Umuzi heads for its 100th title and wants to make quality its trademark
Looking around, you can tell immediately you’re in the boardroom of a publishing house. Half the room looks like an ordinary office boardroom — large polished table, plush carpet. But the other half looks like someone’s lounge — couches, armchairs, a low coffee table and along the far wall several tall bookshelves filled with books.
Frederik de Jager is the publisher of Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik, which celebrated its fifth birthday in July and will publish its 100th title this month.
The book, Son-in-law of the Boere by Nape ‘a Motana, tells the story of a young black man who falls in love with a white girl and the dramas that ensue from their equally Âhorrified families.
“He makes fun of the situation, but underlying it there is a seriousness,” says De Jager. “The fact that this Âhappens to be our 100th book wasn’t manipulated at all. I’m very happy with it.”
De Jager, who became publisher at Umuzi in March last year, describes his job as “a blast”. “There’s never an unproblematic day and I sometimes feel like a mother who doesn’t have the time to give all the devotion she wants to all her children.
“We’ve grown quite rapidly, which means there are more and more things to look after, but it’s a joy, almost all the time.”
De Jager says that Umuzi has to decline about 97% of the submissions it receives but its strict focus areas help the selection process.
“Our main lines are accessible literary fiction and narrative non-fiction and we try to limit this to what we call the South African here and now.
“I tell my colleagues in our weekly editorial meetings: ‘A book must make you fall off your chair.’ There’s a wonderful quote from Franz Kafka: ‘We ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.’ That’s possibly a little exaggerated but I very much like the books that we put out to do that.
“I have a pet hate of mediocrity. There’s so much of it; it’s so celebrated, it’s so easy. And I don’t want to contribute to that with the books we put out, so there must be something really special about them.”
The English writing scene in South Africa is experiencing an “explosion of talent”, says De Jager.
“I think the liberation of the country has had a great deal to do with that. It’s created not only headspace but also space for the sort of people who would earlier have sought publication overseas or they themselves would have been in exile. They’re now here and they’re writing the world around themselves. And it’s not only about politics any more.”
De Jager lists a few stand-out authors from the 80 or so he’s worked with in his time at Umuzi: “Ivan Vladislavic, a novelist of almost unsurpassed quality; Mike Nichol, who’s now turned to crime fiction; and, of course, the wonderful Peter Harris.”
While there is no specific “Umuzi look”, De Jager says the company works hard with a team of designers to make each book special.
“What we want is, when people see the Umuzi logo, they know this book is going to be good.
“People who buy books don’t often pay much attention to the imprint itself, but authors do and authors are another kind of market for us. So we do want to make the imprint notable and, in the long term, a mark of quality.”
De Jager says Umuzi is still too young to boast about its 100th title, but it has held a round of presentations with booksellers, bookshop owners and shop assistants to thank them for their support.
“When we’re 100 years old we’ll have a party in the Sandton Convention Centre,” he says, laughing.