Much closer than it appears.”When a lion at a breeding park mauls an old school friend of his, Con steps in as the keeper of Sekhmet, the last remaining black-maned lioness in the world. In a Cape Town where fences keep people and wildlife apart, park officials and investors fret about their flagship big-cat project. And while Con grows steadily more bonded to his enigmatic charge, a cult of animal lovers with obscure alchemical aims seeks to claim the lioness as their own. When she escapes, Sekhmet engulfs the city’s imagination, stirring up rumours of terror and magic. In Con’s quest to track her down, he must enter the wilderness of a cordoned-off Table Mountain – and his own dark history. Henrietta Rose-Innes’s novel Green Lion gleams with stylistic precision as myth and reality fuse in a story that sparks off the page.

    Born in Lebanon in 1883, Kahlil Gibran's groundbreaking philosophy and simple yet eloquent poetry made him a figure of international renown. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages, and his reflections on the nature of humanity continue to bring joy and inspiration to millions.This beautiful and accessible book is infused with Gibran's timeless and provocative truths, touching on subjects as diverse as love, friendship, beauty, wealth, sorrow, ambition, and destiny. A thoughtful gift for all milestone occasions-graduations, birthdays, anniversaries-and for every age group, this remarkable collection will provide a lifetime's worth of wisdom. "To be closer to God, be closer to people."

    Shortly after her arrival, her apartment is burglarized, and her collection of precious shells, shells that she had been collecting for a lifetime, is stolen. Meeting with indifference from the local police, she decides to investigate the crime on her own, with the help of her new friend from the Museum of Natural History, Sof. While investigating the crime, Helena reflects on the life she’s lived—her ex-husband, her daughter, her lovers, her childhood—and begins to fall in love with her married boss, Theo Verway.An alternately sublime and satirical meditation on love, loss, and obsession, Ingrid Winterbach's The Book of Happenstance is an emotionally affecting masterpiece from one of South Africa’s most exciting authors.

    OK, maybe the shoes were new, but it struck me that he hardly ever sets foot in the street. It's all hotel, limousines, sterilized airports—the life I was about to lead. I shivered, feeling poised at the top of a rollercoaster about to sweep across the world. In 1978, Sean Mayes toured the world with David Bowie. Traveling first class and performing each night with one of the world's greatest rock stars at the height of his fame was an amazing experience—fortunately, Sean had the foresight to document it. Here, for the first time in complete book form, Sean's tour diary is presented; a blow-by-blow record of how it felt to be part of a real rock circus, from rehearsals in Dallas through shows across the US, UK, Europe, Australasia, and Japan to recording in London and Switzerland. Providing page after page of fascinating insight into life on the road with Bowie, Sean's account is a unique travelogue, a must for any Bowie fan or, indeed, anyone interested in life on a sell-out world tour. Also included is a full tour chronology and previously unpublished photos from Sean's personal archive.

    "A rare playwright, who could be a primary candidate for either the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Nobel Peace Prize."--Mel Gussow, The New Yorker

    With language harvested from everyday speech, fragments of pop culture, objects and figures borrowed from art and literature, his work makes light out of darkness, playing with tone and style to show how even the seemingly frivolous stuff of existence can be employed to express the deepest levels of feeling.Commotion of the Birds showcases once again Ashbery’s mastery of a staggering range of voices and his singular lyric agility: wry, frank, contemplative, resigned, bemused, and ecstatic. The poet in this new collection is at once removed from and immersed in the terrain of his examination. Disarmingly conversational, he invites the reader to join him in looking out onto the future with humor, curiosity, and insight. The lines of these poems achieve a low-humming, thrilling point of vibration, a jostling of feathers before flight.

    Quick and stimulating to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world.

    He's putting aside childish things, starting his first business serving food to the workers in Cape Town. His Pa is proud.At the same time, Mattie is pulled toward an altogether different version of masculinity, in which oiled and toned bodies cavort for him at the click of a mouse. His porn addiction threatens his relationship with his boyfriend, Jack, and imperils his inheritance.Pa’s days as a swaggering businessman are done, but even as cancer shrivels him, his ancient authority intensifies. While the family wrestles with his patrimony, around them a new South Africa moves forward, demanding they confront the challenges of the future as well as the past.

    Barcelona Plates is a collection of sleek, dark, and witty short stories from the renowned comedian, presenter and actor, Alexei Sayle.

    Luminous, resonant and profound, these poems trace the dying days of summer, ‘the hour of rust’, when memory is haunted by loss and decay. But in the silence that follows, as the soul is cast adrift, there is also reconciliation with the transience of all things; the knowledge that there is a place, ‘changeable, that will not betray’.

    Originally published under the title Muriel at Metropolitan, the novel was for some years banned (on the grounds of language derogatory to Afrikaners) even as it received worldwide acclaim. It was later issued in the Longman African Writers Series, but has for some years been out of print and unavailable.This Broadview edition includes a new introduction by the author describing the circumstances in which she wrote Between Two Worlds.

    A renowned stylist of hyper-brevity in fiction, Fleur Jaeggy proves herself an even more concise master of the essay form, albeit in a most peculiar and lapidary poetic vein. Of De Quincey’s early nineteenth-century world we hear of the habits of writers: Charles Lamb “spoke of ‘Lilliputian rabbits’ when eating frog fricassse”; Henry Fuseli “ate a diet of raw meat in order to obtain splendid dreams”; “Hazlitt was perceptive about musculature and boxers”; and “Wordsworth used a buttery knife to cut the pages of a first-edition Burke.” In a book of “blue devils” and night visions, the Keats essay opens: “In 1803, the guillotine was a common child’s toy.” And poor Schwob’s end comes as he feels “like a ‘dog cut open alive’”: “His face colored slightly, turning into a mask of gold. His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could shut his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.” Fleur Jaeggy’s essays—or are they prose poems?—smoke of necessity: the pages are on fire.

    But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace. As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda's consciousness starts to drift and the line between fact and the workings of her excited imagination becomes blurred. What follows is the fable of a woman's passionate, obsessed and violent response to an Africa that will not heed her.

    This book is a collection of reflections and memories of that time, collected by JH Thompson, who interviewed men who did National Service in the Apartheid-era South African Defence Force. Contributors include ordinary soldiers, Special Forces members, helicopter pilots, chefs and religious objectors. The book is a fast, fascinating read that captures the spirit and atmosphere, the daily duties, the boredom, fear and other intense experiences of an SADF soldier. For everyone who did military service, as well as their loved ones, this book is a must.

    At the centre of the old guard’s fightback efforts is Ace Magashule, a man viewed by some as South Africa’s most dangerous politician. In this explosive book, investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh ventures deeper than ever before into Magashule’s murky dealings, from his time as a struggle activist in the 1980s to his powerful rule as premier of the Free State province for nearly a decade, and his rise to one of the ANC’s most influential positions. Sifting through heaps of records, documents and exclusive source interviews, Myburgh explores Magashule’s relationship with the notorious Gupta family and other tender moguls; investigates government projects costing billions that enriched his friends and family but failed the poor; reveals how he was about to be arrested by the Scorpions before their disbandment in the late 2000s; and exposes the methods used to keep him in power in the Free State and to secure him the post of ANC secretary-general.Most tellingly, Myburgh pieces together a pack of leaked emails and documents to reveal shocking new details on a massive Free State government contract and Magashule’s dealings with a businessman who was gunned down in Sandton in 2017. These files seem to lay bare the methods of a man who usually operated without leaving a trace. Gangster State is an unflinching examination of the ANC’s top leadership in the post–Jacob Zuma era, one that should lead readers to a disconcerting conclusion: When it comes to the forces of capture, South Africa is still far from safe.