THE WEST RAND JIVE CATS BOXING CLUB
Laura Liebenberg
Life on the Johannesburg mines is tough. Scorched by searing heat and choked by dust, it's a place of downtrodden women and hard-drinking men whose prejudices already seem out of date, even in 1958, at least to twelve-year-old Chris and Tommy. Kindled by the sounds of Elvis, Chuck Berry and the kwela kwela rhythms of the black ghettos, the young jive cats of the West Rand Cons Mine look to prove their grit on the township dance floors and in the sweat-soaked ring of the boxing club, which is run by the enigmatic and wise Jock McGinty. But when Tommy's beloved sister Cecilia disappears without trace one night, and their cold-blooded father falls under suspicion, the two friends find that they need the deepest loyalty and courage to face their future.
Frank, witty and heartbreakingly poignant, this is a compelling story about the endurance of friendship by the author of The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam.
Virago, paperback, 9781844086719 (April)
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SOMEWHERE, HOME
Nada Awar Jarrar
(Reissue) This remarkable novel, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, tells the story of three women, each of them far from where they came, all of whom are still searching for somewhere that can be called home.
Maysa returns to the house that was her grandparents' when she was a child, in a village high on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Aida, who has long since left the country of her birth, returns in search of the Palestinian refugee who was a second father to her when she was a child. And Salwa, now an old woman, recalls her life from her hospital bed, surrounded by her family but still, in some sense, far from home.
Harper (UK), paperback, 9780007221943 (March)
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STOLEN LIVES
Jassy MacKenzie
When wealthy Pamela Jordaan hires PI Jade de Jong as a bodyguard after her husband Terrance disappears, Jade thinks keeping an eye on this anxious wife will be an easy way to earn some cash. But when a determined shooter nearly kills them both and Jade finds Terrance horrifically tortured and barely alive, she realizes that she has been drawn into a wicked game. At the same time, her relationship with police superintendent David Patel is on the rocks, and things only get more complicated when his son is kidnapped and his wife is blackmailed. It soon becomes clear that the kidnapping and the attempted killings of Pamela and her husband are tied to a human trafficking ring that stretches from Johannesburg to London.
Soho Press, hardcover, 9781569479094 (April)
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GO TELL THE SUN
Wame Molefhe
"Wame Molefhe's stories have a gentle, unassuming yet intimate and captivating feel to them. Set in Botswana, the stories trace the lives of characters whose paths cross and re-cross each others', some times in and through love, at other times through tragedy. And through them the author brings to bear a woman's perspective on the societal mores in which sexual abuse, homophobia and AIDS, among others, flourish and spread. The social content and views are never proclaimed as a loud agenda; instead, it forms a 'natural' backdrop to the lives of the characters, something that may raise a wry comment or thought in one character, while eliciting a mere shrug from another. Molefhe's voice is, to some extent, a world-weary voice, weary of all she has seen of society's failures, but never without the gentleness often absent and much needed in broken societies, and never without the hope and redemption that can be found in love and the imagination." —Rustum Kozain
Wame Molefhe was born in Francistown, Botswana. She started writing short stories in 2005 when she won the British Council/Alexander McCall Smith Short Story Competition. In 2007 she was highly commended in the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Award. Her fiction has been published in local and international journals, anthologies and online. She has co-written two TV dramas. Just Once (MediPublishing 2009), a children's collection of short stories is her first book. Go Tell the Sun is her second short story collection.
Modjaji Books, paperback, 9781930397258
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THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: STORIES
Zoë Wicomb
Set mostly in Cape Town and Glasgow, Zoë Wicomb's new collection of short stories straddles dual worlds. An array of characters—drawn with extraordinary acuity—inhabit a complexly interconnected, twenty-first-century universe. Travelling between continents, they encounter commonalities as often as cultural collision. The fourteen stories in this collection, most previously unpublished, explore a range of human relationships: marriage, friendships, family ties and relations with servants. Wicomb's fluid, shifting technique questions our certainties—and makes for exhilarating reading, full of ironic twists, ambiguities and moments of startling insight. Playful and sophisticated, the stories touch on issues of representation in writing and visual art. Often, they elegantly undermine their own realism, leaving every situation open to the reader's interpretation. Wicomb's first collection of linked stories, You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, introduced her to an international audience. Long awaited, The One That Got Away showcases this established, award-winning author at the height of her powers.
Five Leaves Publication, paperback, 9781907869044 (March)
Umuzi (SA), paperback, 9781415200520
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