Butter is keenly attuned to the many ways the private sphere runs on the disproportionate work of women while deliberately…
In Show Me the Place, Hedley Twidle displays an earnest curiosity about how to inhabit a world that seems to…
New original fiction in The JRB. ~~~ A History of Phantoms By Wamuwi Mbao There comes a time and place…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, a book that contains ‘one of the most alarmingly enjoyable…
The JRB presents new fiction by Wamuwi Mbao. Sebenza Sebenza brought recruiters to our villagesAnd took men far away to…
Elif Batuman’s Either/Or is a new and worthy entry into the well-populated gallery of erudite books about people learning how…
Author Karen Jennings was in conversation with The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec at the Origins Centre in Johannesburg recently, as…
The Blinded City by Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon is a lucidly fascinating immersion into the world of the people who occupy the…
Kei Miller’s collection of essays Things I Have Withheld takes the measure of what it means to read and be…
Culture and Liberation: Exile Writings, 1966–1985Alex La GumaEdited by Christopher J LeeSeagull Books 1966 was an interesting year. Future Trump…
Michaela Coel’s Misfits blends an effervescent sense of social realism with a beguiling clarity, writes Wamuwi Mbao. Misfits: A Personal…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Susan Abulhawa’s Against The Loveless World, winner of the Palestine Book Award. Against The Loveless WorldSusan AbulhawaBloomsbury…
The shortlists for the 2021 Sunday Times/CNA Literary Awards have been revealed. The awards celebrate ‘the best of South African…
The longlists for the 2021 Sunday Times/CNA Literary Awards have been revealed. The awards celebrate ‘the best of South African…
Claudia Rankine’s Just Us is perhaps the most profound meditation on race and violence to emerge in the first two…
The JRB presents a selection of poetry from Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poems of Decolonisation, a new…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Rešoketšwe Manenzhe’s novel Scatterlings, winner of the 2020 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. ScatterlingsRešoketšwe ManenzheJacana Media, 2020 There…
In The Lie of 1652, Patric Tariq Mellet fills in the ‘before’ that was of little interest to those invested…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Avni Doshi’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Burnt Sugar. Burnt SugarAvni DoshiPenguin, 2020 The rather selfish belief that one’s…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Irenosen Okojie’s Nudibranch, the ‘immersively deranged’ collection containing her 2020 Caine Prize-winning story. Nudibranch Irenosen OkojieLittle, Brown,…
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a Ghanaian writer, filmmaker and art historian. On a balmy traffic-clagged Cape Town morning, I meet…
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s new book Manchester Happened reflects the here-and-there double consciousness of living between Uganda and England, writes Wamuwi…
As part of our January Conversation Issue, Wamuwi Mbao chats to Nicole Dennis-Benn about her work, the process of writing…
This December marked the The JRB’s thirty-second issue, the final issue of our third volume. With the new year—but not…
The 2019 South African Literary Awards winners were announced tonight at a gala ceremony in Johannesburg, with The JRB’s nominees—Editor…
The Nickel Boys is a powerfully controlled novel in which the main character learns that there are no rules by…
A novel of feminist radicalism, readable in the best sense of the word—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn, who will be…
Egyptian writer Adam El Shalakany has won the 2018 Short Story Day Africa Prize for his story ‘Happy City Hotel’—becoming the…
The shortlists for the 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards have been revealed! The duo of awards—the Alan Paton Award for…
The shortlist for the Short Story Day Africa Prize for Short Fiction has been announced. The JRB is delighted that our regular…
The JRB presents new short fiction by Editorial Advisory Panel member and regular contributor Wamuwi Mbao. ~ ~ ~ Beginnings….
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall by Adam Habib, finding it engrossing, but ultimately unconvincing. Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall…
The longlists for the 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards have been revealed! The duo of awards—the Alan Paton Award for…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Diana Evans’s novel Ordinary People, which has been longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction….
Wamuwi Mbao chats to Namwali Serpell about her debut novel, The Old Drift. Namwali Serpell The Old Drift Penguin Random…
The JRB presents ‘Loadshedding’ by Michael Yee, the winner of this year’s Short Sharp Stories Award. The Short Sharp Stories…
Sally Rooney reshapes our understanding of the ordinary in a manner that invites us to imagine better ways of being,…
Wamuwi Mbao imagines a serial adaptation of Angela Makholwa’s Black Widow Society, a sleekly executed interpretation of HJ Golakai’s The Lazarus…
Lisa Halliday’s debut Asymmetry is a genuinely surprising novel, which invites us to question how men and women are rendered in…
OK, Mr Field, the debut novel by acclaimed South African poet Katharine Kilalea, is a pleasingly minimalist, idiosyncratic novel, writes…
