Literary Fire

Walk into any bookstore and expect to pay anything from R150 to R1500 for book. But why are books so expensive, or are they not that expensive in comparison to other things? We asked publishers. Are books expensive in South Africa? “The…

Books are expensive. There is no denying that most books sold at mainstream book stores or online are astronomically expensive. People just can’t afford to spend over R300 at minimum for a single book. Yet, the importance of reading and…

Reading Rosie Motene’s biography, Reclaiming The Soil: A black girl’s struggle to find her African self feels like catching up with a friend you haven’t seen for many years. FATIMA MOOSA takes a deeper look at the themes in the book. There…

It’s always a marvellous thing when a really good book is turned into a film. Aside from the inevitable argument about which story was told better, it’s always fun. 2018, in particular, has been a great year for book-to-film adaptations.…

Born and bred in Cape Town, Qarnita Loxton started writing as a way of keeping herself busy. Being a shy child, she had always written as a way of expressing herself without having to speak. Now with a second book in her repertoire, Loxton…

Mohale Mashigo’s latest literary offering Intruders is a rollercoaster of a read. Moving from monster-chasing in Bloemfontein to escaping the end of Earth to outer space, Intruders is the stories of individuals who are all on the fringes of…

Full-time freelance photographer and writer, Saaleha Idrees Bamjee has released her debut poetry collection, Zikr. She said she has always been a writer from the time she first read Roald Dahl in primary school. With Zikr, Bamjee tackles…

Called To Song is academic Kharnita Mohamed’s debut novel. It delves into issues of race, gender and identity in post-apartheid South Africa. Mohamed’s personal politics and personal experiences colour the brilliant story of a woman who…

If you haven’t eagerly been following the adventures of South African superhero Kwezi, you’re seriously missing out. In 2014, Loyiso Mkize created Kwezi, about a 19-year-old city boy who discovers he has super powers. Together with…

Millions people around the world experience menstruation. It is a basic biological bodily function and yet menstruation is often viewed as something shameful. Regardless of a person’s economic, political and social standing, if a person…

Who are we? Conceptualisations of home, identity and wholeness are pertinent questions. Identity can refer to who we are, where we come from, who we belong to or what we belong to. We find ourselves in our families, our cultures, the…

The 2018 South African Book Fair ran from 7 to 9 September at Johannesburg’s Newtown Cultural Precinct. It was a wonderful affair complete with book exhibition stands, poetry, theatre and engaging panel discussions on a range of topics.…

You might know Chidera Eggerue as The Slumflower, the British-Nigerian blogger who fuses fashion and politics on her award-winning blog. Maybe you know her as the woman who inadvertently started a social movement around body positivity when…

Representation is the buzzword for Hollywood in 2018. Films like Black Panther, Love, Simon and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before have been hailed as celebrations for People Of Colour (POC) representation. The latest film to add to the list…

“Growing up as a born free I was told there were a lot of things I could access - education, shelter, even food, sometimes. But I found them hard to attain,” writes Clinton Chauke in his debut book Born In Chains: The Diary Of An Angry…

There’s a lot of things Clinton Chauke would describe himself as: social critic, fierce debater, Pan-Africanist. But despite being born in 1994, one label he flatly rejects is that of ‘born free’. Chauke is also the author of Born In…

The current political climate is such that anti-immigration and Islamophobic right-wing policies are fast gaining traction. From this climate emerges Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, a gripping book that tells of a British family entwined with…

Love, death, magic, reality, immigration and the diaspora, Lesley Nneka Arimah’s book What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky has it all. Released in 2017, the book is a compilation of short stories, seemingly unconnected but all…

July 18, 2018 marks the centenary of Nelson Mandela. The first democratically elected president of the Republic of South Africa would have turned 100 years on that day. To honour Mandela’s life, Kate Sidley has compiled a collection titled…

A funeral is an important symbolic ritual. It brings together friends and family in a celebration of life, a grief of loss and an expression of beliefs, thoughts and feelings about losing a loved one. Nozizwe Cynthia Jele’s latest book The…