Awards

[The JRB Daily] 2020 International Booker Prize longlist announced—including South African author Willem Anker, for his novel Red Dog, translated by Michiel Heyns

The longlisted books for the 2020 International Booker Prize have been revealed, featuring translations from eight languages, originating in Europe,…

Book excerpts

[The JRB Daily] ‘I wanted to release a story from a sealed box I had dragged around for decades’—Read an excerpt from Shaun Johnson’s award-winning novel The Native Commissioner

Award-winning author and renowned anti-apartheid journalist Shaun Johnson has died, aged sixty. Read: Shaun Johnson, 1959—2020, RIP Read an excerpt…

Fiction

Contemplating South Africa’s coalition of traumas through the idea of lost language—Khanya Mtshali reviews Phumlani Pikoli’s Born Freeloaders

In Born Freeloaders, Phumlani Pikoli seeks to provide a meditation on how empire is constructed through language. But the language…

Art & Architecture

[City Editor] Conjuring his images out of darkness—Lidudumalingani reflects on how the late Santu Mofokeng’s photographs are a kind of visual metaphor for Johannesburg

Johannesburg is a city that dances on the edges of elusive, and yet somehow Santu Mofokeng managed to contain it…

Book excerpts

‘You look fancy for a girl who’s just going to the TAB.’ Read ‘The Outsider’ by Isabella Morris, excerpted from Fool’s Gold: Selected Modjaji Short Stories

The JRB presents an excerpt from Fool’s Gold: Selected Modjaji Short Stories, edited by Arja Salafranca. Since its inception in…

Academic

[The JRB exclusive] ‘This is not a game of football, it is a slaughter of the innocents!’—Read an excerpt from JM Coetzee’s new novel The Death of Jesus

The JRB presents, exclusively in South Africa, an excerpt from The Death of Jesus, the newly published final novel of…

Children

[Conversation Issue] ‘I know what lurks in the bushes. And that’s how I write the stories’—Jason Reynolds talks to Tony Eprile about resistance and the imagination

As part of our January Conversation Issue, author and Editorial Advisory Panel member Tony Eprile is in conversation with Jason…

Africa

[Conversation Issue] ‘I won’t be polite, because there’s nothing polite about patriarchy’—Mona Eltahawy inspires (and triggers) at the Abantu Book Festival, reports Itumeleng Molefi

As part of our January Conversation Issue, Itumeleng Molefi reflects on Mona Eltahawy’s keynote address and conversation with Pumla Dineo…

Fiction

[Conversation Issue] ‘I seek out women who make unpopular decisions in my writing because they’re more interesting to me’—Nicole Dennis-Benn chats to Wamuwi Mbao about her bestselling novel, Patsy

As part of our January Conversation Issue, Wamuwi Mbao chats to Nicole Dennis-Benn about her work, the process of writing…

Interviews

[Conversation Issue] [City Editor] Is it possible, or necessary, to write a friendlier and prettier Johannesburg? A conversation between Lidudumalingani and Outlwile Tsipane

As part of our January Conversation Issue, guest City Editor Lidudumalingani chats to Outlwile Tsipane about the literatures of Johannesburg….

Fiction

[Conversation Issue] ‘Dispossession is the backdrop to every South African story’—Henrietta Rose-Innes in conversation with Gail Fincham about her forthcoming novel, Stone Plant

As part of our January Conversation Issue, Gail Fincham interviews Henrietta Rose-Innes about her work, including her forthcoming fifth novel,…