy oorlede vrou, skryf en sê dat hy haar liefgehad het.

When a strike by the University of Adamastor’s technical staff coincides with a lull in sound operator Vida’s employment, she agrees to stage-manage a university event. There she meets the Head of Effective Communication, Simon Landor. He is caught up in a massive student protest and his communication is anything but effective. Vida, who rescues strays, whether pets or people, steps in. A host of engaging characters populate this novel exploring communication and connection in a complex world.

Die verhaal van 'n slavin wat as die enigste oorlewende van 'n mislukte ekspedisie in die hart van Afrika haar terugtrek in die hol stam van 'n kremetartboom. In toenemende verlatenheid herleef sy haar vroeëre bestaan: hoe sy as kind in haar tuisdorp gevange geneem en weggevoer is, haar lewe in 'n hawestad aan die ooskus as dienares van verskillende meesters, haar reis saam met haar laaste eienaar en beskermheer, haar lewe in die kremetartboom.

Hierdie belangrike Afrikaanse roman is reeds in verskeie ander tale gepubliseer, o.m. in Engels deur J.M. Coetzee. Die Italiaanse vertaling word bekroon met die Grinzane Cavour-prys in 1988 en in 1995 word die Franse vertaling verwerk vir die verhoog en opgevoer in die Thèâtre de l'Ante in Parys.

"Solank Afrikaans bestaan, sal dié boek waarskynlik die essensie daarvan bly verwarm." – Antjie Krog

It’s 2008 and the height of Zimbabwe’s economic demise. A group of passengers is huddled in a Toyota Quantum about to embark on a treacherous expedition to the City of Gold.

They have paid a high price for the dangerous passage to what they believe is a better life; an escape from the vicious vagaries of their present life in Bulawayo. In their minds, the streets of Johannesburg are paved with gold but they will have to dig deep to get close to any gold, dirtying themselves in the process. Told with brave honesty and bold description, the stories of the individual immigrants are simultaneously heart-breaking and heart-warming.

‘This book is a page-turning tale of struggle and triumph.’ – Sunday World

The doctors and nurses at a small hospital in an African town are fighting an uphill battle against the Aids pandemic, made worse by the interventions of Holmes, the budget-conscious superintendent, and his bungling sidekick, Thunderbird.

The rebellious and profane Morgan thwarts every new rule in his quest to save his patients, most of whom are dying because they lack the resources to buy back their lives with over-priced drugs. His efforts are valiantly supported by the enigmatic Oumar, the likeable Kenyan, the beautiful Violet, and Rebecca, the battleaxe with a heart of gold. Then there is Mary, with her passion for birds, holding Morgan’s heart in her frail hands; Naledi, the success story, who is brought back from the brink of death; and Rastodika, the untameable spirit.

When funds are needed for a kidney transplant, Morgan conspires with Father Michael; Dorcas, the shebeen queen; and Rachel, the whore, to make the rich Mr B organise a Beerfest to pay for the operation. But then things don’t work out exactly as they had planned.

The Innocence of Roast Chicken focuses on an Afrikaans/English family in the Eastern Cape and their idyllic life on their grandparents’ farm, seen through the eyes of the little girl, Kate, and the subtle web of relationships that is shattered by a horrifying incident in the mid-1960s.

Scenes from Kate’s early life are juxtaposed with Johannesburg in 1989 when Kate, now married to Joe, a human rights lawyer, stands aside from the general euphoria that is gripping the nation. Her despair, both with her marriage and with the national situation, resolutely returns to a brutal incident one Christmas day when Kate was thrust into an awareness of what lay beneath her blissful childhood.

Beautifully constructed, The Innocence of Roast Chicken is painful, evocative, beautifully drawn and utterly absorbing.

In ’n oorloggeteisterde Angola, word kaptein Piet Prinsloo gekonfronteer met meer as terroriste uit die Kongo wanneer sy verlede hom op Oukersaand inhaal.

’n Span bankrowers kom hul moses teë in die Chuosberge. ’n Veldwagter is op sy hoede toe twee uiters verdagte karakters by Etosha opdaag. Drie boesemvriende raak verlief op een meisie. En ’n skrywer en ’n beeldskone filmster is gestrand op die Kaitschavlei.

In vyf stories skets Doc Immelman wêrelde waar hardebaarde kan liefhê, helde nog met die vuis kan slaan en kameeldoringbome arabesk teen die laaste bietjie lig van die dag geëts is.

It all began with the anger of Laduma, the Thunder God, and the birth of a special child with strange, flickering eyes. This is the tale of a rural family – Mabena, Mantombi and their grandson Duma – who are exiled from the ancestral home and thrown into the turmoil of township life. They take Duma to Boekenhout, on the outskirts of a city, where Mabena, the grandfather, becomes a bridge between the past and the present, the urban and the rural.

The harder Mabena tries to keep the values of the past alive, the more intrigued and bedazzled Duma becomes by urban life and jazz music. The introduction of the apartheid homelands policies forces the family to return to their old village, where Duma is to be initiated into manhood. We Shall Not Weep is a beautifully written lyrical novel about a traditional African community in change, swayed by the forces of modernity and political change.

“I could have guessed that one day I’d hear something I shouldn’t have on that party line. It was one thing listening to the gossip and the small talk that buzzed along its wires all the time, but it was something else to hear, on a hot Saturday morning before you started high school, that your best friend’s mother, the woman you wished you could somehow have married one day, was dead.”

Dangerous boyhood memories surface when a letter brings news of Karl’s suicide.

Karl, Max’s enigmatic friend who taught him how to toughen up when he’d first arrived in their small Lowveld town. Karl, whose beautiful mother became the object of Max’s raging teenage obsession.

Her tragic death brought a brutal end to the two boys’ friendship. But why exactly did Karl and his family leave town so soon thereafter?

As Max tries to make sense of what is transpiring, his complicity in the ills of the past begins to gnaw at him.

Due South of Copenhagen is Mark Winkler’s masterful tale of the friendships between men, small-town living during the height of South Africa’s Border War, and about what it takes to put the past to rest.

When Mr George loses his job teaching English at a private secondary school in Bulawayo, 'his pension payout, after forty years of full-time service, bought him two jam doughnuts and a soft tomato.'

When he backs his uninsured white Ford Escort into a brand new Mercedes Benz, the out-of-court settlement sees him giving up his house to the complainant, Beauticious Njamayakanuna, and becoming her domestic servant.

Through the prism of this engaging post-colonial role reversal, and spiced with George's lessons on Shakespeare, John Eppel draws down the curtain on one particular white man in Africa.

But before it's time to go, George will delight us with the antics of his literature classes; his various arrests - all timed to coincide with the police chief's need for help with essays on Hamlet and A Gram of Wheat; his keen eye for flora and fauna; and the long trek back through the hundred years of his family's Zimbabwean past, as he returns an abandoned child to her home.

Hierdie ware verhaal handel oor 'n jong seun uit 'n arm gesin wat op die spoorlyne van Carnarvon-stasie grootgeword het en moes as kind onder andere bottels en bene in die dorp optel en verkoop vir eksta geld vir die gesin om te oorleef. Sy weetgierige geaardheid, positiewe uitkyk en wil om bo uit te kom, lei egter tot 'n inspirerende suksesverhaal. Die skrywer vertel met humor, passie en 'n gemaklike skryfstyl unieke en skreeusnaakse stories wat net in 'n klein Karoodorpie kan plaasvind.

From the Booker-winning Irish author, a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths

This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.

But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime.

Actress is about a daughter’s search for the truth: the dark secret in the bright star, and what drove Katherine finally mad.

Brilliantly capturing the glamour of post-war America and the shabbiness of 1970s Dublin, Actress is an intensely moving, disturbing novel about mothers and daughters and the men in their lives. A scintillating examination of the corrosive nature of celebrity, it is also a sad and triumphant tale of freedom from bad love, and from the avid gaze of the crowd.

Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena vertel die lewensverhaal van ’n swart vrou teen die agtergrond van apartheid. Hierdie hartverskeurende, tog inspirerende roman word steeds beskou as een van die beste romans wat Afrika in die twintigste eeu opgelewer het.

Nuwe plek, nuwe skool, nuwe mense. Ek het my eenkant gehou, net in die middae pinball gespeel by die Griek se kafee op die hoek. Pinball was my ding. My nuwe klasmaats het gesien hoe ek speel.

“Kyk hoe jive die cat daar agter die pinball,” lag die een. “Ek scheme dié Randfontein cat is nie te bad nie.”

Omdat ek ’n soort van pinball wizard was, het hulle my nie so geboelie soos vir my kleinboet Johnny nie.
 
Ná ’n lewe in die skadus neem ’n man stelling in, rewolwer in die hand, om sy allerlaaste misdaad te pleeg.
 
Terwyl hy in ’n donker sitkamer wag, loop sy herinneringe wye draaie: na harde grootwordjare in Randfontein en Germiston se strate, waar selfs jou eie familie jou kon bloedmond slaan. Hy onthou die Suid-Afrika waarin hy opgegroei het: die Castle Lager en Lucky Strikes agter skoolpawiljoene, die seuns met aanvalsgewere op die grens.
 
Vir ’n hierjy soos hy was sy pad reeds vroeg uitgemeet: hoëtroustelle steel, baie Klipdrift, verbeteringskool, daarná die army. En toe sluk Sunnyside se nagklubs en onderwêreld hom in.
 
In André Krüger se aangrypende roman oor familie, verraad en wraak – geskryf in die taal van die straat en die tyd – voer een man ’n uiterste stryd teen sy lotsbestemming.

Danny – Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – is an undocumented immigrant in Sydney, denied refugee status after he has fled from his native Sri Lanka. Working as a cleaner, living out of a grocery storeroom, for three years he’s been trying to create a new identity for himself. And now, with his beloved vegan girlfriend, Sonja, with his hidden accent and highlights in his hair, he is as close as he has ever come to living a normal Australian life.

But then one morning, Danny learns a female client of his has been murdered. When Danny recognizes a jacket left at the murder scene, he believes it belongs to another of his clients ― a doctor with whom he knows the woman was having an affair. Suddenly Danny is confronted with a choice: come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported, or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of a single day, evaluating the weight of his past, his dreams for the future, and the unpredictable, often absurd reality of living invisibly and undocumented, he must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

Propulsive, insightful, and full of Aravind Adiga’s signature wit and magic, Amnesty is both a timeless moral struggle and a universal story with particular urgency today.

'Smart and funny' Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things

The first step was learning to read, but if she really wants to turn her life around, Maggsie is going to have to trust other people – and that might just be the hardest lesson she’s ever faced . . .

Small and dyslexic, with a short fuse, bad teeth, a prison record and something to prove, Marguerite McNaughton – Maggsie – doesn't need anybody or anything, thank you very much. She's more than capable of looking after herself.

She’s also about to discover that everyone needs someone, sometimes.
Even her.

The thing about trusting others, though, is that not everyone is trustworthy . . .

It starts when a fellow inmate gives Maggsie reading lessons. Then she's offered a job in London as a kitchen assistant, together with supported accommodation and a colleague who seems determined to befriend Maggsie, no matter what.

At first, Maggsie is convinced nothing will change.
Especially her.

But maybe this time can be different? Maybe Maggsie can be different – if she can just put her previous mistakes behind her and her trust in the right people.

Maggsie McNaughton's Second Chance, by Frances Maynard, is an uplifting, heartwarming novel about the power of friendship and the written word, perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Home, Three Things about Elsie and Elizabeth is Missing.

We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.

'Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that's nested in life's quotidian details' Guardian

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.

Colman Harpe works for the C&O in the Appalachian rail town of Thurmond, West Virginia, but he'd rather be a preacher and lead his own congregation. When a member of the rival McLean clan guns down his cousin and the clan matriarch, Serepta McLean, taunts the Harpes by coming to a tent revival in their territory, Colman chooses peace over seeking revenge with the rest of his family.

Colman, known for an unnaturally keen sense of hearing, is shocked when he hears God tell him to preach to the McLeans. A failed attempt to run away leaves Colman sick and suffering in the last place he wanted to be--McLean territory. Nursed by herbalist Ivy Gordon--a woman whose birthmark has made her an outcast--he's hindered in his calling by Serepta's iron grip on the region and his uncle's desire to break that grip. But appearances can be deceiving, and he soon learns that the face of evil doesn't look like he expected.

As the only daughter, Sylvia Miller of The Tinderbox has always held a special place in her Old Order family, one Adeline Pelham jeopardizes when she shows up at the Millers' Hickory Hollow farm. It isn't that Adeline means to be a threat, but her very existence is a reminder of the painful secret that has so recently upended the Miller household. And with Sylvia and her mother still struggling to come to terms with that news, this is a challenging time to welcome an Englisher--especially this Englisher--into their midst.

Despite the Millers' unexpected hospitality, Adeline is well aware that she's treading on Sylvia's turf, and she feels guilty about doing so when Sylvia is grappling with issues of her own. Not only is Sylvia trying to rebuild her trust in her father, but she's uncertain what to make of her once-promising engagement to Titus Kauffman, who hasn't pursued her since she confronted him. Adeline wishes she could help Sylvia, but she's not sure that either she or Sylvia is ready for that level of closeness in their relationship.

Can God make something good come out of the mistakes of the past? Or does Adeline's arrival mark one too many surprises for the Millers and their Amish community?

'Brilliantly funny ... the best satire of our contemporary nightmare that you will ever see, and very possibly the last' Alan Moore

It's 2019 and America is ruled over by a billionaire reality TV star. Its media is owned by a transnational class of the shameless and the depraved. And its people have been silently robbed of their wealth, their dignity and their democracy.

In this brave new world, going to see a superhero movie counts as activism, and arguing with the other serfs on social media is political engagement. BUT EVERYTHING'S FINE - as long as you never, ever ask yourself who makes money from the ticket sales and the ratings, or who owns Twitter.

It's 2019 and Jarett Kobek has done the only thing a dissident American novelist can do in those circumstances: he's joined the party and written fantasy novel about an immortal fairy queen and a shadowy billionaire philanthropist sheikh called Dennis.

Hilarious, provocative and unmissable, Only Americans Burn in Hell is the only novel for our certifiably insane times.

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro is the French phenomenon by Christine Féret-Fleury ready to charm book-lovers everywhere, for fans of The Little Paris Bookshop and The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

When Juliette takes the métro to her loathed office job each morning, her only escape is in books – she avidly reads on her journey and imagines what her fellow commuters’ choices might say about them.

But when, one day, she decides to alight the train a few stops early and meets Soliman – the mysterious owner of the most enchanting bookshop Juliette has ever seen – she is sure her life will never be the same again . . .

For Soliman also believes in the power of books to change the course of a life – entrusting his passeurs with the task of giving each book to the person who needs it most – and he thinks Juliette is perfect for the job.

And so, leaving her old life behind, Juliette will discover the true power a book can have . . .