For the past three years I’ve been asked by The Star newspaper to compile a list of the top ten South African books of the year. Here is this year’s:
Richard de Nooy
Jacana
A mother travels to reclaim her gay son’s body in Amsterdam, which is where he fled to escape his dorp community’s misunderstanding of his “condition”. Self-identification, finding “home” and understanding, are themes tackled in pacy, excessively readable prose using multiple voices that range from earthy to elegiac. De Nooy’s sad and funny second novel establishes him as a confident, bracing, sophisticated voice with global appeal.
Tan Twan Eng
Myrmidon
This Booker Prize shortlisted book contains big themes, delicate landscapes and elegant writing. Memories of the scars of the Boer War, WW II, and Malaya under colonial rule come together as an old woman tends a memorial garden.
McIntosh Polela
Jacana
This ex-TV news reporter and current Hawks spokesman tells an irresistible biographical story tautly, and avoiding mawkishness, in a story about abandonment, violence, hardship, kindness and finally redemption through the love of teachers and “new” parents.
Leonie Joubert
Picador
South Africa has enough food, but 80% of households are food insecure. Powerful pictures by Eric Miller supplement compelling research by one of our top science writer, who has a talent for accessibly written narrative.
The Great Agony and Pure Laughter of the Gods
Jamala Safari
Umuzi
A Congon boy’s voyage from happy childhood to boy soldier to escape is told in rich, poetic language, holding the reader’s attention like no news article ever will, to tell the story of how it feels to be a refugee.
Dana Snyman
Tafelberg
This non-fictional account of the writer’s travels through SA attempts to understand cultural inheritance in our social and political landscape. This journey into identity is an almost faultless, deeply engaging and searingly truthful read.
Kagiso Lesego Molope
Oxford University Press
A spellbinding story about a young girl recalling a childhood summer is aimed at young readers but deserving of a much wider audience. Complex, unsentimental and with surprising literary depth, it has the makings of a classic.
Dawn Garisch
Modjaji
Doctor-writer Garisch uses vibrant poetic imagery to tackle the relationship between the arts and intuition on the one hand, and developments in the sciences on the other, applying intellectual rigour to debates on physical health and creativity.
Xolela Mangcu
Tafelberg
This biography of Steve Biko is a deeply thought-provoking contribution to South African history and politics. Mangcu doesn’t pretend the iconic man was a saint, and fills in important gaps towards a more complete understanding of Biko.
Kelwyn Sole
Hands-on Books
Sole is an experienced poet. In his sixth collection he deals with a variety of contemporary themes in language wielded like a surgeon’s scalpel to dissect minute details and splay open disappointment, anger and passion.
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