Litnet

"In many ways, this is not merely a historical novel about Taiwan under Japanese rule, but a novel about every colonised society where the coloniser arrives convinced of their own sophistication while remaining blind to the humanity standing beside them."

"You have to create intrigue and curiosity pretty quickly for a reader to want to finish the story."

The theme for this year’s conference is: Indigenous Knowledge Systems for a New Era of Enlightenment.

"South Africa’s challenge is no longer simply moral reconciliation, but coordinated survival. The capacities produced by Afrikaner covenantal thinking – planning, infrastructure, institutional memory, long-horizon cooperation – cannot simply be discarded because the metaphysics that once organised them has shifted."

"Anyone who is interested in creativity may want to get hold of the book. While it is an academic text, Hardman writes fluently, and the bits that I have been reading since buying it are easy to understand."

The historic town of Nxuba (Cradock) is set to transform into a vibrant hub of literary exploration and artistic storytelling as the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival returns from June 18th to June 21st, 2026. This year’s festival promises an immersive experience, blending the rich heritage of the Karoo with contemporary voices in poetry, memoir writing, and social-media storytelling.

We received 240 submissions from poets across southern Africa. The poems showcased inventive use of language, humour, interplay between languages, truth-telling, and remarkable attention to specific details.

"It relies on recognisable structures of interpretation: the compromised genius, the corrupt system, the haunted past, the faithful wife who outlasts everything. These are presented with intelligence and elegance, but also with a certain complacency, as if their truth were self-evident tropes that need no further interrogation."

"While several fine stories here tie up their loose ends in very few words, the best of them almost invariably unsettle the reader’s expectations in one of two ways."

"I loved how seamlessly the story blends humour, adventure and creativity. While the stakes are higher and the danger more pronounced, the narrative maintains its light, quirky tone throughout."

What is Breyten Breytenbach’s poetic legacy? His daughter Daphnée Breytenbach and his French translator Georges Lory join Catherine du Toit, head of the French department at Stellenbosch University, for a conversation on Breytenbach’s lasting influence on French and South African literature at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.

For anyone who loves reading, writing and the Karoo, please join us at the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival from Thursday evening 18 June until Saturday night 20 June.

A study of anti-Blackness and white supremacy across four continents demonstrates that colorblindness is neither new nor a subtype of racist ideology, but a constitutive technology of racism.

"We meet Maryam in 1994 at the movies, watching Grumpy old men with her best friend Tauhier after being ditched by their friends. It is such an ordinary moment, and yet it becomes the foundation for everything that follows. There is already a tenderness between them – a sense of possibility – but restraint. They make a choice: Their friendship matters more than the risk of romance."

Julien says her story grew out of her fascination with the people who come to work in our homes: domestic workers, nannies, carers, gardeners.

"Boel gives 'clear steps for raising capital, analysing and securing high-yield deals, structuring investments for maximum tax benefits, and manage property profitably'. He has even coached mentees who have come from townships and started out with absolutely nothing."

"The image is almost too apt, which may be why Jill Lepore, never innocent of the well-placed metaphor, places it at the conceptual centre of We the People, her Pulitzer Prize-winning history of 2026."

"What truly stood out, though, is just how inclusive this story is. It celebrates diversity in such a natural and beautiful way. It opens the door for important conversations, and teaches children from an early age that we all experience the world differently, and that’s okay."

"What you are left with, finally, is an accumulation of atmosphere: lives conducted partly in the open and partly in concealment; stories moving across continents and decades; a writer who converts experience into fiction; and a woman who must inhabit the afterlife of that transformation."

Poets or their publishers are invited to submit entries for the Ingrid Jonker Prize for English poetry in 2026.