As Bongani Madondo experienced tinges of nostalgia occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, HipHop Feminist…
The JRB presents an exclusive excerpt from This Mournable Body, the highly anticipated new novel from Tsitsi Dangarembga. Scroll to…
In La Bastarda we find a revolutionary piece of literature, where a young girl isn’t saved by her long-lost father,…
The JRB presents an excerpt from a short story by Nnedi Okorafor, taken from the new anthology Lagos Noir. Lagos…
Sally Rooney reshapes our understanding of the ordinary in a manner that invites us to imagine better ways of being,…
Lola Shoneyin spoke to Shayera Dark about the fifth edition of the Aké Arts and Book Festival, which took place…
Header image (left to right): Nozizwe Cynthia Jele, Niq Mhlongo, Siyamthanda Skota, Yanele Nyamela, Phindile Mokoena, Outlwile Tsipane and Mũkoma…
A giant of black feminist writing and thought, Maryse Condé was recently awarded the New Academy Prize in Literature, a…
Constructed around a feminist, though dystopian, future, Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Who Fears Death—now reissued some eight years after its first…
It’s a strange time to be writing a comedy of manners about moneyed New Yorkers, but Patrick deWitt’s French Exit…
The Johannesburg Review of Books presents a previously unpublished poem by Geoffrey Philp. ~~~ Shlomo’s Return (For Jeffrey and Dina…
After a pleasant day that perhaps included a light lunch in Hotel Zator, they would write postcards to family or…
The JRB presents an excerpt from South African Gothic: Anxiety and Creative Dissent in the Post-apartheid Imagination and Beyond by…
On 12 October, Maryse Condé was announced as the winner of the New Academy Prize in Literature, an award created…
Anna Burns has become the first Northern Irish writer to win the Man Booker Prize. The fifty-six-year-old author won the fiftieth…
In his debut work of fiction, The Night of Broken Glass, Feroz Rather masterfully captures the peculiar, punctured lives of…
Aminatta Forna sat down with The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town to talk about her new novel,…
Fred Khumalo recalls being swept off his feet by Alan Paton, the African Writers Series and James Hadley Chase. It’s a question…
The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec reviews Esi Edugyan’s Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, Washington Black. Washington Black Esi Edugyan Serpent’s Tail, 2018 Esi…
Two problems are gnawing at my heart as we leave Dar es Salaam to Morogoro on the Sunday afternoon of…
Two weeks before the end of our JIAS Fellowship, Niq Mhlongo and I decided that as we had been to…
Alain Mabanckou’s new novel, Les cigognes sont immortelles, spans three important days in the life of a Congolese boy from…
It’s awards season in the French-speaking literary world! A number of big prizes revealed their longlists in the month of…
The six authors shortlisted for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize have been announced—with 27-year-old debut novelist Daisy Johnson becoming the youngest…
The shortlist for the 2018 Nigeria Prize for Literature has been announced. The prize was founded in 2004, and is awarded…
Arundhati Roy visited South Africa on a book tour recently, and sat down with The JRB to discuss her highly…
Lisa Halliday’s debut Asymmetry is a genuinely surprising novel, which invites us to question how men and women are rendered in…
In Transparent City, Ondjaki writes Angola not as an insignificant place in the margins of history but as if it…
Ugandan author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi visited Wits University in August, for a discussion around her debut novel, Kintu. Kintu Jennifer…
The Long Take by Robin Robertson is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Here is poet Loftus Marais’s short…
Victor Dlamini is The JRB’s Photo Editor. We feature his work on our Instagram channel. Don’t miss the ten-year retrospective…
The JRB is proud to present an excerpt from House of Stone, the debut novel by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. House of…
About five months ago a very close friend of mine invited me to his wedding. His big day was Saturday,…
Un océan, deux mers, trois continents is the realisation of an idea I had forming in my mind for about…
Indian writer Arundhati Roy, in South Africa on a book tour, sat down with The JRB to discuss her books…
VS Naipaul, who died aged eighty-five on Saturday, spent some months in South Africa in 2009, researching his final book….
‘History is created in the mouth …’ Novuyo Rosa Tshuma and The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi both have new…
Torn for so long between anxiety and awe at the idolisation of Nelson Mandela, The JRB Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo…
Ayesha Harruna Attah’s new novel, The Hundred Wells of Salaga, has just been published by Cassava Republic Press. She chatted…
Yemisi Aribisala recalls her first encounter with Little Black Sambo, and asks: Who is responsible if the image of the…
