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Buchtipps - African Publishers

It is just a regular day at the office until IT worker Osaretin finds a cryptic note on his desk that sends his day into overdrive, thrusting him into a frantic world of  ruthless operatives, shape-shifting villains, portable time turners and futuristic landscapes.

The yearnings of a young and restless orphan are ignited when an enigmatic drifter named Bros returns to Gulu Station from Rome, laden with gifts and the allure of other places. The orphan longs for escape too, for life to have meaning and so the whole village can look up to him.

When Chigozie and Obianuju meet in August 1978, it is nothing short of fate. He is the perfect man: charismatic, handsome, Christian, and–most importantly–Igbo. He reminds her of her beloved Uncle Ikenna, her mother’s brother who disappeared fighting in The Civil War that devastated Nigeria less than a decade before. It is why, when Gozie asks her to marry him within months of meeting, she says yes, despite her lingering and uncertain feelings for Akin—a man her mother would never accept, as his tribe fought on the other side of the war.

One night, you will calmly put a knife to your husband’s penis and promise to cut it off. It will scare him so much that the next day, he will call his family members for a meeting in the house. He will not call your family members, but you will not care. Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos.

Siya Khumalo grew up in a Durban township where one sermon could whip up a lynch mob against those considered different. Drawing on personal experience - his childhood, life in the army, attending church, and competing in pageants - Khumalo explores being LGBTQI+ in South Africa today. In 'You Have to Be Gay to Know God', he takes us on a daring journey, exposing the interrelatedness of religion, politics and sex as the expectations of African cultures mingle with greed and colonial religion.

Four friends' lives seem to be crashing before them: Nandi's ex-fiancé makes a reappearance; Zaza, the “trophy wife”, hopes to keep her infidelities a secret; a stranger shows up at Tumi's doorstep, carrying her husband's child; and when Princess discovers she's pregnant, her boyfriend goes AWOL. Think Sex and the City, Sandton . . . A re-edition of the 2010 novel to coincide with the film, starring Khanyi Mbau, Renate Stuurman and Mmabatho Montsho. Ideal for lovers of chick lit.

“I would get out of the car at every shopping centre and want to ask the stranger walking by with their trolley: ‘Why are you still shopping? Someone I love has died.’” Death is a fact of life but the experience of grief is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. This poignant and thought-provoking anthology gives us portraits of grief as seen through the eyes of writers and poets such as Sisonke Msimang, Dawn Garisch, Lidudumalingani, Mary Watson, Ishtiyaq Shukri, Hedley Twidle, Karin Schimke, Khadija Patel, Shubnum Khan and many others. 

In this daring novel, the author gives a startling account of the inner workings of contemporary South African urban culture. In doing so, he ventures into unexplored areas and takes local writing in English to places it hasn't been before. The Quiet Violence of Dreams is set in Cape Town's cosmopolitan neighbourhoods - Observatory, Mowbray and Sea Point - where subcultures thrive and alternative lifestyles are tolerated. The plot revolves around Tshepo, a student at Rhodes, who gets confined to a Cape Town mental institution after an episode of 'cannabis-induced psychosis'.

The Broken River Tent is a novel that marries imagination with history. It is about the life and times of Maqoma, the Xhosa chief who was at the forefront of fighting British colonialism in the Eastern Cape during the nineteenth century. The story is told through the eyes of a young South African, Phila, who suffers from what he calls triple ‘N’ condition—neurasthenia, narcolepsy and cultural ne plus ultra. This makes him feel far removed from events happening around him but gives him access to the analeptic memory of his people.