Extracts
Extract: Bewilderment by Richard Powers
28 September 2021
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old.
“BUT WE MIGHT NEVER FIND THEM? We’d set up the scope on the deck, on a clear autumn night, on the edge of one of the last...
Extract: Wayfarer’s Hymns by Zakes Mda
23 September 2021
Infused with rhythm and melody, Zakes Mda’s new novel invites you to travel from Lesotho’s Mountain Kingdom to the City of Gold through the history of famo. Famo music was born in the drinking dens of migrant mineworkers in Lesotho, where the men would sing to unwind after work, accompanied by the accordion, a drum and sometimes a bass...
Extract: The Zulus of New York by Zakes Mda
23 September 2021
The impresario Farini introduced Em-Pee and his troupe to his kind of show business, and now they must earn their bread. In 1885 in a bustling New York City, they are the performers who know the true Zulu dances, while all around them fraudsters perform silly jigs.
1
New York City – November 1885
The Wild Zulu
“THE...
Extract: A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland
23 September 2021
In the Eastern Cape, Stephen (Malusi) Mzamane, a young Anglican priest, must journey to his mother’s rural home to inform her of his elder brother’s death.
“THEY HAVE SMASHED THE BELLS. All over Kaffraria the sound has ceased.
There is a great silence. More profound, more still than the dim before the dawn. A great...
Extract: Shades by Marguerite Poland
23 September 2021
Against a backdrop of drought, the rinderpest pandemic, the South African War, the burgeoning gold-mining industry and the complex birth of the exploitative system of recruiting migrant labour, Shades explores the growing tensions between cultures in South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century and the deepening awareness of the black...
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