• Men of the South

    In Johannesburg three men’s lives revolve around one woman. Mfundo is a struggling jazz musician. All hope of ever becoming famous end when he gets into a macho fight with an international R&B artist. No one is keen to employ him any longer, and Mfundo takes the role of house-husband. But his girlfriend Sli is not willing to be the ‘man’ of the house. Mzilikazi is a gay man in a heterosexual marriage. One of the few people in his life who do not question the decision he makes is his best friend, Sli. Tinaye is a Zimbabwean struggling to gain citizenship in South Africa hence his current situation – underpaid and overqualified. The only way to gain citizenship is to marry Grace. But then he meets Sli…

    Men of the South

    135.00
  • The Herd Boy

    Malusi is a herd boy who tends to his grandfather’s sheep and goats among the mountains of the Transkei. High above, eagles fly while on the ground below, beetles crawl, termites scurry and dust flies as Malusi plays games of stick-fighting with his friend. But there’s danger too…

    Can Malusi save his lambs from the hungry baboon who’s stalking the flock?

    And who is the old man in the shiny car who stops to chat, and encourages the herd boy in his dream of being President?

    This beautiful picture book is about a boy who dares to dream of a big future. It is a story of empowerment, self-belief and leadership, and is inspired by the life of former president Nelson Mandela.

    The Herd Boy

    38.00
  • Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature

    June 17, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This publication provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the editorial adviser. This narrative, drawing liberally on the correspondence with the authors, concentrates on the adventurous first twenty-five years.

    Africa Writes Back: The African Writer’s Series & the Launch of African Literature captures the energy of literary publishing in a new and undefined field. Portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers make Africa Writes Back a stand-out book. James Currey’s voice and insights are an added bonus.

  • Yebo, Jamela!

    Age Range: 4 – 7 years

    The second book by Niki Daly about this spunky little heroine.

    Christmas is drawing near and Jamela’s mother decides to go and buy a chicken from Mrs Zibi. If they feed it well, it will be nice and fat by Christmas time. Jamela accompanies her mother on the chicken-buying expedition and suggests calling the chicken Christmas. But by the time Christmas-day comes, Jamela has made a pet of Christmas. And as the ladies at the hairdressers where Jamela and her mother and Mrs Zibi fetch up after the “wild-chicken chase” all agree: one does not eat one’s friends!

    Yebo, Jamela!

    30.00
  • Jamela’s Dress

    Age Range: 4 – 7 years

    Mama is very pleased with the dress material she has bought for Thelma’s wedding. Jamela can’t resist wrapping the material around her and dancing down the road, proud as a peacock, to show Thelma her beautiful dress! When things go wrong, Mama is very sad indeed, but there’s a happy ending just in time for Thelma’s wedding day – and guess who has the biggest smile…Kwela Jamela, African Queen, that’s who!
  • Fly, Eagle Fly!

    Age Range: 7 – 12 years

    Fly, Eagle, Fly! is a charming and innovative adaptation of a Ghanaian tale attributed to Dr. James Kwegyir Aggrey – also known as Aggrey of Africa. With a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

    After a stormy night, a farmer searching for his lost calf finds a baby eagle that has been blown out of its nest. He takes it home and raises it with his chickens. But when his friend comes to visit one day, he tells the farmer that an eagle should be flying high in the sky, not scrabbling on the ground for grain. A powerful and uplifting African tale of fulfilment and freedom brought to life by stunning illustrations.

    Fly, Eagle Fly!

    38.00
  • When Rain Clouds Gather (African Writers Series, AWS247)

    In the heart of rural Botswana, the poverty stricken village of Golema Mmidi is a haven to exiles from far and wide. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionise the villagers traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition, opposition from the local chief and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community.
  • A Question of Power (African Writers Series, AWS149)

    “Your mother was insane. If you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy who was a native.”

    It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal’s cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night. In the darkness of this country where people turn and look at her with vague curiosity as an outsider she establishes an entirely abnormal relationship with two men. A mind-bending book which takes the reader in and out of sanity.

  • The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014

    The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014 brings together the five shortlisted authors’ stories along with 12 other stories from the best new writers. Insightful, arresting and entertaining – this collection reflects the richness and range of current African writing.

    Caine Prize 2014 Shortlisted Stories:
    Phosphorescence Diane Awerbuck (South Africa)
    Chicken Efemia Chela (Ghana/Zambia)
    The Intervention Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe)
    The Gorilla’s Apprentice Billy Kahora (Kenya)
    My Father’s Head Okwiri Oduor (Nigeria)

    The Caine Prize African Writers’ Workshop Stories 2014:
    The Lifebloom Gift Abdul Adan (Somalia/Kenya)
    The Gonjon Pin Martin Egblewogbe (Ghana)
    As A Wolf Sweating Your Mother’s Body Clifton Gachagua (Kenya)
    Pam Pam Lawrence Hoba (Zimbabwe)
    Lily in the Moonlight Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria)
    Running Elnathan John (Nigeria)
    The Murder of Ernestine Masilo Violet Masilo (Zimbabwe)
    All the Parts of Mi Isabella Matambanadzo (Zimbabwe)
    Blood Work Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende (Zimbabwe)
    The Sonneteer Philani A Nyoni (Zimbabwe)
    Eko Hotel Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria)
    Music from a Farther Room Bryony Rheam (Zimbabwe)
  • Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (African Writers Series)

    This anthology introduces the African literature of incarceration to the general reader, the scholar, the activist and the student. The visions and prison cries of the few African nationalists imprisoned by colonialists, who later became leaders of their independent dictatorships and in turn imprisoned their own writers and other radicals, are brought into sharper focus, thereby critically exposing the ironies of varied generations of the efforts of freedom fighters.

    Extracts of prose, poetry and plays are grouped into themes such as arrest, interrogation, torture, survival, release and truth and reconciliation.

    Contributors include: Kunle Ajibade, Obafemi Awolowo, Steve Biko, Breyten Breytenbach, Dennis Brutus, Nawal El Saadawi, M J Kariuki, Kenneth Kaunda, Caesarina Kona Makhoere, Nelson Mandela, Emma Mashinini, Felix Mnthali, Augustino Nato, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kwame Nkrumah, Abe Sachs, Ken Saro Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, and Koigi wa Wamwere.

    Although an often harrowing indictment of the history, culture and politics of the African continent and the societies from which this literature comes, the anthology presents excellent prose, poetry and drama, which stands up in its own right as serious literature to be cherished, read and studied.

  • The Enemy Within (African Writers Series)

    Set in South Africa in the early 1990s, against a backdrop of de Klerk’s rise to power, Steve Jacobs tells the story of Jeremy Spielman, a Jewish junior barrister, and his defense of a Xhosa man accused of murder.

    The murder trial, an Afrikaner girlfriend, and a mother who has tried to keep him from gentiles his whole life, all force Jeremy to confront his own love-hate relationship with the anti-apartheid struggle, South Africa’s almost unconscious racism, anti-Semitism, and his faith in an unjust legal system.

    Steve Jacobs trained as a lawyer but left his legal career to concentrate on writing. He is an active campaigner against cruelty to animals and has worked with squatters at Crossroads and in a local group opposing a nuclear power station.

  • Mine Boy (African Writers Series, AWS6)

    When Xuma move to Johannesburg he is a naive country boy, but the impact of harsh city life awakens him to the new ways and values of  radically different world. His vision of a ‘man without colour’, a raceless society, is shattered by the realities of his underprivileged existence.
    First published in 1946, this novel was one of the first books to expose universally the condition of black South Africans under a white regime. Abrahams’ forceful but restrained images of discrimination in the gold mines, the appalling housing and Xuma’s simple, humanitarian act of defiance, struck a chord around the world. Mine Boy has remained a central influence on South African fiction for over fifty years.

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