View from the privileged heights of the JIAS Castle: Zukiswa Wanner and Niq Mhlongo reflect on their writing fellowship
The JRB City Editor Niq Mhlongo and Zukiswa Wanner have both just published new books—Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree and…
Category: International
Happily-ever-after takes a dark turn: Wamuwi Mbao reviews Julian Barnes’s new novel, The Only Story
The Only Story is Julian Barnes’s thirteenth novel in a career spanning thirty-eight years, but his gift for turning grim…
Decolonisation is generating your own knowledge and understandings: Tawana Kupe discusses the new Wits-based African Centre for the Study of the United States
The African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), a new research centre based at Wits University, Johannesburg,…
Essays that edge towards poetry: Jennifer Malec reviews Zadie Smith’s new collection of non-fiction, Feel Free
Zadie Smith’s new collection of essays, Feel Free, is a too-rare pleasure, writes The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec. Not many…
New short fiction: ‘A Woman is her Hands’ by Wame Molefhe, from The Gods Who Send Us Gifts: An Anthology of African Short Stories
Exclusive to The JRB, read Wame Molefhe’s short story ‘A Woman is her Hands’, excerpted from The Gods Who Send…
‘The Academy is no concentration camp’: Chairperson of the Nobel Committee for Literature Per Wästberg talks to The JRB about the current sexual abuse scandal
Maureen Isaacson reports from Stockholm, Sweden, on the latest developments around the scandal engulfing the Nobel Prize in Literature. The…
[The JRB Daily] Panashe Chigumadzi reflects on Zimbabwe’s ‘coup that was not a coup’ in her new book, These Bones Will Rise Again
Panashe Chigumadzi’s new book, These Bones Will Rise Again, will be out from United Kingdom-based independent publisher The Indigo Press in June….
[The JRB Daily] Exclusive to The JRB: Photographs from the protest against the Nobel Prize in Literature sexual harassment scandal
The Swedish Academy, responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, is currently being rocked by a sexual abuse and…
[The JRB Daily] Henrietta Rose-Innes shortlisted for 2018 Nommo Award for her short story ‘Snake Story’, featured in The JRB
The African Speculative Fiction Society has announced the nominations for the 2018 Nommo Awards, including two stories by The JRB…
[The JRB Daily] ‘None But Ourselves’—Percy Zvomuya charts the sonic cartography of a revolution in the new Chimurenga Chronic: ‘The Invention of Zimbabwe’
Image: Bob Marley performing at the Zimbabwe Independence celebration, Rufaro Stadium, Harare, 18 April 1980 The new issue of Chimurenga’s…
[The JRB Daily] 2018 Man Booker International Prize shortlist announced
The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker International Prize has been announced. The Man Booker International celebrates the finest global…
[The JRB Daily] Yewande Omotoso shortlisted for ‘world’s richest annual literary prize’—the International Dublin Literary Award
The shortlist has been announced for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award, the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single…
‘Imagination is everything’: Paul Gilroy chats to The JRB about race, land and South Africa’s role in overthrowing the racial order
The JRB’s Academic Editor Simon van Schalkwyk spoke to UK academic, historian and philosopher Paul Gilroy, who was in Johannesburg…
‘English’s tendency to obliterate other languages does not apply here’—Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire reviews Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu
Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire reviews Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu, which was recently awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. Kintu Jennifer…
‘The argument between Beauty and, perhaps, War’: William Kentridge and Denis Hirson in conversation in Johannesburg
Artist William Kentridge and author Denis Hirson appeared in a public conversation at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, in February, to…
Those who migrate remake the places they arrive in: Wamuwi Mbao reviews Mohsin Hamid’s latest novel, Exit West
Mohsin Hamid’s new book, Exit West, is a work of speculative fiction that will be read as ‘The Great Migration…
Richard Poplak sets Jordan B Peterson’s house in order: a (scorching) review of 12 Rules For Life
Richard Poplak reviews 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B Peterson, ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world…
Africanism and Afrofuturism: Imraan Coovadia considers Blackness, Black Panther and Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason
Achille Mbembe’s vision is a guide to the revolution that stands on the other side of revolution, writes Imraan Coovadia. Critique…
The JRB Exclusive: Read an excerpt from An Eternity in Tangiers, a graphic novel that evokes the mental and physical limbo of migrancy, by Faustin Titi and Eyoum Nganguè
The JRB is proud to present an exclusive excerpt from the graphic novel An Eternity in Tangiers, by Ivorian illustrator…
Un si beau diplôme !—Rwandese author and genocide survivor Scholastique Mukasonga chronicles her quest for an education in new book
Comment sauver son enfant d’une mort certaine ? Faut-il, comme le croit le père de l’auteur, faire confiance à l’école…
Letter: Christine Chiosi on the ‘discomfort’ and ‘estrangement’ of Wamuwi Mbao’s report from an exhibition of JM Coetzee’s boyhood photographs
This is an edited version of a letter The JRB received, from Christine Chiosi, in response to the essay by…
[The JRB Daily] Former Caine Prize director Lizzy Attree joins Short Story Day Africa
Lizzy Attree has joined the board of Short Story Day Africa. Attree stepped down as the director of the Caine Prize for…
[The JRB Daily] Man Booker International Prize longlist announced
The longlist has been revealed for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. The Man Booker International celebrates the finest global…
[The JRB Daily] Queer Africa 2, edited by Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin, announced as a 2018 Lambda Literary Awards finalist
Queer Africa 2: New Stories, a short story collection edited by The JRB Patron Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin, has…
A novel that takes up Baldwin’s declaration that the story of America ‘is not a pretty one’: Wamuwi Mbao reviews Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, winner of the 2017 National Book Award for fiction. Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn…
Two new poems by Mikael Johani
The Johannesburg Review of Books presents previously unpublished poetry by Mikael Johani. chapel hill stuck a pin in…
A real-life Yemeni-American hero: Imraan Coovadia reviews Dave Eggers’s new book, The Monk of Mokha
The Monk of Mokha’s easygoing optimism glides over the prejudices and hatred that underdog minorities face in the United States,…
[Temporary Sojourner] Efemia Chela reads José Eduardo Agualusa’s Angolan War thought experiment, A General Theory of Oblivion
Luanda’s Shrödinger’s Woman: Efemia Chela travels to Angola with José Eduardo Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion, which was shortlisted for…
The PEN International Women’s Manifesto: ‘The act of silencing a person is to deny their existence. It is a kind of death’
Margie Orford, President Emerita of PEN South Africa and board member of PEN International, on the PEN International Women’s Manifesto,…
Skin and the Arab Spring: Read an excerpt from Tunisian author Azza Filali’s Les Intranquilles
Words without Borders’s issue dedicated to Tunisian women writers got lost in the flurry of the end of 2017, with…
[The JRB Daily] Thirty-eight Nobel laureates, including JM Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and Wole Soyinka, write open letter to Turkey’s President Erdoğan over threats to freedom of expression
Thirty-eight Nobel laureates have written an open letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to draw his attention to damage…
[The JRB Daily] Caine Prize for African Writing director Lizzy Attree stands down
The Caine Prize for African Writing has announced that director Lizzy Attree is leaving the organisation. Attree has served as director…
[The JRB Daily] 2017 Africa Centre Artists In Residency shortlists announced
The Africa Centre has announced the shortlists for the 2017 Artists In Residency programmes, including The JRB Contributing Editor Efemia Chela. The…
Exquisite, but a reminder that there will never be another Baldwin: TO Molefe appraises I Am Not Your Negro, a year after its release
TO Molefe believes Raoul Peck should have claimed I Am Not Your Negro as a new, original work, not as James…
[Temporary Sojourner] Efemia Chela reads The Ultimate Tragedy, the first novel from Guinea-Bissau ever to be translated into English
Efemia Chela travels to Guinea-Bissau with Abdulai Silá’s The Ultimate Tragedy in The JRB’s Temporary Sojourner series. The Ultimate Tragedy (A Última Tragédia)…
JM Coetzee is tired: Wamuwi Mbao reports from the ‘Photographs from Boyhood’ exhibition in Cape Town
An exhibition of JM Coetzee’s newly discovered childhood photography was recently held in Cape Town. Wamuwi Mbao was there. With…
Ben Okri demonstrates the value of dreams in a ramshackle world: Wamuwi Mbao reviews The Magic Lamp
Wamuwi Mbao reviews The Magic Lamp, a new collection of meditations and stories by Ben Okri, illustrated by Rosemary Clunie. The…
Diane Awerbuck mostly does not review Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties, but mostly remembers her mother, horror fan supreme
Second-wave feminism, mansplained: Diane Awerbuck finds much to disappoint in Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties. Sleeping Beauties Stephen King…
A flawed take on immigration and the rise of the right: Lebohang Mojapelo reviews Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s Go Back to Where You Came From
Fear of a black planet, rather than ‘economic anxiety’, gnaws at the West’s hallowed liberal democratic principles, writes Lebohang Mojapelo….
Ta-Nehisi Coates is not the voice of black people: Kibo Ngowi considers the cult of intersectionality
Ta-Nehisi Coates is not the voice of black people—and, crucially, neither does he aspire to be, writes Kibo Ngowi. We…