To be human is to be capable of great love and truly awful behaviour—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
A novel of feminist radicalism, readable in the best sense of the word—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn, who will be…
Category: Reviews
Bearing witness to unusual childhoods of privilege under oppression—Panashe Chigumadzi reviews Township Girls: The Cross-Over Generation
A significant first step in documenting the life writing of black Zimbabwean women—The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi reviews Township Girls:…
An exhilarating elegy for the slaves and storytellers of old—Lara Buxbaum reviews Patrick Chamoiseau’s wildly inventive novel The Old Slave and the Mastiff
Tracing the memory of bones, ‘a long thread of words that attempted to fulfil the universe’—Lara Buxbaum reviews The Old…
Writing queerness as mythology—Zanta Nkumane reviews Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Zanta Nkumane reviews Ocean Vuong’s devastatingly beautiful debut On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a novel about living in the margins,…
‘We have entered the uncanny valley of literary realism’—Simon van Schalkwyk reviews Ian McEwan’s new novel Machines Like Me
In Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan appears to have offered us an alternative history that leads to the same dispiriting…
Wider than the Black Atlantic—Bongani Madondo listens in on Kwame Brathwaite’s visual sounds of Blackness, from the photo book Black Is Beautiful
Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo unmoors Kwame Brathwaite’s Black Is Beautiful from mono-dimensional notions of the Black Atlantic into a New African Globalism of…
Remember the African Renaissance? Adekeye Adebajo reviews Building Blocks Towards an African Century: Essays in Honour of Thabo Mbeki, which shines a partial light on presidential ambition and influence
Celebrating Africa’s Philosopher-King—Adekeye Adebajo reviews Building Blocks Towards an African Century: Essays in Honour of Thabo Mbeki. Building Blocks Towards an…
‘Ace Magashule’s rise reveals the weakness of the centre’—Imraan Coovadia reviews Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s Gangster State
Imraan Coovadia reviews Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s new book, Gangster State: Unravelling Ace Magashule’s Web of Capture. Pieter-Louis Myburgh Gangster State: Unravelling…
Dry like steel: A wrecking ball of a book—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Adam Habib’s Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall
Wamuwi Mbao reviews Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall by Adam Habib, finding it engrossing, but ultimately unconvincing. Rebels and Rage: Reflecting on #FeesMustFall…
A book written by a great writer who wants to be everything to everyone—Tymon Smith reviews Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a frustrating could’ve, would’ve, should’ve affair, although it may yet prove to be the beginning…