Title: Talk of the Town Author: Fred Khumalo Publisher: Kwela Books Published: 2019 Genre: Fiction In this collection of short stories, Khumalo tackles the ideas of South African identity and of belonging by routinely detailing the particularities of South Africans – illustrating their ubuntu and simultaneously pulling apart the ideas that have given rise to…
Title: Heads of the Colored People Author: Nafissa Thompson-Spires Publisher: Chatto & Windus (Penguin Random House imprint) Published: 2018 Genre: Fiction And what is a black network narrative but the story of one degree of separation, sketching the same pain over and over…? The blurb reads that the collection ‘interrogates our supposedly post-racial…
Title: Educated Author: Tara Westover Publisher: Penguin Random House Published: 2018 Genre: Memoir In Educated, Tara Westover recounts her childhood about growing up as the youngest of seven children in a Mormon survivalist family. Not only was their life lived along the strictures of a belief that espoused very conservative religious views, but their father…
Title: Lullaby Author: Leila Slimani Publisher: Faber & Faber Published: 2016 Genre: Fiction Leila Slimani’s psychological thriller about a family nanny that murders the two children she minds is an interesting exploration of human fragility and instability. Myriam and her husband Paul, a young Parisian couple with young children, interview for a nanny when Myriam decides…
Title: The Good Immigrant Author: edited by Nikesh Shukla Publisher: Unbound Published: 2016 Genre: Non-Fiction The blurb reads: ‘What’s it like to live in a country that doesn’t trust you and doesn’t want you unless you win an Olympic gold medal or a national baking competition’. The Good Immigrant is a collection of essays by…
Title: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal Publisher: HarperCollins Published: 2017 Genre: Fiction Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows is, as the title states, just that. The stories told by a group of Punjabi women are not only central to the book but expose the themes around arranged marriages, elements of patriarchy in…
Title: HOME FIRE Author: Kamila Shamsie Publisher: Bloomsbury Published: 2017 Genre: Fiction Kamila Shamsie’s book is a tale of two families’ lives in this retelling of the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles (which I had to educate myself about when I started reading this book). From the very beginning of the book, you get the sense…
Title: An American Marriage Author: Tayari Jones Publisher: Oneworld Published: 2018 Genre: Fiction Tayari Jones has written a love story that is tender and heartbreaking in equal measure. Celestial and Roy are your average educated, upper-middle-class, upwardly mobile professionals. They are barely past their first year as newlyweds when Roy is arrested for a crime…
I have always thought that the first book I’d read by Gabriel García Márquez would be One Hundred Years of Solitude. To be honest One Hundred Years intimidates me. This is the tome to Magic Realism, a genre I am not particularly partial to, but which I will read in smaller volumes. One Hundred Years…
Title: The Lover Author: Marguerite Duras Genre: Memoir Published: First published in 1986 I am reading Modern Classics this month. As if my reading ambitions were already not lofty enough, along with #reading SA, #reading Africa, now there is this goal. This was more of an assigned reading on a writing class I am taking.…