The Love Song Of Andre P. Brink is the first biography of this major South African novelist who, during his lifetime, was published in over 30 languages and ranked with the likes of Gabriel García Márquez, Peter Carey and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Leon de Kock’s eagerly awaited account of Brink’s life is richly informed by a previously unavailable literary treasure: the dissident Afrikaner’s hoard of journal-writing, a veritable chronicle that was 54 years in the making. In this massive new biographical source – running to a million words – Brink does not spare himself, or anyone else for that matter, as he narrates the ups and downs of his five marriages and his compulsive affairs with a great number of women. These are precisely the topics that the rebel in both politics and sex skated over in his memoir, A Fork in the Road.

De Kock’s biographical study of the author who came close to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature not only synthesises the journals but also subjects them to searching critical analysis. In addition, the biographer measures the journals against additional sources, both scholarly and otherwise, among them the testimony of Brink’s friends, family, wives and lovers.

The Love Song Of Andre P. Brink subjects Brink’s literary legacy to a bracing scholarly re-evaluation, making this major new biography a crucial addition to scholarship on Brink

When he died in 2014, author Chris van Wyk left behind an impressive literary legacy. The scope of his work was broad – poetry, children’s books, short stories and biographies. But perhaps he is best remembered for his memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy, which chronicles his growing up in Riverlea and introduces us to the colourful characters who helped to shape his life and inform the stories he wrote.

The public persona of this witty and wise raconteur was well known, but behind it was a family man, who liked nothing better than to spend time with his two sons Kevin and Karl, his wife and childhood sweetheart Kathy, and the friends and family who were his primary sources of inspiration.

Using the unique vantage point of oldest son, Kevin van Wyk’s astute observations of his father and the strong bond they enjoyed throughout Chris’s life have resulted in a memoir that is as affectionate as it is entertaining. In taking us behind the scenes into the Van Wyk household, we witness the inner workings of the mind of a storyteller, from the flowering of his father’s activism, wit and wisdom to the sources of his occasional quirky outbursts. If storytelling runs in the genes, Kevin may just be proof that his father’s spirit lives on.

Melinda Ferguson is the bestselling author of her addiction trilogy: Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also an award-winning publisher.

To escape the pandemic, Ferguson finds her dream house on a private nature reserve, secluded in the otherworldly Cedarberg. A week before it's registered, a beautiful high-powered exec is brutally murdered next door. How could heaven have transformed into hell in an instant?

Written in her no-holds-barred signature style, Bamboozled is set in an age of fear, on a dystopian planet floundering in a maze of deception. In her search for sanity, Ferguson tries to untangle herself from a masked world gone mad, in which the media are controlled by the Invisible, Big Tech are mining our lives, where truth-tellers are mercilessly hunted and where, in certain countries, there are now Ministries of Loneliness.

Driven by an ancient human yearning to connect, the author must go on a deep journey into the unknown if she is to find her garden of songbirds and her torch of freedom and joy. The book is also about losing money and finding magic, while trying to work out who killed the woman next door.

In 1957 emigreer die negejarige Henk van Woerden vanaf Nederland met sy gesin na Kaapstad – leertas in die hand, mussie oor die ore, serp om die nek, glasoog in die oogkas. Eers veertig jaar later ontdek hy wat die rede was vir hierdie vertrek na Suid-Afrika: Sy pa was ’n kollaborateur in die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. Die emigrasie is die begin van ’n lewe as buitestaander en vorm later die goue draad in sy skilderye en literêre werk.

Koning Eenoog is ’n boeiende biografie van die ewig soekende emigrant Henk van Woerden (1947–2005), ’n skrywer wat nie net ’n bekroonde oeuvre agtergelaat het nie (Een mond vol glas – Alan Paton Award en die Frans Kellendonk-prys, Ultramarijn – Gouden Uil en Inktaap) maar ook die Nederlandse literatuur oor Suid-Afrika verander het.

Although Olga Kirsch’s is the only Jewish voice in Afrikaans poetry, it is scarcely known among members of the South African Jewish community. Olga Kirsch was, after Elisabeth Eybers, only the second woman to publish a collection of poetry in Afrikaans.

The aims of this biography are to reverse this slide into obscurity and to show why her work is important not only in South Africa but also in Israel.

It does not only investigate Kirsch’s role as Afrikaans Jewish poet but also examines her as an example of a cross-cultural, multi-lingual immigrant poet. As such some of her English and Hebrew poetry are included in this work.

The first ever memoirs from the Number One global bestselling adventure author.

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

Always candid, sometimes hilarious, and never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rock is testament to a writer whose life is as rich and eventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.

Love and Fury is the compelling and intimate account of the life, loves and furies of Margie Orford. In this brave memoir, the renowned South African crime writer divulges some of the harrowing experiences that have shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Through sexual assault, divorce, depression and personal loss, Orford illuminates the trauma she has navigated. Tender and courageous chapters vividly recall memories of what she has been through as a woman, mother, wife, feminist and ambitious writer.

Love and Fury shows why trauma in our past can have such an enduring and debilitating effect on women’s lives. It also unpacks the healing power of love, creativity, courage and self-reflection, ultimately offering a profound message of hope and joy for any woman who has ever questioned themselves, their trauma and who they are in the world.

This book is every woman’s love and fury.

Award winning novelist Karin Cronje has established herself as a fearless writer unafraid to expose issues usually considered off limits. There Goes English Teacher, which spans three years of adventures and misadventures as an English teacher in a small Korean village and later at a university, continues her pursuit of truth. This unusually honest memoir reflects amongst others, the nature of identity and the loss of it; sexuality; belief; ageing; displacement; belonging; and nationhood. Karin Cronje has a real talent for tongue-in-cheek observations of herself and her world. Her accounts of her own confusion and incomprehension as she navigates the collision of two cultures worlds apart are told with a mix of irony, pathos and humor. Yet underneath the lighthearted narration this intimate account shows how a disruption of the familiar can lead to fundamental change.

What further sets this memoir apart is that it is as close to first-hand as a reader may possibly ever get. Karin Cronje seldom allows us out of her head; she doesn’t give us anything like a travel writer’s perspective, a dispassionate description of landscape or exterior view. We inhabit this foreign place exactly as she did. Whilst in Korea, she completed a novel, which won the Jan Rabie/Rapport prize. She takes us with her through the various stages of writing it and we experience her internal processes that lead to an end she was unable to predict. Her return to South Africa poses unforeseen troubles. We are right there with her as she makes one disastrous and scandalous decision after another.

There Goes English Teacher is ultimately a celebration of the gifts the world has to offer while it entertains with a sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes acerbic and ironic, but always humane voice. There are few South African memoirs that dig as deeply into what it means to be fully human. It is a compelling, moving story, unusually told and one that will not only linger long after finishing the book but will demand a second slower read to savour the writing.

Ingrid Jonker, begaafde jong digter, loop op 19 Julie 1965 die see in by Drieankerbaai en verdrink. Sy laat haar familie en vriende agter met meer vrae as antwoorde. Gedurende die afgelope 50 jaar het sy ’n ikoon van die Afrikaanse en Suid- Afrikaanse letterkunde geword. In so ’n mate, dat haar lewe en veral haar dood soms haar werk en die belangrike bydrae wat sy tot die literêre beweging van die Sestigers gemaak het, oorskadu.

Haar politieke sieninge, soos uitgedruk in haar poësie en haar passie en die droefheid van haar onstuimige liefdesverhoudings met onder andere Jack Cope en André P. Brink het al tot baie besprekings gelei. Sy het weer onder die publieke oog gekom toe oudpresident Nelson Mandela in sy inhuldigingsrede in 1994 in die Parlement een van haar gedigte aangehaal het. Hy het haar gedig: “Die Kind” voorgelees en gesê: “Sy was beide ’n digter en ’n Suid-Afrikaner.”

Sedert haar dood is daar vele bespiegelings oor haar lewe en tragiese einde. Van dié vrae word beantwoord in hierdie eerste omvattende biografie. Petrovna Metelerkamp doen al jare navorsing oor Jonker. Sy neem die leser saam deur Ingrid se grootwordjare, digterslewe, liefdesverhoudings en die laaste paar jaar van haar lewe.

Metelerkamp bring nuwe inligting aan die lig wat sy neem uit onbekende nuwe briewe en dagboekinskrywings, o.m. uit die dagboeke van Jack Cope. Talle nuwe onderhoude met mense wat Jonker geken het, word in die biografie opgeneem. Sy weerlê ook die beeld van Jonker as ’n ongebalanseerde kunstenaar wat haar houvas op die werklikheid verloor het in hierdie toeganklike biografie oor een van Suid-Afrika se aangrypendste kunstenaars.

Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi is one of South Africa’s most famous novels.

First published in 1930, it is the first full-length novel by a black South African writer, and is widely read and studied in South African schools, colleges and universities. It has been translated into a number of different languages. Written over 30 years before Chinua Achebe’s famous Things Fall Apart, Mhudi is a pioneering African novel too, anticipating many of the themes with which Achebe and other writers from the African continent were concerned.

Mhudi has had a complicated history. Critics have been divided in their views, and there was a delay of ten years between the time Plaatje wrote the book and when it was published. A century on from when it was written, the time is now right to both celebrate its composition and to assess its meanings and legacy.

In this book, a distinguished cast of contributors explore the circumstances in which Mhudi was both written and published, what the critics have made of it, why it remains so relevant today. Chapters look at the eponymous feminist heroine of the novel and what she symbolizes, the role of history and oral tradition, the contentious question of language, the linguistic and stylistic choices that Plaatje made. In keeping with Mhudi’s capacity to inspire, this book also includes a poem and short story, specially written in order to pay tribute to both the book and its author.

“Op die kombuisvloer sit-lê my man met sy rug na my toe. Sy ledemate hang slap, soos ’n marionet wat pas sy toutjies verloor het. Op die toonbank lê sy haelgeweer. Ek weet dadelik hy is dood.”

Die geskenk is die bekende skrywer Riette Rust se ontroerende ware verhaal, onthutsend eerlik, vol menslikheid en soms selfs skreeusnaaks. Van haar kinderjare in die Paarl, waar haar pa whiskey-bottels in die gangkas wegsteek, haar huwelik met JD, die onbeplande swangerskap en gelukkige gesinsjare, tot dié oggend, toe Riette se hele wêreld aan skerwe spat.

Te midde van die diepste verskrikking gaan soek Riette na kennis. Sy studeer sielkunde en lees wyd oor trauma en rou, en met dié boek deel sy wat sy uitvind. Hierdie is nie net die memoir van ʼn merkwaardige vrou aan wie die lewe groot uitdagings gestel het nie. Dit sal ook van groot nut wees vir elkeen wat deur trauma geraak word, met die nuutste wetenskaplike inligting oor selfdood en die nadraai daarvan, van die waarskuwingstekens tot die skaamte en skuldgevoelens, en ʼn hoofstuk oor die verskillende soorte rou.

Riette, nou skielik “ʼn weduwee”, is blootgestel aan skindertonge, geniepsige pastore, en ʼn huis wat herstel moet word. Met Die geskenk bied sy ons die deurleefde wysheid van iemand wat self daar was. Iemand wat weet dit is moontlik om weer voluit te leef, selfs al het die ondenkbare gebeur.

Hierdie dapper, inspirerende boek sal jou uitkyk op die lewe vir altyd verander.

We Two from Heaven is a singular memoir, a four-part fugue on the tricks and traps of memory, a shuffling of the cards of time. Episodes from the early life of writer James Whyle are interwoven with the letters of his father from the Western Front during the First World War. Their formative experiences – war, conscription, injury, desertion – flash by, juxtaposed, as if in counterpoint.

How do we know who we are? Upending the reader’s expectations of a memoir, Whyle then explores the violence and madness of apartheid society as the narrator passes through boarding school and university and takes his first steps to become a writer. Raw and rhythmic, lyrical and caustic, this is an unsparing, formally inventive dissection of human vanities and illusions.

At the end of history, on the shores of a blue bay, the voices of the past can be heard as we await the arrival of the barbarians – or the baboons, whoever comes first.

Ter viering van Dolf van Niekerk se negentigste verjaarsdag verskyn hier ’n versameling filosofiese, bepeinsende en besinnende essays uit die pen van een van Afrikaans se meesterskrywers.

Vanaf sy vroegste gewaarwordinge tot sy kennismaking met groot filosowe soos Nietzsche, Kant en Hegel op universiteit en in sy daaglikse handel en wandel daarna: altyd maar bly die bewustheid van ’n onsigbare “iets” by hierdie aristokratiese gees – en ’n soeke na ’n beter verstaan van dít wat “die sterretyd en die menstyd aan mekaar verbind”.

In 48 essays wat die biografiese tydperk tussen ongeveer sy vyfde en twintigste lewensjaar dek, skryf ’n deurleefde, wyse Van Niekerk oor sy vroegste herinnerings aan sy geboortedorp, sy gesin en sy helderste herinnerings aan die plekke en mense wat hom gevorm het tot die mens wat hy geword het. Want, soos wat hy in die verhaal “Die skinkbord” skryf: Jy kan net wees wie jy is, en jy is wat jy word.

Antjie Krog is ’n (ook internasionaal) bekroonde digter, joernalis, vertaler en akademikus. Sy debuteer op die jong ouderdom van 18 met die bundel Dogter van Jefta (1970) waarna talle bekroonde digbundels en publikasies volg. As joernalis by Die Suid-Afrikaan lewer sy in die 1990’s verslag oor die Waarheids-en-versoeningskommissie en verwoord haar ervarings oor dié proses in Country of my skull, wat in 1998 gepubliseer is en onder meer die Alan Paton-toekenning vir niefiksie en die Olive Schreiner-prys ontvang. Sy vertaal ook Nelson Mandela se biografie, Long walk to freedom, in Afrikaans as Lang pad na vryheid.

Sy wen drie keer die gesogte Hertzogprys – vir Lady Anne (1990), Mede-wete (2017), asook vir haar jongste poësiebundel, Plunder, in 2023. Mees onlangs het sy die Tienie Holloway-medalje van die SA Akademie ontvang vir Vetplantfeetjies, saam met medewerkers Fiona Moodey en Ingrid de Kock, vir haar kinderdigbundel oor die natuur en inheemse plantegroei.

Hierdie huldigingsbundel is die 16de in die reeks van die SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns wat literêre kunstenaars huldig wat met die Hertzogprys bekroon is, en wat die Afrikaanse letterkunde oor dekades heen verryk het.

Dana Snyman deel in Seun die deel van sy storie waaroor hy nog nooit gepraat het nie: sy ervaringe in die 1980’s. Dit is die tyd van PW Botha se vinger, van die Voëlvry-toer, AWB-saamtrekke, onderhandelinge en die laaste dae van diensplig. Dana word oneervol ontslaan uit die weermag, maar eers maak hy ’n draai in Saal 24. Werkloos en doelloos eindig hy in ’n gewese bediendekamer in Pretoria. Dié rou, selfonthullende memoir vra: hoe word ’n seun ’n man? Met Seun neem Dana lesers in sy vertroue.

After an exceptionally wild Mother’s Day where she danced like there was no tomorrow, picked a fight with a stranger and collided with the floor, Johannesburg scriptwriter and author Pamela Power is forced to take a hard look at her drinking habits. She realises that although she does not need to find an AA group immediately, she might be a serial binge drinker and needs to take back control.

In this honest yet humorous account of her year of not getting sh*tfaced, Pamela examines her long, complicated relationship with alcohol. She is shocked to realise just how much of a crutch alcohol has been for her. There is always a bottle of wine or Prosecco around to her to help her manage the many demands of life as a freelancer and as a parent.

Pamela starts her journey to sobriety at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic as her family faces financial troubles, and life in the suburban Parks of Johannesburg isn’t so blissful anymore. Through her, we experience all the frustration, irritation and surprising benefits of going dry. In dealing with her dependence on alcohol, Pamela also confronts her troubled relationship with her parents.

While many other sober curious books portray sobriety as the only answer, Pamela has found a sweet spot between total sobriety and binge drinking: moderation.

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala’s intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba’s surviving colleagues and family.

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life – his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, and family life – are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story ‘The Suit’) on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba’s dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s.

Can Themba’s successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa’s literary canon.

Systemic racism and sexism caused one of South Africa’s most important writers to disappear from public consciousness. Is it possible to justly restore her historical presence?

Regina Gelana Twala, a Black South African woman who died in 1968 in Swaziland (now Eswatini), was an extraordinarily prolific writer of books, columns, articles, and letters. Yet today Twala’s name is largely unknown. Her literary achievements are forgotten. Her books are unpublished. Her letters languish in the dusty study of a deceased South African academic. Her articles are buried in discontinued publications. Joel Cabrita argues that Twala’s posthumous obscurity has not developed accidentally as she exposes the ways prejudices around race and gender blocked Black African women like Twala from establishing themselves as successful writers.

Drawing upon Twala’s family papers, interviews, newspapers, and archival records from Pretoria, Uppsala, and Los Angeles, Cabrita argues that an entire cast of characters—censorious editors, territorial White academics, apartheid officials, and male African politicians whose politics were at odds with her own—conspired to erase Twala’s legacy. Through her unique documentary output, Twala marked herself as a radical voice on issues of gender, race, and class. The literary gatekeepers of the racist and sexist society of twentieth-century southern Africa clamped down by literally writing her out of the region’s history.

Written Out also scrutinizes the troubled racial politics of African history as a discipline that has been historically dominated by White academics, a situation that many people within the field are now examining critically. Inspired by this recent movement, Cabrita interrogates what it means for her —a White historian based in the Northern Hemisphere—to tell the story of a Black African woman. Far from a laudable “recovery” of an important lost figure, Cabrita acknowledges that her biography inevitably reproduces old dynamics of White scholarly privilege and dominance. Cabrita’s narration of Twala’s career resurrects it but also reminds us that Twala, tragically, is still not the author of her own life story.

Professor. Pundit. Public nuisance. In his columns, books and on social media, Jonathan Jansen is prolific and he likes to speak his mind about schools and universities, race, politics and our complex South African society.

He has brought an incisive analysis, compassion and sense of humour to some of the most controversial issues in our country for many years. And now, in this memoir, he goes back to his early years growing up in a loving, fiercely evangelical family on the Cape Flats,
being put on the road to purpose by an inspiring school teacher and becoming the first of his generation to go to university under the apartheid regime. Journey with Jansen as he finds a passion for teaching high school and becomes a leading academic and thinker
amid great transformation in post-apartheid South Africa.

This patchwork of memories tells a bigger story than his own life. It’s a tale of learning the value of ‘breaking bread’ with others, of finding mutual recognition in our different faith and fears, our ideals and frustrations, our hurts and our hopes.

In Kambrokind deel F.A. Venter sy jeugherinneringe vanaf sy voorskoolse jare tot op universiteit.

Op boeiende wyse vertel Venter hoe hy die Karoo se sagte én harde kant leer ken. Hy kon homself wees in die veld en sy gedagtes vrye teuels gee, maar hy het ook die wreedheid van droogtes en siektes en die lang trekpad met skaap na beter weiding ervaar.

Op skool het sekere onderwysers hom ontvanklik gemaak vir die wêreld van boeke en oordenking en het dit hom gedryf om hard te werk sodat hy met ’n studielening en twee pakke klere kon gaan studeer aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch.

A candid account of Patricia Schonstein’s creative, deeply lived life as a novelist.

Annotated with extracts from her writings, this generous memoir welcomes you behind the scenes, into her Workshop and Costumery.

She shows how her own life configures with the scaffolding of her fictions; how characters take up roles both archetypal and simple to tackle existential questions; and how urban landscapes and wilderness serve as the neon-spangled theatres of her story telling.

Slot van die dag: Gedagtes is die skrywer se mymeringe oor ouderdom en die einde van die lewe, saam met verspreide herinnerings van ’n algemene aard, om ’n ryk geskakeerde beeld te verskaf van ’n skrywerslewe van byna tagtig jaar. Die reeks outobiografiese boeke wat met ’n Duitser aan die Kaap, Merksteen en Die laaste Afrikaanse boek begin het, word hiermee afgesluit. Dit is 'n baie persoonlike boek oor ouderdom, die skryfproses en selfbeskikking met kommentaar op oud word en wees, met inbegrip van praktiese wenke, en heelwat inligting oor die moontlike en waarskynlike einde van die lewe. Die element van afskeid en gelatenheid is deurlopend. Die ouderdom is teenswoordig die vernaamste onderwerp van sy oorpeinsing, en die vernaamste element in sy daagliks ervarings. Die verwysings en aanhalings is treffend en spreek van iemand wat sy leeswereld ook sy leefwereld maak. Ten slotte verduidelik die skrywer sy bevrydende besluit oor selfdood.

The first comprehensive biography of this iconic artist to appear in English. Richly illustrated with 160 photographs. Since her dramatic death at the age of 31 the name Ingrid Jonker has been linked to that of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath - legends who died young. In her first biography to appear in English, the frail figure of Jonker as a child, a young poet, daughter of a prominent politician, wife, mother, mistress of a famous author, lover and rebel is portrayed against the backdrop of revolt against South Africa's policies of censorship and apartheid.

Jonathan Ball, the founder of Jonathan Ball Publishers, died on 3 April 2021 after a short illness. This collection of essays, commissioned in tribute to him, is edited by Michele Magwood.

Jonathan Ball left a deep impression on many different people in different ways. The forty or so essays reflect the many facets of Jonathan. The chapter headings would read husband, father, businessman, friend, brother, colleague. But it is in the subheads that we begin to understand the shape of him: publisher extraordinaire, history expert, gourmand, liberal thinker, suitor, philosemite and so on.

It cannot be exaggerated how deep an imprint Jonathan has left on the political and cultural life of South Africa, too. The shelves of Jonathan Ball Publishers are weighted with serious history and biographies of eminent figures, with books that other publishers didn’t have the boldness, the sheer guts, to take on. But there are many smaller, more finespun stories that tell us too who we are as a people and as a nation.