Set in the bohemian suburb of Melville in Johannesburg, this novel introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. Hugh Appel is a computer scientist setting up a gigantic macro chip for public display. His son, Lyon, is on his way to Melville with a group of friends to perform a ritual in the Melville Koppies. Shane and Renee are two artist friends who observe, from a cafe table, as this group passes by the neglected garden of a reclusive Greek immigrant. Aden, an embittered friend of Shane and Renee, mopes at another table. 184pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

This new collection offers a fearless and ecstatic exploration of immanent old age. The taboos within the tidal moods of the menopause are described with an anger and a verbal intensity that are uniquely Krog’s. Close relationships are searingly explored, occasionally in a confrontational way, more often searching for resolution. In the final meditative section, Table Mountain, a looming, symbolic and androgynous godhead, is contemplated as an abiding presence and witness to the transience of human life. 112pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Written over a month of fasting and inspired by the poetry of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, these poems are all, ultimately, songs of love. Accompanied by black and white photos by John Cleare. 144pp, SOUTH AFRICA. WITWATERSRAND UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Short stories about the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of the Townships. 198pp, UK. LONGMAN.

Edited by Stephen Gray and published for the first time, this is the comic prequel to the author's acclaimed 'Stormwrack'. Based on the history of Clanwilliam in Southern Namaqualand, this is the unfolding saga of a Western Cape town climbing out of the shadow of slavery into early Victorian settled prosperity. 248pp, SOUTH AFRICA . HUMAN & ROUSSEAU.

Collected poems of the dissident South African poet, including 6 previously unpublished works. Foreword by Neville Alexander. 362pp, SOUTH AFRICA. REALITIES.

Set in 1991 after Mandela's release, this novel explores the underground world of activists, spies, and saboteurs in the liberation movement. It also journeys back in time to find the forgotten histories of 'coloured' people. Includes an afterword by Dorothy Driver and comes well recommended by J.M. Coetzee, Nuruddin Fara and Gayatri Spivak. Notes, gloss, 278pp, USA. KWELA BOOKS.

Thriller. Meet Jerome Michael Nossel. Known as Nossel to many, and as Comrade Golfer to those who know his history. Gutsy, passionate, vulnerable, smart - and in trouble. Nossel is adrift in the New Republic of self-enrichment and sordid power games, cut loose and betrayed by the very ones he helped bring to power. Then he stumbles upon a murder, and his obsessive mind and big heart won't let him walk away from the desire to find the truth. 195pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA MEDIA.

Collection of 61 poems capturing the poet's most recent phase of environmental curiosity. The first poem in the collection, Settler Country, was awarded a DALRO prize when it first appeared in New Coin 39.1 2003. 29pp, SOUTH AFRICA. ECHOING GREEN PRESS.

Debut poetry collection attempts to probe the realm of the unsaid and the ripples that move between words, between people, between bodies. Sometimes the verses trace and explore details that have brought the poet to, in her own words, "arrested instants of loss or witness that break open the surface of the world". 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA.

The writing in this collection speaks of the places and experiences rarely glimpsed, rarely represented in South Africa's fractured and violent society. Evident in many of the pieces is a reaching back for lost goodness and terrible grief for that lost self, for that other life not lived. B/w illus, 112pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JONATHAN BALL.

A poignant retelling of her father's illness and decline. Dixon's own graceful style provides soothing contrast to the bewilderment and indignity her father suffers. 80pp, UK. SALT PUBLISHING.

A vacant patch of South African veld is taken over by a mysterious eccentric figure with a plan. This first novel develops some of the themes of MISSING PERSONS. 176pp, UK.. SERIF.

Cupidity, corruption and conciliation are the themes of the three plays in this book. The Mother of all Eating, a one-hander, with its central character a corrupt Lesotho official, is a grinding satire on materialism in which the protagonist gets his come-uppance. You Fool, How Can the Sky Fall? is an unbridled study in grotesquerie, reflecting a belief that government by those who inherit a revolution is almost inevitably, in the first decade or two, hi-jacked. The Bells of Amersfoort, with its graphic portrayal of the isolation imposed by exile, picks up on the themes of the other two plays, but adds to them the concept of 'healing', both of the soul and of the land. 184pp, SOUTH AFRICA. WITWATERSRAND UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Short stories from a South African writer, showing the insidious way that apartheid undermines every aspect of daily life. 162pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

Tells the story of two couples, one white, one black, set against the background of the Sharpeville massacre. SOUTH AFRICA . DAVID PHILIP.

This is a story of twin boys identical in appearance but in nothing else. Ashraf is all rage and action u a lover of the real. Firoze is a dreamer and reader - a lover of the ideal. The Dawood family is from Muslim Fordsburg. The father (formally at least) is a merchant and the mother a part-time philosophy lecturer at Wits. Their uncle, known universally as Ten-Per-Cent, lives in the house and shares the ginger-beer factory business with his brother. The story begins in Johannesburg but ends in the US. Ashraf is jailed in Fort Dix Prison in Texas, and Firoze is just settling in New York with his new young wife. Among the cast of characters are Mohammed Atta (of 9/11 notoriety), George Bush, a Pakistani Brigadier in Peshawar, a host of lawyers and assorted crooks of one kind or another, plus various Korean massage parlour girls. 208pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Thirty-two new poems from this prolific South African poet. 44pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF NATAL PRESS.

Prose, poetry and other fragments telling of changing moods and concerns after the 1994 elections. 120pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

A fictional account of a family's life in Namaqualand and their struggle to remain on their land when the government decides they must be moved into the new coloured location. Gloss, 112pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

The third publication from the South African poet. 108pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Joonie - her father named her Junaid, a warrior - has her wits about her and sometimes that's all. This novel follows her travels and travails, in South Africa, America and back again. 249pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA.

Selected and Edited by Colin Gardner. A collection of Paton's poems, short stories, articles and speeches. 298pp. LONDON. REX COLLINGS.

The author of The Last King of Scotland brings his vivid historical imagination to the Anglo Boer War and the 120 day siege of Ladysmith. 366pp, UK. FABER.

2000 1999 0571197337 Paperback WAS 6.99

Poems evoking encounters southern African creatures, from aardvark to zebra, kudu to warthogs. The text invites the reader to consider animals not so much as beasts or feasts, pets or threats, but as our chromosomal cousins, embodying recent discoveries in the fields of evolutionary biology, palaeontology and astronomy. Bib, b/w illus, 85pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Classic text with an introduction by Dorothy Driver. 155pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

New poetry. Gloss, 103pp, SOUTH AFRICA. TIMBILA PUBLISHING.

Maps the representation of jazz and the occasions of its performance in South African literature and reportage, from King Kong reportage to the agonised poetics of exile, Soweto poets of the 1970s to the Staffrider generation of the 1980s. Argues that South African jazz has been formed from complex transactions with other black Atlantic cultures, identities and politics, and local contingencies have been managed through elaborating a relational history that has cut across the hierarchies of colonial and apartheid ideology. Index, bib, notes, 275pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNISA PRESS.

A young Zulu boy named Dumisani grows up in awe of the legendary figure of Nelson Mandela. He thinks of Mandela not only as a great leader of the oppressed, but also as a great seducer of women, and it is in this aspect that he decides to emulate Mandela. A woman he has been pursuing for a long time yields to his advances the day the Black Pimpernel is captured. But Mandela's imprisonment renders Dumisani impotent for 27 years. 182pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

An historical romance, telling the story of Mhudi who saves her husband's life from raiding soldiers in a time span from August 1832 to the rout of the Matabele in November 1837. First published in 1930, this edition includes a bibliography, and a new introduction. 202pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS.

The fourth, eagerly-awaited collection from Jeremy Cronin. Since the publication of his début volume, Inside, which was awarded the 1984 Ingrid Jonker Prize, Cronin has always, compel-lingly, managed to combine political conviction with poetic clarity. In the words of Ingrid de Kok, he is [South Africa's] most experimental, demanding and, despite his disclaimers, one of our most accomplished lyrical poets. Some poems deal very movingly with personal relationships between father and children, husband and wife. Other poems, designed to be performed, contain social commentary. 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Illegitimate, Hud grows up with his mother and her Christian family in the Cape Flats. For 28 years he is overlooked by his Muslim father who is no more than a shadowy figure inhabiting the outskirts of his world; a man his mother has always called Mr Johnson. Then, out of the blue, Hud's father informs him that he is to inherit his rare orchid collection, and asks him to move in with him. His father's health suddenly deteriorates, and this sets in motion a chain of events. Hud's half-brother and sister discover his existence for the first time. When Sawdah returns from Australia, where she has taken refuge from an unhappy experience ten years ago, she is immediately drawn to him. But Mo, her artist brother, resents the intruder. 288pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Although Bosman wrote no formal life history, this collection of his writing contains all the autobiographical pieces he wished to become known, from his Cape childhood and his Johannesburg education as a teacher through to his career as a freelance journalist. Includes a selection of his private letters. B/w illus, 208pp, SOUTH AFRICA. HUMAN & ROUSSEAU.

Short stories of ordinary South African lives. 117pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

An action-packed crime thriller set in Cape Town against the backdrop of the abalone wars along the Cape coast. It is a story of two private investigators from a two-bit agency involved in seemingly different cases. Mullet is hired by the wife of a financial consultant who is allegedly soliciting rent boys. Vincent Saldana is tracking a gang stealing from an abalone farm. But the two cases converge and the action moves from central Cape Town to the suburbs, from Dutch Bay east of the city to Sea Farm on the South Coast, as the detectives hone in on a Triad operator named Jim Woo. 291pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

A love story set against the background of South Africa's apartheid. 262pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

A moving description of a woman who discovers that her cultural identity is based on a lie. Marion runs a travel agency in Cape Town during the 1990s and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions investigations. She has little interest in national events, but when a photograph in a newspaper brings back a long-lost childhood memory, leading to the discovery of a skeleton in her family closet that her father is unwilling to discuss, she turns to Brenda, the first coloured woman she has ever employed, for help in uncovering her history. 218pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Returning to Pretoria where he grew up, Harry van As finds himself in a state of limbo. So many things have changed; so many are still the same. His friends are certainly not those he grew up with: a striking Nigerian schemer, a mathematician-turned-New-Ager, a young black insurance broker and a gay architect. In this novel of shifting surfaces, Harry rekindles a relationship with an old varsity flame and encounters a Pretoria sculptor who works with the unusual medium of glass. Yet his mind constantly returns to another existence - a life in Cape Town, a terrible accident, a mysterious loss. As the shards of Harry's life come together, the reality around him fragments. A picnic at the giant meteor crater on the outskirts of the city brings his quest to a head: he discovers the door through which to enter, and to exit. Bib, 208pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

The Railway Magazine was a journal produced by South African Railways for its employees. Amongst a range of topics it also contained poems written by workers and management, mostly on subjects related to the railways such as work, trains and travel. This volume is a selection of poems from the journal, written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it presents a fascinating insight into the lives and ideas of ordinary railway workers from that period. 63pp. SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

New edition of Ndebele's essays on South African literature and culture appeared initially in various publications in the 1980s. They encompass a period of trauma, defiance, and change, the decade of the collapse of apartheid and the challenge of reconstructing a future. The issues that he raises and the questions that he poses remain key to a people who, after apartheid, have started to rediscover the complex ordinariness of living in a civil society. 184pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Seamus Doyle escapes from a traditional Irish village and arrives in a remote Transkei village where he tries to stand aside from South African politics. But how long can he ignore the forces of oppression. Gloss, 233pp, UK. HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES.

South Africa's most lucid and composed voice in contemporary poetry, the author shares her ability to interweave the intensely personal world with the politically panoramic. This collection is comprised of some of her best poems from the last 25 years many of which have been out of print for a number of years, as well as a selection of new, previously unpublished poetry. 160pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Poetry permeated by the background of oppression and violence of apartheid. 43pp, AUSTRALIA. DANGAROO PRESS

Jamie, the central character, is introduced as a somewhat naïve student of the 1960s, with strong views on racial inequality. As a result, he is detained by the security police. Days after his release, he and Jenny, a ballet student with whom he is deeply in love, leave South Africa for England. A dozen years later, on hearing that his beloved younger brother is dying in Cape Town, he returns without the visa he requires. 279pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS.

Collection of Gray's output over the last seven years. The long title poem first appeared in MOVING WORLDS. 111pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

Collection of poetry by the journalist and political commentator. 43pp, SOUTH AFRICA. VIVLIA PUBLISHERS & BOOKSELLERS.

Debut novel set in late 1980s South Africa, exploring ways in which resistance politics affected education. Includes glossary. 198pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS.

Satirical novel with political, cultural and sexual subtexts played out by a diverse host of extraordinary characters. 419pp, SOUTH AFRICA . SPEARHEAD.

In his first volume of poetry, Mxolisi Nyezwa shifts South African lyrical poetry into powerful and strange landscapes. These are associative poems which move rapidly through multiple dimen-sions. They encompass the spiritual, the political and the bleakness of the everyday with a fluency of language and compelling deftness of image. 92pp, SOUTH AFRICA. GECKO POETRY.

Comic bildungsroman. It's South Africa, 1990. The country still squirms under the iron fist of apartheid. Two major events are about to happen: The release of Nelson Mandela, and more importantly, it's Spud Milton's first year at an elite boys only private boarding school. Cursed with parents from well beyond the lunatic fringe, a senile granny, and a dormitory full of strange characters, Spud has to forge a new life for himself in this foreign and sometimes hostile environment. 389pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PENGUIN BOOKS SOUTH AFRICA.

An adventure story first published in 1884 in response to the diamond rush in Kimberley. This new translation, by Stephen Gray, reintroduces characters critical of British expansionism, omitted from the first English language edition. Illustrated with engraving from the original edition. 252pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

Unrest in Cape Town one stormy winter in 1980 causes two pupils to seek shelter at the home of Anna Rossouw, a young white teacher at a Coloured high school. 190pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

The child of a forbidden marriage, Maha grows up with her parents in Cape Town. But when they are killed, her staid Indian grandparents take her to Durban. Maha treats us to the joys and sorrows of her passionate young heart, and a life in which she's not. Gloss, 288pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

Adele is dying and needs to be brought home. Her two daughters meet up after many years apart, to take care of her in her fading days, in an old house in the Western Cape village of Vergenoeg. Bella, the younger, is single, bohemian, a singer living in Paris, a rebel. San, the well-groomed older sister, is a responsible mother, domesticated and far more conservative. Their contact with death forces them to face the reality of their lives, which is not what it appears to be. An intimate account of the relationship between mother and daughters, and a reflective squaring-up to death. 288pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

Debut collection of poems reflecting a highly eclectic mix of styles with idiomatic interplay of English and African languages. Spanning fifteen years, the poems reflect different developmental and stylistic patterns drawn from various influences of the South African experience. Each poem comments on the poet's educational development and political awareness from the 1970s to present day democratic South Africa. With a foreword by Eskia Mphahlele. 124pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

Moolman's poems speak in the silences of our interactions with others and with ourselves. His close observations of what is immediate - and often imperfect - inspire poems that show us how to look at the everyday with new eyes. 60pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL PRESS.

Peter asks Steve to come and visit him at the hotel of which he is now the manager. Peter senses that his best friend has changed but reckons he owes him a visit and may just get the chance to land a juicy steenbras while he's there. Peter and girlfriend make the trip out to see Steve and it becomes apparent that Steve is not the friend he used to be. It all starts to go a bit pear-shaped. 216pp, SOUTH AFRICA. Compress.

Matthew doesn't know why he sometimes has to hide inside the towel-bin. It has something to do with his mother, Nomvula, the theatre's Xhosa laundry maid, and her relationship with Gustaf Frazier, actor, radio impresario and owner of their back-yard home. A cosy set-up that is stretched to its limits by the inclusion of Sterlington Buthelezi - con-man, prophet, pioneer African aviator and trumpet-repairman extraordinaire. The Second World War sweeps Matthew away from the contradictions of his birth - to the Sphinx and back, and across the sea to the Indian Ocean island town of Diego Suarez. We follow him through wartime travails in North Africa, where he learns of Africa's rich heritage, and back to South Africa where he tries to free himself from the consequences of lust and loyalty - dreaming of his love in Diego Suarez and encountering again the flamboyant Sterlington as the latter plots his triumphant final flight across the ruined countryside. 270pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

A collaboration between two of the most critically acclaimed creative individuals at work in South Africa today, a photographer and a novelist, on a project that is the city of Johannesburg. Johannesburg is a fragmented city. It is not a place of smoothly integrated parts. So begins David Goldblatt's introduction to ‘TJ’, a book of photographs of Johannesburg. Commencing in the 1950s, his lens probes, documents and comments on life over six decades. Selected from a massive body of work, this superb distillation presents a unique pictorial history of the city. In a new novel by Ivan Vladislavic, a young man in Johannesburg receives an induction into the intricate nature of photography and artistic representation. The novel traces the young man as he heads into his career that takes him overseas and back, developing in the process an ever widening perspective on not only the social and political change in the country but also on questions to do with observation and the observing subject. It brings into sharp focus the history of South Africa’s recent past and the difficulty of imaging and re-imagining it. 456pp, ITALY. CONTRASTO PRODUCTIONS.

Absorbing award winning debut novel by South African writer. Set in the claustrophobic society of apartheid South Africa. The central character grapples with growing up under an oppressive regime, its impact on personal relationships, and the consequences of challenging the political system. Includes glossary. 357pp, UK. CROCUS BOOKS.

A story of tension and change in a small town. A book once banned under Apartheid. 320pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

THE TRAP concerns a farmer, Van Schoor, and his servants, Willem and Setole. As the story rises to its violent climax, Van Schoor finds that he has not only betrayed Setole, but also himself. A DANCE IN THE SUN tells of two hitch-hikers on their way to Cape Town who stop for the night on an isolated Karoo farm and are drawn into mysterious happenings. pp. 205, SOUTH AFRICA. DAVID PHILIP.

Jake Tromp's wife has left him. But he still has guns. He makes do, operating as a private eye from a second-floor office, next to a prostitute's parlour. What else is an old-South African soldier to do in the new country? Tromp chooses his clients unwisely. Like the man who instructs him to kidnap a shady businessman's daughter. Only, is it the right girl whom Tromp and his fumbling assistant Frikkie capture? Soon they're shackled with two kidnapped girls, one of whom is more street-savvy than Tromp and Frikkie put together. The sassy lass not only hits it off with Omo, her Nigerian keeper, she also decides to manage her own kidnapping. From Florida her rich Cuban daddy - believing Fidel Castro to be behind his daughter's disappearance - sends two heavies to find his girl. Soon, Cape Town is crawling with Cubans. Or is it? Tromp, who has been known to try a few tricks of his own, plays the two sides against each other. Until the police get wind of the whole thing Tromp's last stand is a comical romp through the under-world. 303pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMUZI.

Short prose pieces, poems, fragments and graphics by students in the last two years of high school, provides a fascinating follow-up to Another kind of one nation (1996) and I, a living arrow (1998). Up the down escalator once again reflects the changing concerns of South African youth. Contributions range across the SA cultural, language and class spectrum, vivid flashes on real life in RSA. 144pp, SOUTH AFRICA. KWELA BOOKS.

New poetry from South Africa. 90pp, SOUTH AFRICA. SKOTAVILLE PUBLISHERS.

A novel of South African history. 270pp. SOUTH AFRICA. HUMAN & ROUSSEAU.

A novel set among development workers on a Poynesian island. HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS.

Set in a fishing village in South Africa, this is a story of the collapse and reconstruction of identity . Later Jimmy returns to this backwater and relives tensions which threaten to destroy him. An extraordinary sensitive novel. 256pp, UK. SERIF.

29 poems from a South African poet and literary agent based in the UK. 48pp, SOUTH AFRICA. CARAPACE POETS.

Three fictional lives collide in Cape Town. Bernal Díaz del Castillo is a tattoo artist who believes he is five hundred years old. Dying, he feels the need to chronicle his remarkable experiences. Luke Turner is a freelance journalist with three obsessions: cooking, women, and the art of tattoo. His ironic style masks the emptiness of his identity. Obsessed with becoming an illustrated man, and so becomes the perfect canvas for Díaz. Malibongwe Kwetani is a child from Khayalitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town. Born on the margins, living without means or hope, he is driven to the streets, traversing the city like a ghost in its architecture. Unlike Luke, he does not have time or opportunity for questions of identity. 256pp, SOUTH AFRICA . KWELA.

Play based on the book by Sylvester Stein. Set in 1950s Johannesburg, it brings apartheid South Africa's black underbelly jumping to life, and counts the cost of one man's struggle to avoid opposition.128pp, UK. OBERON BOOKS.

New poetry from South Africa. 64pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMGANGATHO MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS.

Tributes, critical essays, extracts from their novels, interviews and photographs commemorating the lives of two promising young South African writers who died within five weeks of one another. Index, 264pp, SOUTH AFRICA. UMGANGATHO MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS.