Compiled by Michele Magwood for the Sunday Times
Free Association, Steven Boykey Sidley (Picador Africa)
Sidley goes from strength to strength and here he applies his biting humour to the world of podcasts. Max Lurie’s delirious podcast about his own life is a runaway success, but as he begins to sex it up with embellishments and inventions, things get unhinged.
No Longer Whispering to Power, Thandeka Gqubule (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
A portrait of one of the most courageous women to hold public office in South Africa. In her seven years as public protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela fought relentlessly against the abuses of public office, corruption, mismanagement and negligence. A true hero of our times.
Asylum, Marcus Low (Picador Africa)
There’s a buzz building around this dystopian debut novel, about a man locked up in a quarantine facility in the sweltering Karoo. He drifts through the days, his health failing but his mind alive with dreams and memories. Then there is an opportunity to escape, but what awaits him in the bare world beyond the fence?
Miss Behave, Malebo Sephodi (Blackbird Books)
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” When Sephodi came across the old adage something clicked, and she realised she wasn’t going to let anyone else have a say in who and what she should be. She boldly renounces societal expectations placed on her as a black woman and here she shares her journey towards “misbehaviour”.
The Third Reel, SJ Naudé (Umuzi)
The much-anticipated first novel from the author of the outstanding short story collection The Alphabet of Birds. In 1986 a young South African film student in London finds the first of three reels of a film made by a group of Jewish filmmakers in Germany in the 1930s. He sets off for Berlin to find the two missing reels.
Into The Water, Paula Hawkins (Penguin Random House)
It must have been a daunting task to follow The Girl on the Train, but Hawkins doesn’t miss a step in her second outing. When the bodies of a single mother and a teenage girl are found at the bottom of a river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history. Hawkins proves herself again as a master of the clever reveal.
Black Moses, Alain Mabanckou (Serpent’s Tail)
A new novel from the superb Congolese author, a titan of contemporary French literature. In vivid, colloquial style, he tells the comic tale of a hapless man determined to help the helpless in an unjust world. Could he really be the Robin Hood of the Congo?
The Roanoke Girls, Amy Engel (Hodder & Stoughton)
This is a dark, unsettling tale. Beautiful, rich, mysterious, the Roanoke girls seem to have it all. But there’s a dark truth about them which is never spoken. Every girl either runs away, or dies. Can Lane Roanoke escape the curse?
The Inside-Out Man, Fred Strydom (Umuzi)
Billed as a “mind-bender” of a book, Strydom imagines a brilliant, troubled musician living from gig to gig in a city of dead ends. Then he meets a wealthy jazz lover who has an unusual proposition for him. A Faustian tale set in a hall of shifting mirrors.
Book details
- Free Association by Steven Sidley
EAN: 9781770105218
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- No Longer Whispering to Power: The Story of Thuli Madonsela by Thandeka Gqubule
EAN: 9781868427314
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- Asylum by Marcus Low
EAN: 9781770105133
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- Miss Behave by Malebo Sephodi
EAN: 9781928337416
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- The Third Reel by SJ Naude
EAN: 9781415207727
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- Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
EAN: 9780857524430
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- Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou
EAN: 9781781256732
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- The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
EAN: 9781473648395
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- The Inside-Out Man: by Fred Strydom
EAN: 9781415209561
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