"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
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
~ Douglas Adams
Star Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto In Fifteen Suggestions Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 4th Estate, March 2017 Online Price: R226.00 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was recently in the news for comments she made on transgender women and I myself joined the critics. I thought, How dare she? The episode made me realise that […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 What Sunny Saw in the Flames Nnedi Okorafor Cassava Republic Press/Pan Macmillan, September 2016 Online Price: R190.00 What Sunny Saw in the Flames will take the reader on an imagination roller coaster ride, into a world where nothing seems to be quite the same – and has not yet been […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 We Need New Names NoViolet Bulawayo Vintage Publishing, February 2014 Online Price: R165 Leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost returning to earth, roaming around with a missing gaze in your eyes In We Need New Names we meet ten year old […]
Star Rating: ★★★☆☆ 3/5 Swing Time Zadie Smith Hamish Hamilton, November 2016 Online Price: R313.00 I have recently discovered Zadie Smith and I have to say — Why didn’t anyone put me on to her sooner? This has not been an easy read, however: Swing Time does a difficult dance. It doesn’t quite mesh […]
Star Rating: ★★★ 3/5 Period Pain Kopano Matlwa Jacana Media, November 2016 Online Price: R200 The only books worth reading are books written in blood – Frederick Buechner Period Pain is a raw, hard-hitting and an intensely personal account of a young woman’s struggle to find her place in contemporary South Africa. […]
Star Rating: ★★★★★ 5/5 The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives Lola Shoneyin Serpent’s Tail, January 2011 Online Price: R209 Lola Shoneyin evokes an extraordinary Nigerian family in splashes of vibrant colour. — from the blurb of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives I have never read such an odd book in my […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 The Book of Memory Petina Gappah Faber & Faber, September 2015 Online Price: R302 The Book of Memory is the second work of fiction by Petina Gappah, a work that underscores why she won the Guardian First Book Award for her first, the short story collection An Elegy for Easterly. This […]
Star Rating: ★★★★☆ 4/5 Homegoing Yaa Gyasi Penguin Random House, June 2016 Online Price: R313 You can learn anything when you have to learn it. You could learn to fly if it meant you would live another day. Homegoing is a fresh new voice in African literature – one that it is imperative you […]
It is rare that debut work is this exquisitely polished – more often than not, debut authors are well within the vicinity of great work, but lack either the editorial resources or distance from their own work to give it that final, lustrous sheen. The Miniaturist has a plot filled with splendid characters and superb […]
Very informative account of the collapse of the Rand during 2001. This book not only looks at the effect this phenomenon had on our economy but also how whistleblowers who are brave enough to stand up face the responsibility of whistleblowing after the dust has settled. Barry Sergeant is not afraid to name and shame, […]
