Once one experiences the phenomenal power of Christopher Okigbo’s poetry, it seems the reverberations persist throughout one’s creative life, writes…
This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Chimukwembe demonstration, aka the ‘Pots and Pans Protest’, a student uprising in…
The JRB presents an excerpt from I Write the Yawning Void: Selected Essays of Sindiwe Magona. I Write the Yawning…
In 2020, Caroline Davis, a British scholar, now based at England’s University College London, published the book African Literature and…
There is something permanent about how Johannesburg reveals itself to anyone arriving in it, etching itself into the memory, even…
In the context of increasing scrutiny on the literary production of white writers, Ben Williams offers up some ideas on…
On Sundays, in downtown Johannesburg, on the edge of Hillbrow, encroaching into Braamfontein, queues of worshippers fill out the streets,…
The man at the bottom of Johannesburg Road in Highlands North, where Berkswell Road intersects it, punching it from the…
‘Still, there were dreams, and there were dreamers.’ Carey Baraka attempts to gather together the stories of Kwani? 1. One…
A commentary on the present crisis and the need for literate understandings of it by Angelo Fick. 1. These are…
Almost every city has been built more than once. Each phase complete with its own architecture and infrastructure and, for…
Adam Smyer reflects on a global pandemic and Black Lives Matter. As I write this, we are in roughly Month…
Editor’s note: by agreement with the author, this article has been removed from The JRB, ahead of its reappearance in…
It happens that words become too inconsistent to communicate shock. Not that we can’t guess at the terrifying explosion, whose…
‘How do we craft a healthy, dignified blackness, in a world where blackness is a captured identity location that needs…
The following piece was written in 2006, since when it has been languishing on the author’s blog. It was revived…
The Kenyan novel is not dead, writes Carey Baraka, as long as Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor keeps writing. 1. On June…
As part of our January Conversation Issue, Itumeleng Molefi reflects on Mona Eltahawy’s keynote address and conversation with Pumla Dineo…
Those who temporarily abandon Johannesburg this December—and those who stay while pining for home—must know that the city is theirs,…
Mmatshilo Motsei pays tribute to Es’kia Mphahlele, one hundred years after his birth. I first encountered Es’kia Mphahlele when, in…
Adekeye Adebajo addresses the once-unthinkable question ‘Was Gandhi a racist?’, as the 150th anniversary of his birth is celebrated. 1….
Hip Hop is producing a new generation of readers and writers in a world that operates in diverse literary forms,…
In Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino presents her cosmopolitan obsessions with piercing insight and authority, writes Khanya Mtshali. Trick…
The following is an edited excerpt from a work in progress by American author Adam Smyer, whose debut novel, Knucklehead,…
Moshibudi Motimele reflects on the publication of Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets, 2000–2018, a…
On Paulin Hountondji’s Universalist philosophy—Sanya Osha reviews Paulin Hountondji: African Philosophy as Critical Humanism, by Franziska Dubgen and Stefan Skupien….
Read an excerpt from Black Tax: Burden or Ubuntu, a new collection of essays edited by City Editor Niq Mhlongo….
Djiboutian author Abdourahman Waberi talks to RFI Djiboutian author Abdourahman Waberi spoke to Radio France Internationale recently about his life growing…
This August marks one hundred years since the birth of Noni Jabavu. Makhosazana Xaba reflects on the life of this…
The JRB presents a new essay by Jacob Dlamini. For Dlamini, what began as a research project on the labour…
OluTimehin Adegbeye has won the R25 000 Gerald Kraak Prize, which honours African writing and photography that ‘provokes thought on…
The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi presents a new reading of the work, career and life of Dorothy Masuka, arguing that…
The JRB Contributing Editor Efemia Chela reads Adèle, Die, My Love and The Pisces, three stirring psychological novels, kindred portraits of contemporary womanhood….
The JRB presents new narrative non-fiction by Pwaangulongii Dauod. In December of 2014, barely one week after the department reluctantly…
City Editor Niq Mhlongo finds a cautionary tale in an interaction with one of his (heretofore unknown) international publishers. In…
James Baldwin’s novel of half a century ago, If Beale Street Could Talk, now reissued by Penguin Random House, was…
Eben Venter presented the world debut of his first visual exhibition, ‘Translate Yourself’, at the February Lectures conference at the…
As part of our January Conversation Issue, we present an excerpted interview from a new collection of Zoë Wicomb’s writing, Race,…
As part of our January Conversation Issue, read Amatesiro Dore’s Letter to a Young Queer Intellectual. How far, I’ve been…
In The JRB’s forthcoming Fiction Issue, we will feature two short stories by Koos Prinsloo, published for the first time…
