Contrary to what the title and pulpy cover seem to suggest, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is…
As Bongani Madondo experienced tinges of nostalgia occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, HipHop Feminist…
In La Bastarda we find a revolutionary piece of literature, where a young girl isn’t saved by her long-lost father,…
Sally Rooney reshapes our understanding of the ordinary in a manner that invites us to imagine better ways of being,…
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…
In his debut work of fiction, The Night of Broken Glass, Feroz Rather masterfully captures the peculiar, punctured lives of…
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…
The story told in The Lost Boys of Bird Island warps South Africa’s history beyond the nightmares of colonialism and apartheid,…
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…
The Long Take by Robin Robertson is longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Here is poet Loftus Marais’s short…
Torn for so long between anxiety and awe at the idolisation of Nelson Mandela, The JRB Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo…
Born to Kwaito: Reflections on the Kwaito Generation cranks up the volume of the unsung and barely documented soundtrack of ‘freedom’,…
OK, Mr Field, the debut novel by acclaimed South African poet Katharine Kilalea, is a pleasingly minimalist, idiosyncratic novel, writes…
By recentering the narrative on Durban and Natal, rather than Johannesburg and the Transvaal, Jon Soske modifies the established account…
Pravasan Pillay’s new collection of short stories, Chatsworth, is a literary necessity, writes Francine Simon. Chatsworth Pravasan Pillay Dye Hard…
This July marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s seminal novel Things Fall Apart. Lebohang Mojapelo reviews…
Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York, reissued fourteen years after its first publication, endures in the quality of its writing and…
Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater is a striking, startling, butterfly-net of a novel, writes Wamuwi Mbao.
Ableism and the silent roar: The JRB Francophone and Contributing Editor Efemia Chela travels to Burundi with Roland Rugero’s novel Baho! in The…
Olúmìdé Pópóọlá’s debut novel, When We Speak of Nothing, seems to indicate a blossoming of things to come, writes Outlwile…
The JRB City Editor Niq Mhlongo reviews Clinton Chauke’s debut book, Born in Chains: The Diary of an Angry ‘Born Free’. Born…
Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a lesson in how to create novels that reflect the now in all its glory and…
Adekeye Adebajo reviews Woman in the Wings by Carien du Plessis, offering concluding reflections on Agenda 2063, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s dubious…
The Only Story is Julian Barnes’s thirteenth novel in a career spanning thirty-eight years, but his gift for turning grim…
Zadie Smith’s new collection of essays, Feel Free, is a too-rare pleasure, writes The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec. Not many…
Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire reviews Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu, which was recently awarded a prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. Kintu Jennifer…
Mohsin Hamid’s new book, Exit West, is a work of speculative fiction that will be read as ‘The Great Migration…
Richard Poplak reviews 12 Rules For Life by Jordan B Peterson, ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world…
Nomavenda Mathiane’s Eyes in the Night: An Untold Zulu Story illuminates the times, spaces and voices in-between, writes The JRB…
Achille Mbembe’s vision is a guide to the revolution that stands on the other side of revolution, writes Imraan Coovadia. Critique…
The Land is Ours is Tembeka Ngcukaitobi’s first book, and it must not be his last, writes Perfect Hlongwane. The…
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,…
Luanda’s Shrödinger’s Woman: Efemia Chela travels to Angola with José Eduardo Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion, which was shortlisted for…
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)…
Wamuwi Mbao reviews The Magic Lamp, a new collection of meditations and stories by Ben Okri, illustrated by Rosemary Clunie. The…
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….
