Biography & Memoir

‘The beginning of an adventure’—Read the late George Bizos’s account of his escape from Nazi-occupied Greece as a child, from his memoir Odyssey To Freedom

The JRB presents an excerpt from Odyssey To Freedom, the memoir of the late George Bizos. Bizos passed away in…

Awards

[The JRB Daily] Women dominate the shortlist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award—the world’s richest annual literary prize

The ten-novel shortlist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award has been revealed. The shortlist includes Milkman, the Booker Prize-winning…

International

‘A tour de force of scholarship’—Arja Salafranca reviews The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser

Arja Salafranca reviews Mark Gevisser’s new book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers. The Pink Line: Journeys…

Academic

‘Lines and images stick in the mind years after they have been heard or read’—Read Ivan Vladislavić’s Introduction to My Mother’s Laughter, a new collection of poems by the late Chris van Wyk

The JRB presents an excerpt from My Mother’s Laughter: Selected Poems by Chris van Wyk, edited by Ivan Vladislavić and…

Academic

‘Bessie Head’s work jolted me awake … I had not thought it possible that a black woman could be a writer’—Read an excerpt from Barbara Boswell’s new book, And Wrote My Story Anyway

The JRB presents an excerpt from the Author’s Preface of And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels…

Africa

‘We didn’t fight a revolution to stay inside’—Read an excerpt from Mark Gevisser’s new book The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers

The JRB presents an excerpt from The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers, the new book by Mark…

Academic

‘The idea of literary imagination as a kind of violation’—Imraan Coovadia considers JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, excerpted from his new book Revolution and Non-Violence in Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela

The JRB presents an excerpt from Imraan Coovadia’s new book Revolution and Non-Violence in Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela. Revolution and…

Biography & Memoir

‘The whole wide world could see what South Africa was truly like’—Read an excerpt from Heart of a Strong Woman: A Memoir by Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema, as told to Fred Khumalo

The JRB presents an excerpt from Heart of a Strong Woman: A Memoir by Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema, as told to Fred…

Creative non-fiction

What continuities can be drawn from the murder of Ahmed Timol in apartheid Joburg to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis? Wamuwi Mbao unpacks the debased tradition of police murdering civilians

The abolition of slavery, formalised gender discrimination, apartheid and other reprehensible ways of being did not occur simply through continued…

AfricaSouth Africa

[City Editor] ‘Writers do not write alone. They are always in the company of other writers’—Lidudumalingani reflects on reading books that make you write

Some days are longer than others, and during this Covid-19 controlled reality, it seems like someone out there somewhere keeps…

Academic

‘Race matters. It matters because of the meanings we give to it.’ Read an excerpt from Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa by Zimitri Erasmus

This excerpt is based on a chapter from a Zimitri Erasmus’s book Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South…

Book excerpts

‘It’s surreal that a coming-of-age story set in Umlazi has found another home in the USA’—International deal for Sifiso Mzobe’s debut novel Young Blood (Plus: Excerpt)

United States publisher Catalyst Press has acquired the rights to publish Sifiso Mzobe’s award-winning novel Young Blood in North America….