"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
~ Douglas Adams
"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
~ Dr. Suess
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
~ Anton Chekhov
Happy New Year from Exclusive Books! We’ve rung in 2018 on a particularly joyful note by fulfilling the life-long dream of Mrs Carina Greyling of Kempton Park, Johannesburg, who had, according to her four children, listed being “locked inside an Exclusive Books for the night” as her top birthday wish. Greying turned 60 on Sunday […]
Q: Tell us about #AbidjanLit – what’s it all about? Abidjan Lit is a movement of passionate readers based in Côte d’Ivoire but from diverse horizons. As we love to say, identities are complex and diverse. By saying Abidjan Lit, we are playing on words. Our Anglophone counterparts will say the T part and imagining […]
Star Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3/5 A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars Yaba Badoe Head of Zeus, September 2017 Online Price: R216 If book covers are anything to go by—they shouldn’t be, but they are—this one draws you in immediately. It is a beauty, and tells you straight away that A Jigsaw of Fire and […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 Ghana Must Go Taiye Selasi Penguin Books, January 2014 Online Price: R189 He stares at the glittering, arrested by beauty, and knows what he knew all those winters ago: that when faced with a thing that is fragile in a world that is ugly and crushing and cruel the correct […]
Wherever you look there are books. Marvellous books on groaning shelves. And the pity of this end of year literary orgy is that you can’t buy everything. What an extraordinary year of fact and fiction there has been. Until three months ago, it seemed that it would be a year of stellar fiction. I still […]
The launch last night of Jacques Pauw’s book, The President’s Keepers, was disrupted by a power failure in the Hyde Park Corner shopping centre. At this stage, we have no way of knowing whether the disruption was the result of a technical failure or whether there was some unseen hand intent on silencing Mr Pauw. […]
Thank goodness. It’s enough with the book awards for 2017. It’s also enough with the book festivals for 2017. We need a break now that the Booker Prize 2017 has come and gone. Now it’s time for whatever peace we can find as we run down the steep slope towards the end of a turbulent […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 When Rain Clouds Gather Bessie Head Little Brown, August 2010 (originally published 1968) Online Price: R180 Bessie Head is one of southern Africa’s hidden gems. Like most people I was introduced to her because her books were part of my school’s syllabus – and since then I have long […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 Purple Hibiscus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Harper Collins, January 2005 Online Price: R200 When a house is on fire, you run out before the roof collapses on your head. – Aunty Ifeoma Purple Hibiscus is a story told in the first person by Kambili Achike, a 15-year-old girl who is […]
Star Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3/5 What We Lose Zinzi Clemmons Harper Collins, July 2017 Online Price: R246.00 I waited with bated breath for this book. The USA cover art drew me in and the tweets raving about how good it is only served to heighten my curiosity. Critics were quick to call it the […]
