Of fear and motherly love—Rofhiwa Maneta reviews Imani Perry’s memoir Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry’s Breathe is a memoir committed to the radical hope that sees Black boys as more than problems to…
Category: Biography & Memoir
[Sampler issue] ‘I was outed before I was ready, but there was nothing I could do’—Read an excerpt from Jamil F Khan’s new book Khamr: The Makings of a Waterslams
The JRB presents an excerpt from Khamr: The Makings of a Waterslams, the forthcoming book by Jamil F Khan. Khamr:…
[Sampler issue] ‘I would stare at this monstrous building trying to visualise my uncle falling to his death’—Read an excerpt from The Murder of Ahmed Timol by Imtiaz A Cajee
The JRB presents an excerpt from The Murder of Ahmed Timol: My Search for the Truth by Imtiaz A Cajee….
[The JRB Daily] 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Awards winners announced, including Fiona Snyckers for Lacuna and Gabeba Baderoon for The History of Intimacy
The winners of the 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Awards (HSS Awards) have been announced. The awards, now in their…
[Conversation Issue] On writing about religion, childhood and insecurities: Azad Essa transcribes a conversation between father and son
As part of our January Conversation Issue, journalist and author Azad Essa is in conversation with his father Ebrahim Essa,…
Jia Tolentino is a moral voice for the secular world—Khanya Mtshali reviews Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, a collection of essays that explores how we survive our late-capitalist hellscape
In Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino presents her cosmopolitan obsessions with piercing insight and authority, writes Khanya Mtshali. Trick…
‘I will always love Africa, because from the minute I arrived it treated me like a white girl.’—Author Adam Smyer reflects on his visit to the Open Book Festival
The following is an edited excerpt from a work in progress by American author Adam Smyer, whose debut novel, Knucklehead,…
Bearing witness to unusual childhoods of privilege under oppression—Panashe Chigumadzi reviews Township Girls: The Cross-Over Generation
A significant first step in documenting the life writing of black Zimbabwean women—The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi reviews Township Girls:…
On Noni Jabavu and the return home—Makhosazana Xaba celebrates one of South Africa’s foundational literary centenarians
This August marks one hundred years since the birth of Noni Jabavu. Makhosazana Xaba reflects on the life of this…
[The JRB Daily] 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlists announced—celebrating ‘the best of South African non-fiction and fiction’
The shortlists for the 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards have been revealed! The duo of awards—the Alan Paton Award for…
[The JRB exclusive] ‘PS. Everybody calls me Binyavanga these days.’ Read Binyavanga Wainaina’s letter to his late mother, from the 2016 exhibition Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison
In 2016, the late Binyavanga Wainaina contributed a piece of writing to a United Kingdom-based art project titled Inside: Artists and…
‘I didn’t seem to exist. It felt easier that way’—Es’kia Mphahlele. Read an excerpt from Like Family: Domestic Workers in South African History and Literature
The JRB presents an extract from Like Family: Domestic Workers in South African History and Literature, by Ena Jansen. Like…
[City Editor] Finding out you’re big in Myanmar—and a caution on the potential effects of South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill
City Editor Niq Mhlongo finds a cautionary tale in an interaction with one of his (heretofore unknown) international publishers. In…
[The JRB Daily] 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists announced
The longlists for the 2019 Sunday Times Literary Awards have been revealed! The duo of awards—the Alan Paton Award for…
‘A literary con’—Hedley Twidle rereads Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost by Dugmore Boetie, the joker in the pack of Sophiatown-era life writing
In this excerpt from his forthcoming book on non-fiction in South African literature, Experiments with Truth, Hedley Twidle revisits Dugmore…
English translation published of Yolande Mukagasana’s personal testimony of the Rwandan Genocide, Not My Time To Die
Kigali-based Huza Press has just released the English translation of Yolande Mukagasana’s Not My Time To Die, translated by Zoe Norridge….
[The JRB Daily] Commemorate Human Rights Day with an exclusive excerpt from Lie on Your Wounds: The Prison Correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe
Header image: Book cover (left); and Sobukwe, inside the grounds of Orlando Police Station, awaiting arrest, on the morning of 21…
Illuminating a mighty poet and a total artist—Rustum Kozain reviews Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution
The JRB Poetry Editor Rustum Kozain reviews David Austin’s new book Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, finding…
Showcasing African literature’s contribution to decolonisation—Lebohang Mojapelo reviews Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing
Lebohang Mojapelo reviews Ngũgĩ: Reflections on His Life of Writing, a collection of essays that reflects on the life and work of Ngũgĩ…
A 1960s summer in New York with Lewis Nkosi—Read an excerpt from Vintage Love and Other Essays by Jolyon Nuttall
The JRB presents an excerpt from Vintage Love and Other Essays by Jolyon Nuttall. Vintage Love Jolyon Nuttall Jacana Media, 2018 …
‘It was the only way we could escape our whiteness’—Read ‘Struggle Heroes’, an excerpt from Hugh Lewin’s memoir, Stones Against the Mirror
The JRB presents an excerpt from Stones Against the Mirror, the memoir of journalist, author and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Lewin,…
Hugh Lewin, 1939–2019, RIP
Journalist, author and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Lewin has died, aged seventy-nine. Lewin passed away at his home in Killarney, Johannesburg…
[Conversation Issue] ‘There is nothing I loathe more than the idea that a piece of writing is “experimental”’—Emmanuel Iduma in conversation with Lidudumalingani
As part of our January Conversation Issue, Emmanuel Iduma, author of A Stranger’s Pose, in conversation with writer and photographer Lidudumalingani….
[Conversation Issue] ‘Every small victory chips away at the fallacy that gay people are some sort of un-African species’—Chike Frankie Edozien chats to Efemia Chela
As part of our January Conversation Issue, The JRB Contributing Editor Efemia Chela chats to Chike Frankie Edozien about his memoir, Lives of Great…
We told her she was Nina Simone—Bongani Madondo reviews She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Joan Morgan
As Bongani Madondo experienced tinges of nostalgia occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, HipHop Feminist…
Read an excerpt from What Is Africa to Me? by Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé, winner of the ‘alternative Nobel’ literature prize
A giant of black feminist writing and thought, Maryse Condé was recently awarded the New Academy Prize in Literature, a…
‘He took us only as far as Auschwitz’—Read an excerpt from Everyone is Present: Essays on Photography, Memory and Family by Terry Kurgan
After a pleasant day that perhaps included a light lunch in Hotel Zator, they would write postcards to family or…
‘I like writing male characters—I don’t have to get them home safely at the end of the chapter’—An interview with Aminatta Forna
Aminatta Forna sat down with The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town to talk about her new novel,…
‘Man’s afraid of a few sharks’—Read an excerpt from Poacher: Confessions From the Abalone Underworld by Kimon de Greef and Shuhood Abader
Flares exploded in the sky. Stun grenades fired into the water. From the dunes came a volley of gunshots. It…
[The JRB Daily] Lesego Rampolokeng and Barbara Boswell win the UJ Prizes for South African Writing
The winners have been announced for the University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing in English for works published in…
[The JRB Daily] 2018 South African Literary Awards shortlists revealed—and new Poet Laureate to be announced
The 2018 South African Literary Awards shortlists have been announced, with nominees including Malebo Sephodi, Nick Mulgrew, Kelwyn Sole and…
[The JRB Daily] UJ Prize shortlists announced—novels dominate this year
The shortlists for the 2017 University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing in English have been announced. Unlike most…
[The JRB Daily] Remembering VS Naipaul in South Africa
VS Naipaul, who died aged eighty-five on Saturday, spent some months in South Africa in 2009, researching his final book….
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and Panashe Chigumadzi in conversation—Meditations on the traumas and triumphs of Zimbabwe’s histories
‘History is created in the mouth …’ Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi both have new…
Nelson Mandela’s ‘new’ collection of prison dispatches signs his name across our hearts: Bongani Madondo reviews The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
Torn for so long between anxiety and awe at the idolisation of Nelson Mandela, The JRB Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo…
[The JRB Exclusive] ‘The colonisers were right: the mbira is dangerous’—Read an excerpt from Panashe Chigumadzi’s new book These Bones Will Rise Again
Chigumadzi’s exploration of personal, family and national history reincarnates in stark, vivid images, many of those interred in the shadows…
[The JRB Exclusive] ‘What African Nationalism Is’—Read an excerpt from Africa’s Cause Must Triumph: The Collected Writings of AP Mda
The JRB is proud to present an excerpt from Africa’s Cause Must Triumph: The Collected Writings of AP Mda. Africa’s Cause…
Emerging from Chinua Achebe’s shadow: Nigeria’s first generation of post-independence writers and the literary brotherhood of Umuahia
This July marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s seminal novel Things Fall Apart. Lebohang Mojapelo reviews…
The over-intellectualisation of desire—Efemia Chela reviews Anne Garréta’s newly translated memoir Not One Day
The JRB Francophone and Contributing Editor Efemia Chela reviews Not One Day, Anne Garréta’s memoir and the second of her books to be…
[The JRB Daily] Harry Kalmer and Bongani Ngqulunga win Sunday Times Literary Awards
‘I dedicate this win to my mother and my father, who never went to school. It just shows what…