Finding Soutbek

Finding Soutbek PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907320200
Category : South Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
The focal point of the novel is the small town of Soutbek. Its troubles, hardships and corruption, but also its kindness, strong community and friendships, are introduced to us in a series of stories about intriguingly interlinked relationships. Contemporary Soutbek is still a divided town - the upper town destitute, and the lower town rich, largely ignorant - and Finding Soutbek is a novel about the real conditions that shape the lives of ordinary, marginalised people. Karen Jennings's focus on the quiet but necessary heroism of the poor and disadvantaged makes her work universal.

Finding Soutbek

Finding Soutbek PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907320200
Category : South Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Get Book

Book Description
The focal point of the novel is the small town of Soutbek. Its troubles, hardships and corruption, but also its kindness, strong community and friendships, are introduced to us in a series of stories about intriguingly interlinked relationships. Contemporary Soutbek is still a divided town - the upper town destitute, and the lower town rich, largely ignorant - and Finding Soutbek is a novel about the real conditions that shape the lives of ordinary, marginalised people. Karen Jennings's focus on the quiet but necessary heroism of the poor and disadvantaged makes her work universal.

An Island

An Island PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0593446542
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “beautifully and sparingly constructed” (The New York Times) novel about a lighthouse keeper with a mysterious past, and the stranger who washes up on his shores—An Island is the American debut of a major voice in world literature. “An Island by Karen Jennings is quite simply a revelation—a ferocious, swift chess game of a novel.”—Paul Yoon, author of Run Me to Earth ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vulture Samuel has lived alone on an island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades. He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life. Routinely, the nameless bodies of refugees wash ashore, but Samuel—who understands that the government only values certain lives, certain deaths—always buries them himself. One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing. As he nurses the stranger back to life, Samuel—feeling strangely threatened—is soon swept up in memories of his former life as a political prisoner on the mainland. This was a life that saw his country exploited under colonial rule, followed by a period of revolution and a brief, hard-won independence—only for the cycle of suffering to continue under a cruel dictator. And he can’t help but recall his own shameful role in that history. In this stranger’s presence, he begins to consider, as he did in his youth: What does it mean to own land, or to belong to it? And what does it cost to have, and lose, a home? A timeless and gripping portrait of regret, terror, and the extraordinary stakes of companionship, An Island is a story as page-turning as it is profound.

Nothing to See Here

Nothing to See Here PDF Author: Twongyeirwe, Hilda
Publisher: Femrite Publications
ISBN: 9970480049
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
In Nothing to See Here, sixteen African women writers ably deal with the politics of nationhood and identity, and the burden and beauty of womanity. From the serious, to the absurd to the seriously absurd, these stories will leave you pondering, crying and laughing as you travel from East Africa to Southern Africa through to West Africa. A beautiful collection with 16 well-written, well-plotted stories from 16 amazing African female storytellers.

Crooked Seeds

Crooked Seeds PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0593597133
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A woman in post-apartheid South Africa confronts her family’s troubling past in this taut and daring novel about national trauma and collective guilt—from the Booker Prize–longlisted author of An Island. “Extraordinary . . . unputdownable.”—Roddy Doyle Cape Town, 2028. The land cracks from a years-long drought, the nearby mountains threaten to burn, and the queue for the water trucks grows ever longer. In her crumbling corner of a public housing complex, Deidre van Deventer receives a call from the South African police. Her family home, recently reclaimed by the government, has become the scene of a criminal investigation. The remains of several bodies have just been unearthed from her land, after decades underground. Detectives pepper Deidre with questions: Was your brother a member of a pro-apartheid group in the 1990s? Is it true that he was building bombs as part of a terrorist plot? Deidre doesn’t know the answers to the detectives’ questions. All she knows is that she was denied—repeatedly—the life she felt she deserved. Overshadowed by her brother, then left behind by her daughter after she emigrated, Deidre must watch over her aging mother and make do with government help and the fading generosity of her neighbors while the landscape around her grows more and more combustible. As alarming evidence from the investigation continues to surface, and detectives pressure her to share what she knows of her family’s disturbing past, Deidre must finally face her own shattered memories so that something better might emerge for her and her country. In exquisitely spare prose, Karen Jennings weaves a singularly powerful novel about post-apartheid South Africa. It is an unforgettable, propulsive story of fractured families, collective guilt, the ways we become trapped in prisons of our own making, and how we can begin to break free.

Migrations: New Short Fiction from Africa

Migrations: New Short Fiction from Africa PDF Author: Sibongile Fisher
Publisher: New Internationalist
ISBN: 1780264062
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Short Story Day Africa presents its annual anthology. The stories explore true and alternative African culture through a competition on the theme of Migrations. 'Wherever we go, so do our stories.' Shortlisted Authors: Sibongile Fisher (South Africa), Mirette Bhagat Eskaros (Egypt), Blaize Kaye (South Africa), Megan Ross (South Africa), Stacy Hardy (South Africa), TJ Benson (Nigeria).

A Prisoner of Birth

A Prisoner of Birth PDF Author: Jeffrey Archer
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429934492
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
International bestseller and master storyteller Jeffrey Archer returns with a tale of fate and fortune, redemption and revenge with A Prisoner of Birth. Danny Cartwright and Spencer Craig never should have met. One evening, Danny, an East End cockney who works as a garage mechanic, takes his fianceé up to the West End to celebrate their engagement. He crosses the path of Spencer Craig, a West End barrister posed to be the youngest Queen's Counsel of his generation. A few hours later Danny is arrested for murder and later is sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, thanks to irrefutable testimony from Spencer, the prosecution's main witness. Danny spends the next few years in a high-security prison while Spencer Craig's career as a lawyer goes straight up. All the while Danny plans to escape and wreak his revenge. Thus begins Jeffrey Archer's poignant novel of deception, hatred and vengeance, in which only one of them can finally triumph while the other will spend the rest of his days in jail. But which one will triumph? This suspenseful novel takes the listener through so many twists and turns that no one will guess the ending, even the most ardent of Archer's many, many fans.

We Need New Names

We Need New Names PDF Author: NoViolet Bulawayo
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
ISBN: 0316230839
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Finalist for the Booker Prize: the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America (New York Times Book Review), from the author of Glory. Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her — from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee — while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own. "Original, witty, and devastating." —People

Feast, Famine and Potluck

Feast, Famine and Potluck PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 0620588861
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
A dazzling collection from across the African continent and diaspora here SHORT STORY DAY AFRICA has assembled the best nineteen stories from their 2013 competition. Food is at the centre of stories from authors emerging and established, blending the secular, the supernatural, the old and the new in a spectacular celebration of short fiction. Civil wars, evictions, vacations, feasts and romances the stories we bring to our tables that bring us together and tear us apart.

Upturned Earth

Upturned Earth PDF Author: Karen Jennings
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907320910
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Fiction. UPTURNED EARTH is set in Namaqualand, the copper mining district of the Cape Colony, during the winter of 1886. William Hull arrives at the town to take up the position of magistrate, a position that no one else wanted to accept because of the bleak and depressing locale. He finds that the town is run by the Cape Copper Mining Company and the despotic mine superintendent, Townsend. Meanwhile, Molefi Noki, a Xhosa mining labourer, is intent on finding his brother who was sent to jail for drunkenness and has yet to be released. Set against the background of a diverse community, made up of white immigrants, indigenous people and descendants of Dutch men and native women, we are given insight into the daily life of a mining town and the exploitation of workers, harsh working conditions and deep-seated corruption that began with the start of commercial mining in South Africa in the 1850s and which continue until now. While UPTURNED EARTH is a novel about the past, its concerns are very much founded in the present. "A remarkable and moving book. Evocative of an era of raw possibility; unflinching as it traces the veins of violence that run through South Africa's bedrock to this day."--Henrietta Rose "A mythical tale of heart and soul, cruelty and courage, fear and redemption."--Joanne Hichens "Meticulously researched and grippingly told, this is an intensely human story that sheds light on a neglected corner of South African history."--Fiona Snyckers

The Hate Race

The Hate Race PDF Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 9781472151520
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description