Gina knows hardly anything about her father apart from the fact that he was once engaged to Koringa, a crocodile tamer, and that he is buried in an unmarked grave. In between shifts at a call centre, with Doubt always looking over her shoulder, she works on a novel about him, ultimately drawing back the curtain on a complex, sad but also funny and enchanting life.

A story about love, family, fear and the banishing of fear: a celebration of strong women and a defence of a ‘nervous’ man.

In this award-winning novel, Finuala Dowling explores the fleeting and often so complicated moments of happiness in any household. Margot is a late-night talk radio host – the perfect job for an outspoken insomniac. Her home in Kalk Bay is crowded with wonderfully evocative characters such as her teenage daughter, Pia, and the three men in their lives. Finally there’s her mother, Zoe, once the acclaimed author of a quirky self-help volume with the same title, but now increasingly senile.

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.

Poet John Carson lives in a crumbling seaside house with his sister and niece. Winter is upon him, and he writes feverishly to the woman who has abandoned him as a lover yet kept him as a correspondent. Theresa: beautiful, generous . . . and married. 'Will John and Theresa find a way to overcome everything that holds them apart or is a state of permanent longing, in fact,  really what poets need?

Pretend You Don’t Know Me brings together in one volume the best of Finuala Dowling’s funny, poignant and idiosyncratic poetry from four earlier prize-winning collections, with a section devoted to new poems.

This new collection contains her iconic poem ‘To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair’ as well as Dowling’s tragi-comic cycle of poems on the theme of her mother’s dementia, and the hugely popular poems ‘Butter’ and ‘The abuse of cauliflowers’. At the heart of the book are the funny and poignant connections we make with other people, and the lifelong effort to stay whole.

‘Pretend You Don’t Know Me, by South African Finuala Dowling, is a witty and wise collection of new and selected poems. Her sequence about her mother’s dementia is very touching. Elsewhere, these vital works will have you crying with laughter.’ – Jackie Kay, The Guardian (Books of the Year 2018)

Pretend You Don't Know Me brings together in one volume the best of Finuala Dowling's funny, poignant and idiosyncratic poetry from four earlier prize-winning collections, with a section devoted to new poems. It introduces this popular South African poet to a UK audience. Finuala Dowling's debut collection, I flying, published in 2002, was an instant success in her native South Africa. Its accessibility, humanity and wit, as well as its beguilingly honest stories of home, parenthood, love, loss and desperation, won many new converts to poetry. The volume went into multiple printings, and won the Ingrid Jonker prize. Dowling's subsequent collections, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe and Notes from the Dementia Ward (winners of the SANLAM and Olive Schreiner prizes respectively), consolidated her reputation as an inventive sketcher of the domestic sublime. Her chapbook, Change is possible, sold out at the 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Pretend You Don't Know Me contains her iconic poem 'To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair' as well as Dowling's tragi-comic cycle of poems on the theme of her mother's dementia, and the hugely popular poems 'Butter', 'I am the Zebra', 'To adventurers, as far as I'm concerned' and 'The abuse of cauliflowers'. At the heart of the book are the funny and poignant connections we make with other people, and the lifelong effort to stay whole.

An anthology of poems by poets working with Finuala Dowling. The title also contains a memoir/essay about teaching poetry and a new poem by Finuala Dowling. The students' poems have notes about the prompts and exercises and in some cases notes about how the poet edited the poem. Finuala Dowling is a well-known, popular prize-winning poet and novelist. The book is ideal for poets, students of poetry, High School English teachers, teachers of poetry, creative writing and literature as well interested readers.

Notes from the Dementia Ward deals in part with the tragic-comic effects of the inexorable and distressing collapse into senility and the way in which memory and yearning come to the fore as a mix of poignancy and wit. The balance between the grim and the touchingly comic is delicately maintained and the subject is imbued with dignity and grace. The dementia poems are interlaced with wry, ironic and compassionate poems that are the hallmark of this remarkable poet.

This book has been developed by the Cambridge Open Learning Project in conjunction with the Cambridge University Press South African Branch. It offers a high quality learning resource to support the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate Syllabuses at HIGCSE level. The book is designed with distance learners in mind, but can also be used in the classroom. Each module is divided into neatly structured units, with learning objectives at the beginning and summaries at the end. The book encourages self-assessment by providing frequent activities and feedback, as well as a 'check your progress' exercise after selected units. It is written in a student-friendly style to encourage interactive learning, and the development of a range of skills needed for HIGCSE examinations.