Kwela: 87 books

'Firepool' is a chronicle of South Africa in the ‘second transition’ – one in which the foundations of the post-apartheid settlement are being shaken and questioned in all kinds of ways. From the complex legacy of artists like Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and JM Coetzee to the #FeesMustFall protests,...

In Going Back to Say Goodbye: A Boyhood on the Mine Kenneth de Kok describes his childhood in Stilfontein, a small mining town in the Western Transvaal. Set in the late 1950s and seen through the eyes of the young Kenneth, the story immerses the reader in a world of bicycle races down dirt roads,...

Room 207 is set in and around a dilapitated building in Hillbrow. For more than ten years, six guys live in room 207 of this block of flats: they are Matome, Molamo, Zulu-boy, D’nice, Modishi and the nameless narrator. By day, they are hustlers – they hustle production companies, they have their...

Die opvolg op Dis ek, Anna. Wat hét met Anna gebeur die oomblik ná sy die sneller getrek het? Ná sy haar stiefpa wat haar soveel jare lank fisies en emosioneel verrinneweer het, vroeg een oggend in Bloemfontein in die oë gekyk, en toe geskiet het? Agt jaar ná die verskyning van Dis ek, Anna neem...

Notes from the Dementia Ward is Finuala Dowling’s third collection of verse following on the brilliant and popular I Flying and Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe. This new collection deals in part with the tragic-comic effects of the inexorable and distressing collapse into senility and the way in which...

“This apricot tree has multiple souls that fill me with wonder every morning and enchant me by afternoon. This tree has bitter-sweet memories, just like the fruit it bears.” If the apricot trees of Soweto could talk, what stories would they tell? This short story collection provides an imaginative...

“Feminism is about power, potential, passion, and rights, but it keeps changing in purpose and meaning ...” Do you call yourself a feminist? What does this mean in your daily life? In this book, South African feminists explore their often vastly different experiences and perspectives in accessible...

Few countries in transition have managed to get a grip on their public finances as well as South Africa did after 1994. Now, just more than 20 years later, the nation’s credibility and the democratic project lie in tatters as we teeter on the brink of a political and fiscal cliff. Business confidence...

In this new collection Rustum Kozain, who won both the Ingrid Jonker Prize (2006) and the Olive Schreiner Prize (2007) for This Carting Life, raises his own bar. Groundwork retains strong connections with Kozain's early work, but it does so while simultaneously introducing a group of poems that indicate...

Four friends’ lives seem to be crashing before them: Just as Nandi’s final wedding arrangements are put in place, her ex-fiancé, a man who bankrupted her heart and bank account, makes a re-appearance. Zaza, the “trophy wife”, waits for the day that her affair comes to light and her husband...

Lily struggles with an apathetic mother, a domineering grandmother and the shifting alliances of her schoolgirl friendships. She soon develops a brittle self-esteem and obsesses over the one aspect of her life that she can control – her body. A story of secrets, warped friendships and addiction, and how families guard their secrets to keep up appearances – with disastrous consequences.

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma has won international acclaim for her short fiction. In this, her first collection – consisting of a novella and five short stories – Novuyo displays the breathtaking talent that has seen her win numerous awards. She sketches, with astounding accuracy, the realities of daily...

This Carting Life collects poems that span more than ten years of writing. A fair number of these poems have been published previously in either journals or anthologies, primarily in South Africa, but also abroad in the USA and, in some cases, in translation in France. Within the admittedly small...

Bernal Díaz del Castillo is a tattoo artist who is five hundred years old, or believes he is five hundred years old. His mind is filled with images of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He lives in Cape Town, working out of a tiny studio in Long Street. He is dying, and feels the need to chronicle his...