From the underworld of zama-zama goldminers to the tragicomic closure of a Cape Town Zoo, from stick fighting to punk rock, game lodges to fruit farms, cricket pitches to mermaids, The Interpreters: South Africa's New Nonfiction assembles a range of true stories that are often more far-fetched, and more compelling, than any fiction.Featuring J. M. Coetzee • Kimon de Greef • William Dicey • Alexandra Dodd • Madeleine Fullar...

1986 was a pivotal year in South African history. It was the year of the vigilante, the year of the necklace – but also the year the talking began.Drawing on newspaper articles, memoirs, and little-known histories, William Dicey presents a compelling diary of a very bad year.He focuses on ordinary people, showing what life was actually like under an authoritarian regime – from the six hours a day that black workers in KwaNdebele spent on buses to the rebel sporting tours th...

From a carcass competition in the Karoo to a shambolic murder trial in Cape Town, William Dicey’s essays freewheel across an open terrain of interests. Dicey is curious and inventive, weaving strands of essay, journalism, fiction and self-reportage into something uniquely his own.Mongrel investigates a range of topics – radical environmentalism, the fault lines between farmer and farm worker, the joys and sorrows of reading – yet drifts of concern and sensibility draw the collectio...

'Theatre, food, refugees: in Adrian's writing they're all linked up ... If you haven't read his book AA GILL IS AWAY, read it now. It was when he was away that he was at his best' Stephen DaldryA. A. Gill was probably the most read columnist in Britain. Every weekend he entertained readers of the SUNDAY TIMES with his biting observations on television and his unsparing, deeply knowledgeable restaurant reviews. Even those who objected to his opinio...

London's Overthrow is a potent polemic describing the capital in a time of austerity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Award-winning author and essayist China Miéville cuts through the hyperbole of our politicians to present a view from ordinary London - of the inequality, oppression and indignity and the hidden, subversive sentiment pervading throughout our streets. 'China Miéville does more than reveal the skull beneath the London's scabby, piebald skin; he offers effervescen...

Musings from a truly original thinker on eveything under the sun and many things over the moon.There are few aspects of existence to which Michael Leunig has not turned his renaissance mind, as a bemused and committed member of the human plight. From his cartoonist's sensibilities comes a peculiar journalism made of parable, memoir and soliloquy, on subjects ranging from the sublime to the subhuman.From the fragile ecosystem of the spirit to the brutalisation of th...

**'A sprinkling of delightful nuggets about the uses and abuses of the English Language'**Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year'[There are] myriad delights in Ben Macintyre's musings on language' The Times, Books of the Year_____________________Do you know your geek-speak from your geek-chic? Ever wanted to put Humpty Dumpty together again? Can you distinguish Spanglish from Chinglish?We adapt words from other l...

Celebrated writers reveal surprising truths about the joys, challenges, and importance of finding the words, in this special fundraising anthology for PEN Canada.In Finding the Words, thirty-one well-known writers share deeply personal discoveries and stories that will surprise, delight, and stir the mind and heart. By turns inspiring, provocative, witty, and compelling, these diverse and original pieces explore home, exile, and the search for a place to belong; co...

Irreverent, laugh-out-loud tales of living and travelling in India.

The second collection of travel writing (and other essays) by Britain's funniest and most feared critic.A.A. Gill is probably the most read columnist in Britain. Every weekend he entertains readers of the Sunday Times with his biting observations on television and his unsparing, deeply knowledgeable restaurant reviews. Even those who want to hate him agree: A. A. Gill is hopelessly, painfully funny. He is one of a tiny band of must-read journalists and it is always...

A startling new work from a Nobel prize-winning author: ten short stories, each a revelation of our interior lives, each entering unforeseen contexts of our contemporary world. In the title story an earthquake exposes both an ocean bed strewn with treasure among the dead, and the avarice of the town's survivors.In 'The Diamond Mine' a woman remembers her first, passionately erotic experience, hidden, in the company of her parents, with a soldier who may not be alive to remember her...

A strange, thrilling novel about desperate love, paranoia, and heartbreak by one of America's most singular writers.“What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here.”Pitch Dark is a book about love. Kate Ennis is poised at a critical moment in an affair with a married man. The complications and contradictions pursue her from a house in rural Connecticut to a brownstone apartment in New York City, to a small island off the coast of Washington...