Litnet

Don’t miss the Bargain Books early-bird Christmas special! Do your gift shopping in November and enjoy a further 10% off already-reduced selected Christmas titles! Plus stand a chance to win a copy of Terry Pratchett’s biography!

Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit are the authors of numerous books on the Karoo. Tony Jackman spoke to them at the Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée, days after their Karoo roads III had rolled of the press.

We hope that you can join us at one of these launches planned for November.

"Published by Umuzi, its extended narrative provides a vividly localised image of community life in Walmer Estate, an area of Cape Town that is set on the slopes of Table Mountain, most of whose adult and older occupants have haunting memories of District Six ..."

Mignonne Breier has won the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Award for non-fiction for Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre, published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers.

The South African air fryer cookbook focuses on mouth-watering local favourites such as bobotie, apricot snoek with sweet potato, boerewors with chakalaka, paptert, milk tart and malva pudding.

The Island Prize is a literary prize open to previously unpublished debut African novelists from across the continent to help them reach wider audiences and break into the UK publishing scene. 

"I called this novel panoramic, but it is also kaleidoscopic, so pregnant is it with fractured reflections that reconfigure themselves at each quick shake."

We invite you to write a story of between 3 000 to 5 000 words.

You are invited to attend the Cape Town launch of Etienne van Heerden’s A library to flee on 9 November 2022. David Attwell will be in conversation with Van Heerden and the translator of the novel, Henrietta Rose-Innes.

On 9 October 2022 the Ingrid Jonker Prize was presented to Jacques Coetzee for his collection An illuminated darkness (uHlanga Press). This is the presentation read to Coetzee at the event during the annual Tuin van Digters poetry festival at the Breytenbach Centre in Wellington.

"But who was the mysterious MAB who, on a visit to Rhodesia, had paid 4/6 to a second-hand bookdealer in Salisbury – either The Treasure Trove or The Book Exchange, according to my informants – and ‘passed it on with warm affection’?"

"To have taken such inflammable issues, and to have presented them so inoffensively yet so clearly, is a clear pointer to Van Heerden’s remarkable skills as a writer. In Library, he plunges headfirst into fiction with social issues to discuss, and succeeds beyond his hopes, I’m sure. He has amused us, frightened us, titillated us and informed us."

Before entering the AVBOB Poetry Competition, we trust these suggestions will help you sharpen your poems! Submit up to 10 poems in all 11 official languages. Entries close on 30 November 2022.

"The reader is required to assemble and make sense of disparate story fragments and construct meaning in much the same way Thalia tries to make sense of her quest. It’s fascinating, absorbing, challenging and well researched."

"Neither is Steyn professing to write academically, he writes for readers who read for pleasure but who want to be informed. The fact remains the book is an important text and adds richly to South African historiography for an understanding of an era."

Mr Entertainment evokes not just Taliep’s life, but also the music and entertainment worlds of the 1950s to 2000s and their diverse and irrepressible cultural traditions.

This month, as the world celebrates World Migratory Bird Day, the AVBOB Poetry Project celebrates a brilliant, challenging new collection by Kelwyn Sole, an award-winning poet and keen bird watcher, with a particular love of pelagic birding.

Bargain Books is giving away a copy of Nothing more to tell by Karen M McManus. You could be the lucky winner, enter now!

Bargain Books is giving away a copy of The bullet that missed by Richard Osman. You could be the lucky winner, enter now!