Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is in South Africa in August to discuss her lauded debut novel, Kintu. She spoke to CA…
By recentering the narrative on Durban and Natal, rather than Johannesburg and the Transvaal, Jon Soske modifies the established account…
The 2018 Man Booker Prize longlist has been announced, including a graphic novel for the first time. The £50,000 prize had…
Mbali Sikakana considers Nozizwe Cynthia Jele’s new novel The Ones With Purpose in the context of Hilton Als’s groundbreaking 1996…
Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York, reissued fourteen years after its first publication, endures in the quality of its writing and…
Zinzi Clemmons was in South Africa recently on a book tour for her debut novel, What We Lose. She sat…
Ableism and the silent roar: The JRB Francophone and Contributing Editor Efemia Chela travels to Burundi with Roland Rugero’s novel Baho! in The…
Exclusive to The JRB, listen to a recording of Zinzi Clemmons reading from her debut novel, What We Lose. What…
The JRB is proud to present an excerpt from Roland Rugero’s novel Baho!—the first Burundian novel to be translated from French…
Author Zinzi Clemmons, who is in Johannesburg on a book tour, sat down with The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec today…
The African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), a new research centre based at Wits University, Johannesburg,…
Richard Poplak reviews 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B Peterson, ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world…
Queer Africa 2: New Stories, a short story collection edited by The JRB Patron Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin, has…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, winner of the 2017 National Book Award for fiction. Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn…
The Monk of Mokha’s easygoing optimism glides over the prejudices and hatred that underdog minorities face in the United States,…
TO Molefe believes Raoul Peck should have claimed I Am Not Your Negro as a new, original work, not as James…
Second-wave feminism, mansplained: Diane Awerbuck finds much to disappoint in Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties. Sleeping Beauties Stephen King…
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—and, crucially, neither does he aspire to be, writes Kibo Ngowi. We…
Sarah Ruden responds to David van Schoor’s letter, published in our January issue, addressing Ruden’s response to Van Schuur’s review…
As part of our January Conversation Issue, Ben Williams talks to Jonathan Franzen. Purity Jonathan Franzen Fourth Estate, 2016 American…
David van Schoor responds to Sarah Ruden’s letter, published in our December issue, addressing Van Schoor’s review of her translation…
South Africa’s National Poet Laureate, Keorapetse ‘Bra Willie’ Kgositsile, has died in Johannesburg. Kgositsile passed away at Milpark Hospital in…
The JRB’s Editor takes a look back at 2017 and picks out the single work that left the biggest impression….
The longlist for the 2017 9mobile Prize for Literature (formerly the Etisalat Prize for Literature) has been announced. South African…
The JRB presents City Editor Niq Mhlongo’s short story ‘Four Blocks Away’. The story is excerpted from Mhlongo’s most recent book,…
Driss Ksikes gives us a vivid intergenerational short story in ‘Fuckin’ Family’ (‘Putain la famille’). For a long time, family…
Writing for the New Yorker, The JRB Editorial Advisory Panel member Petina Gappah contemplates ‘How Zimbabwe Freed Itself From Robert Mugabe’. Mugabe’s resignation…
The New York Review of Books has featured an article by Panashe Chigumadzi, titled ‘Soap and South Africa’s “Fatal Intimacy”‘….
Jennifer Malec sat down with Nathan Hill in Cape Town during the Open Book Festival recently to talk about his…
American author George Saunders has won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Saunders…
When New York’s pout-fully punk weekly, The Village Voice, announced the end of its print issue last month, Gotham City…
Fran Ross’s wildly funny race satire, Oreo, was originally published in 1974, and instantly forgotten. Mbali Sikakana surveys the novel’s…
Victor Dlamini is The JRB’s Photo Editor. We feature his work on our Instagram channel. Don’t miss the ten-year retrospective…
The shortlist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been announced, with six books described as ‘playful, sincere,…
The JRB Academic Editor Simon van Schalkwyk spoke to Paul Beatty, whose novel The Sellout won the 2016 Man Booker…
In the late nineteen-seventies, James Baldwin encountered an ‘extraordinary and illuminating’ Rhodesian book, which influenced his thought around black rage…
The Sellout Paul Beatty One World 2015 The JRB recorded this reading by Paul Beatty during his recent visit to…
What We Lose Zinzi Clemmons Fourth Estate, 2017 Memory itself is an internal rumour —George Santayana But most of…
Masande Ntshanga’s debut novel, The Reactive, came out from Umuzi in 2014. Since then, it has won international publishing contracts…
