The Johannesburg Review of Books Vol. 10, Issue 1 (October 2026)

Wamuwi Mbao • Fifi Bat-hef • Nondwe Mpuma • Makhosazana Xaba • Percy Zvomuya • Anthony Chennells • Percy Mabandu • Musaemura Zimunya • Malika Lueen Ndlovu • Corinne A Kratz • Khadija Magardie • Kelwyn Sole • Simon van Schalkwyk • Thando Fuze • Lesego Rampolokeng • Aryan Kaganof • Diane Awerbuck • Faraaz Mahomed • stacy hardy • Michelle Kekana • Zakes Mda • Martha Evans • Brian Willan • Brown Maaba • Benjamin N Lawrance • Vusumuzi R Kumalo • Victor Dlamini • Tymon Smith

Welcome to the first issue of Volume 10 of The Johannesburg Review of Books!

We start with a word from me, the Publisher.

Yes, The JRB lives, rather against the odds. I know that for many a fresh issue from us in 2026 had been in doubt, and I apologise to all those for whom the constant delays have been a source of deep frustration.

The story behind our tardiness is fairly mundane, but also for another day. Now that the question of ‘to ship or not to ship’ is fully settled (unlike the numerous debts we owe and accounts we must attend to), it’s on to the main event, in the form of our 66th production.

Feast your mind:

Wamuwi Mbao reviews The Crying Bride & Other Hallucinations by Dominique Botha, and finds it Botha’s strongest book yet. Fifi Bat-hef reviews Nadia Davids’s Cape Fever, a slow-burning gothic tale in which a haunted house becomes the (Cape?) colony in miniature.

Percy Zvomuya visits his former teacher, the academic Anthony Chennells, in Harare, to talk about the Rhodesian novel, the writers Chennells taught—Dambudzo Marechera among them—and his friend Doris Lessing. Chennells passed away in July at the age of 88. Hamba kahle.

Nondwe Mpuma is in conversation with The JRB Patron Makhosazana Xaba about her debut collection Peach Country, the eleventh in Xaba’s series of long-form interviews focusing on contemporary poetry collections by Black women and non-binary poets.

Staying with Makhosazana Xaba, ten years after its publication she revisits Percy Mabandu’s Yakhal’inkomo: Portrait of a Jazz Classic, which cradles Winston Mankunku Ngozi’s 1968 masterpiece in its pages. She also talks to Mabandu about his book’s first decade, and what it means to write as a witness.

When the publisher of a new Brazilian edition of Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger needed help with the book’s Shona songs and local allusions, they sent their questions to Musaemura Zimunya. We present his answers, in Notes on Translating Marechera.

Turning to award-winners, we celebrate two recent books: read an excerpt from Griefseed, Malika Lueen Ndlovu’s collection of poems, essays and reflections on grief, which won the Main University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing in English this year. And dip into the winner of the 2026 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award, Rhetorics of Value: Exhibition Design and Communication in Museums and Beyond, in which Corinne A Kratz explores how museums in South Africa and beyond have redesigned popular histories.

We’re delighted to present ‘Elbow’, a short story by Khadija Magardie, first published in Let’s Tell This Story Properly: An Anthology of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

In our poetry corner, we share previously unpublished work by Kelwyn Sole, ‘The Honourable Skin’. We also present excerpts from five collections: Zero Summer, the new collection by The JRB’s Academic Editor, Simon van Schalkwyk; Fluent in the Language of Burial, the debut collection by Thando Fuze, with recordings of the poet reading her work; When the Fires Go Down by Lesego Rampolokeng; We Who Are Not Dead Yet by Aryan Kaganof; and Diane Awerbuck’s new collection, Fishwife.

In our survey of new fiction, we present excerpts from Mother/Land, the novel by Faraaz Mahomed; An Archaeology of Holes, the short story collection by stacy hardy (read it alongside Rampolokeng’s poem ‘Holes’, dedicated to her); and The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women, the debut novel by Michelle Kekana.

In non-fiction, we feature extracts from four new biographies: Chris Hani: A Life of Courage and Compassion by Zakes Mda; Lilian Ngoyi: A Life by Martha Evans; Isaiah Bud-M’belle: The Life of Isaiah Budlwana M’belle, 1870–1947 by Brian Willan and Brown Maaba; and Original Apartheid Hustler: The fiction and fabrications of Dugmore Boetie by Benjamin N Lawrance and Vusumuzi R Kumalo.