A courageous and compelling journey through the chaotic and hyper-real world of Hillbrow, South Africa.Welcome To Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbing ride through the contradictory, alluring and painful realities of post-apartheid South Africa. Set in the vibrant and chaotic microcosm of Hillbrow, this novel fearlessly confronts the shattered dreams of youth, the unpredictable costs of sexuality, the specter of AIDS, rampant xenophobia, and the omniprese...

A poignant prequel to the acclaimed bestseller Welcome to Our Hillbrow, showcasing Mpe's immense talent and heart.Brooding Clouds is a posthumous collection of short stories and poems that serve as a prequel to Phaswane Mpe's acclaimed bestseller, Welcome to Our Hillbrow. In these thematically linked stories, readers meet the organic roots of the emblematic characters and concerns of the later novel.With an expressive simplicity t...

Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was re...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERWe all know the system isn’t working. Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a faire...

After the school festival... a big mission commences in the Outer World.Having fended off Elise’s sudden attack, Alus manages to protect the campus festival. As the festival continues, Single Digit Magicmaster Lettie secretly visits the Institute. Of all things, she brings with her the mission to reclaim Vanalis, a place with a dark history. Alus and Loki immediately head out after the festival, but...?

The Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writer’s powerful first novelTwo brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a garbage heap and look into their futures: Njoroge is to attend school, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter. But this is Kenya, and the times are against them: In the forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against the white government, and the two brothers and their family need to decide where their loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau, the choice is simple, ...

Nigel Barley was a 'new anthropologist', one of the younger generation of academi whose learning and research had been acquired in institutes, research departments, from academic journals and university libraries. But after suffering years of gentle put-downs from leathery old field-workers, their 'teeth permanently gritted from years of dealing with natives', he was determined to gain his own experience. The two years he spent among the Dowayo people in the Cameroons (1978-80) produced a ...

A pocket Discworld quote book. Go beyond the novels to discover more about the fantastically funny and gloriously inventive world of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.‘I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.’The most quotable writer of our time, Terry Pratchett’s unique brand of wit made him both a bestseller and an enduring, endearing source of modern wisdom. Th...

“The definitive African book of the twentieth century” (Moses Isegawa, from the Introduction) by the Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writerThe puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya. A deceptively simple tale, Petals of Blood is on the surface a suspenseful investigation of a spectacular triple murder in upcountry Kenya. Yet as the int...

A brilliant, of-the-moment political satire like no other, from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement. Kafka meets the world of Brexit in this bitingly funny novel centered on a cockroach transformed into the prime minister of England.That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a giant creature.Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born the fifth child of his father's third wife, in a family that includes twenty-four children born to four different mothers. He spent his 1930s childhood as the apple of his mother's eye, before attending school to slake what is considered a bizarre thirst for learning.As he grows up, the wider political and social changes occurring in Kenya begin to impinge on the boy's life in both inspiring and frightening ways. Through the story of his grandparents and ...

In 1992, a gang leader was shot dead by an ANC member in Kroonstad. The murder weapon was then hidden on Antjie Krog’s stoep. In Begging to Be Black, Krog begins by exploring her position in this controversial case. From there the book ranges widely in scope, both in time - reaching back to the days of Basotho king Moshoeshoe - and in space - as we follow Krog’s experiences as a research fellow in Berlin, far from the Africa that produced her. Begging to Be Black is a book of journeys - mo...