The 23rd novel by the Irish writer John Banville feels like the literary equivalent of Winston Churchill’s description of Russia.
M&G books editor Darryl Accone picks his top five best reads for this year.
Ruge achieves a saga span while avoiding the saga sloth often displayed by chronological treatments.
There is a confidence, economy and enjoyability to "Bad Monkey" that give the impression of a writer back in love with his franchise.
Two new crime thrillers, both set in police states, show how the enemy of the rule of law is very often the state itself.
Anne Norton rejects the "clash of civilisations" view of Islam and the West, but offers little to replace it, says Lawrence Rosen.
Chronic ranges across the post-colonial world, exposing multiple contradictions and a bewildering range of trajectories across this landscape.
Liesl Jobson has been published in many short story collections and that this, her first solo collection, is a book worth reading.
In ‘Freedom Rider’ Kevin Davie, an endurance sport enthusiast and business editor of the Mail & Guardian, writes about life on the road.
Lauren Beukes’s latest novel, a nightmare tale of a time-hopping women-killer, is a publisher’s dream but leaves little in its wake.
It is doubtful that a homogeneous volk ever really existed, but the debate about Afrikaner identity – and its future – has not run its full course.
New insight on our leaders past and present gives us a clearer idea about why the rosy future we believed was ours has been lost.
Amina Cachalia certainly was an extraordinary woman – Nelson Mandela clearly thought so, too.
Reality is renegotiated, universes up for grabs in two stories that disrupt the traditions of hard SF and hard-boiled fiction.
Latest releases on South African shelves prove that if youngsters have material they enjoy, they will read.
What is most interesting, and most fresh, about Hugh Howey’s book is its back story.
Former and current members of the air force give personal insights into the history of the SAAF.
Reviewing a book when its writer, who is foreign, is on a visit to South Africa is something of a double-edged sword.
JM Coetzee’s latest novel, with its highly efficent and clinical prose, is both befuddling and engaging.
A lot of money has come into sport, changing it utterly, and the perils that confront rich sports stars keep mounting.
As an introduction to a memoir, one can’t imagine a more dramatic opening than hijacking a plane and landing it in a hostile country.
In this book, Barney Desai and Cardiff Marney open the doors on an obscure part of South African history.
An academic attempt to present an alternative view of the massacre reveals little that is not known.
Percy Zvomuya examines Joe Queenan’s loves, aversions and views on readers in ‘One for the Books’.
The security police cut short Roger Lucey’s burgeoning music career – just one stop in an eventful journey through life.
The plot is intriguing, the world and its people convincing.
Having Seffrican in Homer’s epic work is a strange mix but
who’s to say it won’t work for some?
Here is a wealth of reasons to head for the kitchen, roll up your sleeves and get to work.
We speak to some of the country’s hottest literary talents about the books and authors which inspired them in 2012.
A new book shows how, in exile, the South African Communist Party was pretty much the dominant influence on the ANC.
‘JM Coetzee: A Life in Writing’ suffers from many problems, including a star-struck author, writes Imraan Coovadia.
In her first book, Redi Tlhabi takes a journey through a hidden love in her childhood that opened her up to a world of secrets, violence and pain.