Wulf

Winner of both the New Zealand Society of Authors Best First Book Award & the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards

Wulf, Hamish Clayton's inventive, brilliant novel, explores a subject little covered in New Zealand fiction, and marks the emergence of a startlingly assured, exciting new voice.

1830s New Zealand: The great chief Te Rauparaha has conquered tiny Kapiti Island, from where his tribe of Ngati Toa launches brutal attacks on its southern enemies. Off the coast of Kapiti, an English ship arrives seeking to trade with the Maori, setting off a train of events that forever changes the course of New Zealand history.

From the very beginning, Wulf will grab you with its visual imagery. Narrated by an English sailor and conjuring up a land of power, secrets, and strangeness, this book will make you feel as if you too are trekking through dense native bush, wandering on a desolate sandy beach, and standing on a ship offshore of New Zealand knowing you are being watched by the fearsome locals.

“A powerfully imagined novel—assured, crisply poetic, and spellbinding in its unfurling narrative. . . . Clayton [is] a gifted writer for a new generation.” —NZ Books

“…the writing is so full of colour and richness that it is almost as if it is all taking place in some sort of enchanted wonderland.” —Booksellers New Zealand

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Out of Bounds

Jane Addams Book Award
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults
NY Public Library Books for the Teen Age
Parents' Choice Silver Honor

“We are the young people,
We will not be broken!
We demand freedom
And say
Away with slavery
In our land of Africa!"

For almost fifty years, apartheid forced the young people of South Africa to live apart as Blacks, Whites, Indians, and “Coloreds.” This unique and dramatic collection of stories—by native South African and Carnegie Medalist Beverley Naidoo—is about young people's choices in a beautiful country made ugly by injustice.

Each story is set in a different decade during the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and features fictional characters caught up in very real events. Included is a Timeline Across Apartheid, which recounts some of the restrictive laws passed during this era, the events leading up to South Africa's first free democratic elections, and the establishment of a new “rainbow government” that leads the country today.

(A special thank you to book club member, Sarah Howe for the suggestion.)

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The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

In J.M.Coetzee’s stunning translation: a powerfully symbolic story in the voice of a slave that explores the depths of imagination, isolation, fear, and love.

A slave woman is the only survivor of a failed expedition into the depths of Southern Africa. She shelters in the hollow trunk of a baobab tree where she relives her earlier existence in a state of increasing isolation. We are the sole witnesses to her moving history: her capture as a young child, her life in a harbor city on the eastern coast as servant to various masters, her journey with her last owner and protector, and her life in the baobab tree.

“Thanks to Stockenström’s rich language (wonderfully translated by award-winning novelist and Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee) and brilliant use of symbolism, The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is a heartbreaking story about what we stand to lose as humans, and about how what we stand to lose can never be returned.” —Three Percent

“Using image-rich and poetic language, the illiterate narrator vividly evokes enslavement, isolation, and longing.” —Publishers Weekly

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)

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Cry, the Beloved Country

“The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time.” —The New Republic

“A beautiful novel…its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling, and its understanding so compassionate that to read the book is to share intimately, even to the point of catharsis, in the grave human experience.” —The NY Times

An Oprah Book Club selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, was an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

Cry, the Beloved Country, is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

(A special thank you to book club member, Christine Jensen for the suggestion.)

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The Steam Pig

A beautiful blonde has been killed by a bicycle spoke to the heart, Bantu gangster style. Why?

Set in Apartheid-era South Africa, The Steam Pig is the first in the outstanding mystery series featuring the biracial police team duo of Lieutenant Kramer and Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi.

“James McClure's novel arrives like a slam in the kidneys . . . a gripping style, real characters, and an exotic locale. . . . The Steam Pig will not only keep the reader's nose to the page, it will also make [him] think.” —The NY Times Book Review

“This well-plotted, well-written murder mystery is exceptional ... sometimes grim, sometimes sourly comic, always shocking.” —The Atlantic

“That it takes place in the apartheid setting of South Africa, that it has a black and white police team so artfully conceived as to engender cheers, that it uses the power of subtlety over brash bias to make its points, sets it up as a memorable mystery.” —LA Times

“More than a good mystery story, which it is, The Steam Pig is also a revealing picture of the hate and sickness of apartheid society.” —The Washington Post

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Exotic Territory

An exceptional anthology of award-winning poets, Exotic Territory seeks to address a dearth of information in the English-speaking world about Paraguayan poetry. The twelve outstanding poets included here—José Luis Appleyard, Moncho Azuaga, Gladys Carmagnola, Susy Delgado, Oscar Ferreiro, Renée Ferrer, Joaquín Morales, Amanda Pedrozo, Jacobo Rauskin, Elvio Romero, Ricardo de La Vega, Carlos Villagra Marsal—represent a wide diversity of themes, styles, and perspectives in this little-known nation.

The majority of these poets have published extensively, have been recognized through literary awards and inclusion in national/international anthologies, and continue writing today.

To contextualize the poets and their poetry for readers unfamiliar with Paraguay, the introduction provides a brief background of its geography, history, government, economy, society, and artistic milieu. Following that is a wide selection of representative poems published previously in Spanish, with translations in English on facing pages. The book concludes with a brief biographical sketch of each poet, followed by an unprecedented and extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources intended to encourage those readers who might want to pursue further reading or research on any poet of interest.

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

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The 1989 Coup d'Étát in Paraguay

The year 1989 was crucial for Paraguay. After a long period of 35 years of dictatorship, General Alfredo Stroessner was finally overthrown by a violent coup d’état. In a sort of prophetic way, he once said …”I came to power by arms and I will only leave by arms” and that came true on 2 February of that year.

The 1989 Coup d’état in Paraguay discusses Stroessner’s climb to power during a coup of 1954, fraudulent elections that got him re-elected seven times, and the ways Stroessner kept himself afloat through cooperation with the armed forces, a right-wing political party, and the USA. Arguably, longing to maintain his popularity, the dictator launched a large number of major development projects, including construction of roads, water and sewage facilities, three big hydro-electrical power stations, and a build-up of an airline. At the same time, abuse of human rights and oppression of any kind of political opposition became a norm: dozens of political prisoners were tortured and even executed, and thousands driven into exile.

As could be expected from a dictator with a military background, Stroessner prompted a major expansion and a build-up of the armed forces and the police, too. Nevertheless, it was the armed forces of Paraguay that brought about his demise: the coup that finally ended Stroessner’s rule was planned by General Andres Rodriguez, the Commander of the I Army Corps—and then with full support of large segments of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy of Paraguay.

A description of the coup in question, and how Stroessner was driven into exile in Brazil, is the centrepiece of this narrative. Containing over 100 photographs, colour profiles, maps and extensive tables, ‘The 1989 Coup d’etat in Paraguay’ is a unique study and a source of reference about an important episode in Latin American history.

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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The Curse of Nemur

The Tom-raho, a subgroup of the Ishir of Paraguay, are one of the few remaining indigenous populations who have managed to keep both their language and spiritual beliefs intact. They have lived for many years in a remote region of the Gran Chaco, having limited contact with European or Latin American cultures. The survival of the Tom-raho has been tenuous at best; at the time of this writing there were only 87 surviving members.

Ticio Escobar, who lived extensively among the Tom-raho, draws on his acquired knowledge of Ishir beliefs to confront them with his own Western ideology, and records a unique dialogue between cultures that counters traditional anthropological interpretation. The Curse of Nemur—which is part field diary, part art critique, and part cultural anthropology—offers us a view of the world from an entirely new perspective, that of the Ishir. We acquire deep insights into their powerful and enigmatic narrative myths, which find expression in the forms of body painting, feather decoration, dream songs, shamanism, and ritual.

Through dramatic photographs and native drawings, and Escobar’s lucid observation, The Curse of Nemur illuminates the seamless connection of religious practice and art in Ishir culture. It offers a glimpse of an aesthetic “other” and in so doing, causes us to reexamine Western perspectives on the interpretation of art, belief, and Native American culture as well.

“A beautifully written, profoundly engaged exploration of the mythology of a small indigenous society. Original, sensitive, and thoughtful in execution…It's a smart, sometimes moving view of the cosmology of a little-known people and is valuable for anyone seeking to understand more about the pain, beauty, and complexity of indigenous experience in this hemisphere.” —Orin Starn, author of Ishi's Brain

“A compelling read.” —Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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The Emotional Life of the Toddler

Alicia F. Lieberman’s The Emotional Life of the Toddler is the seminal, detailed look into the varied and intense emotional life of children aged one to three. Hailed as “groundbreaking” by The Boston Globe after its initial publication, the new edition includes the latest research on this crucial stage of development.

Anyone who has followed an active toddler around for a day knows that a child of this age is a whirlwind of explosive, contradictory, and ever-changing emotions. Alicia F. Lieberman offers an in-depth examination of toddlers’ emotional development, and illuminates how to optimize this crucial stage so that toddlers can develop into emotionally healthy children and adults.

Drawing on her lifelong research, Dr. Lieberman addresses commonly asked questions and issues. Why, for example, is “no” often the favorite response of the toddler? How should parents deal with the anger they might feel when their toddler is being aggressively stubborn? Why does a crying toddler run to his mother for a hug only to push himself vigorously away as soon as she begins to embrace him? This updated edition also addresses 21st century concerns such as how to handle screen time on devices and parenting in a post-internet world.

With the help of numerous examples and vivid cases, Lieberman answers these and other questions, providing, in the process, a rich, insightful profile of the roller coaster emotional world of the toddler.

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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I the Supreme

I the Supreme imagines a dialogue between the 19th Paraguayan dictator known as Dr. Francia and Policarpo Patiño, his secretary and only companion. The opening pages present a sign that they had found nailed to the wall of a cathedral, purportedly written by Dr. Francia himself ordering the execution of all of his servants upon his death. This sign is quickly revealed to be a forgery, which takes leader and secretary into a larger discussion about the nature of truth: “In the light of what Your Eminence says, even the truth appears to be a lie.”

Their conversation broadens into an epic journey of the mind, stretching across the colonial history of their nation, filled with surrealist imagery, labyrinthine turns, and footnotes supplied by a mysterious “compiler.” A towering achievement from a foundational author of modern Latin American literature, I the Supreme is a meditation on power and its abuse—and on the role of language through the author’s own verbal invention.

“A text of a verbal density that recalls the later James Joyce. . . . Roa Bastos’s novel has challenged and fascinated thousands of readers around the world.” —LA Times

“Passages reverberate with surrealism—peopled with dwarves, women warriors and clairvoyant animals… However cumbersome and rhetorical I the Supreme may often feel, the novel remains a prodigious meditation not only on history and power, but also on the nature of language itself.” —The NY Times

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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Disgrace

From the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. When an affair with a student leaves him jobless, shunned by friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife, he retreats to his daughter Lucy’s smallholding.

David’s visit becomes an extended stay as he attempts to find meaning in his one remaining relationship. Instead, an incident of unimaginable terror and violence forces father and daughter to confront their strained relationship and the equallity complicated racial complexities of the new South Africa. 

“Compulsively readable… A novel that not only works its spell but makes it impossible for us to lay it aside once we’ve finished reading it.” —The New Yorker

(A special thank you to book club member, Jennifer Koen for the suggestion.)

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Zoo City

Multi-award winner including the Arthur C. Clarke Award & Publisher's Weekly Best of the Year Sci Fi & Fantasy among others

A unique cyberpunk/urban fantasy mash-up set in an alt Johannesburg where murderers and other criminals have magical animals mystically bonded to them for their crimes.

Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit, and a talent for finding lost things. When a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, Zinzi’s forced to take on her least favorite kind of job—missing persons.

Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives including her own.

“This book is a must read for lovers of South African fiction and urban fantasy alike. It is edgy and pacey. Like a rollercoaster ride, it sweeps you up, spins you around, turns you upside down and dumps you out on the other end, heady and breathless and yearning for more.” —Exclus1ves

"At times, the witty and lyrical prose is sheer magic, the story captivating and the characters exotic, cruel and beautiful while the backdrop of Johannesburg seethes with hidden, lurking dangers around every corner, Zoo City is quite simply captivating.” —SciFi & Fantasy Books

"Beukes’s future city is as spiky, distinctive and material a place as any cyberpunkopolis, and quit a bit fresher. The narrative is brisk and well turned, but the great achievement here is tonal: atmospheric, smart and memorable work.” —Locus

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An Instant in the Wind

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

In early 1749, a white woman and a black man are stranded in the wilderness of the South African interior. She is an educated woman, totally helpless in the wilds. He is a runaway slave. They know only each other.

At first, their relationship is guarded, poisoned by the black and white in them both. But hesitantly, there emerges between them a fellowship that engulfs their most private selves, as they face the long trek back to civilisation.

This, then is the stunning story of their trek together, how they find in each other their mutual need and humanity, and finally how their days together turn into an unforgettable, tender love story.

“It is difficult to see how any South African novelist will be able to surpass the honesty of this novel or the real courage—both as artist and as a political man—which enabled Brink to write it.” —World Literature Today

(A special thank you to book club member, Jo Jackson for the suggestion.)

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Burger's Daughter

The equidistant sea and sky were divided for her by the line of gravity like an hour-glass, through which a ship wrapped in pink-mauve haze passed from one element to the other, coming down over the horizon.

This is the moving story of the unforgettable Rosa Burger, a young woman from South Africa cast in the mold of a revolutionary tradition. Rosa tries to uphold her heritage handed on by martyred parents while still carving out a sense of self.

Although it is wholly of today, Burger's Daughter can be compared to those 19th century Russian classics that make a certain time and place come alive, and yet stand as universal celebrations of the human spirit.

Written by Nadine Gordimer, the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

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July's People

A startling, imaginative novel from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

For years, it had been what is called a “deteriorating situation.” Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and relationships—gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.

“So flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible.” —The NY Times Book Review

“Gordimer’s art has achieved and sustained a rare beauty. Her prose has a density and sparsity that one finds in the greatest writers. ”—The New Leader

(A special thank you to book club member, Carol Weldon for the suggestion.)

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Country of My Skull

Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after 27 years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country—one of spectacular beauty and promise—come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors?

To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha’s extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey.

(A special thank you to book club member, Jennifer Koen for the suggestion.)

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Telling People What They Don't Want to Hear

Very few Jews, or whites in general, were openly and vocally adversarial to white domination and the brutality of the post-1948 Afrikaner regime. And very few of the Jews who did oppose apartheid were able to live comfortably with their own Jewishness.

Jock Isacowitz played a key role during the 1940s and 1950s in forging and defending the progressive ideals on which post-apartheid South Africa was built. He was national chairman of the Springbok Legion, the radical ex-servicemen’s “union”, and the brains behind the Torch Commando, the last popular movement to take to the streets against the Apartheid regime.

A member of the Communist Party during WWII, he resigned before the end of the war over its totalitarian approach and subservience to Moscow. He was a founder of the Liberal Party and, in 1955, became the first party member to be issued with a banning order. After the Sharpeville massacre, he was imprisoned under emergency orders. Towards the end of his life, Jock was a radical anti-apartheid activist, a Zionist and a leader of the local Jewish community. As such, he was, if not unique, a rare commodity. Only his sudden illness and death prevented Jock from contributing further to the anti-apartheid opposition.

Written by Jock’s son, Roy, this biography takes an unflinching, second-generation look at a life that intersected with those of Jan Smuts, Alan Paton, Bram Fischer, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Joe Slovo and many others. A veteran journalist and writer, Roy Isacowitz brings the remarkable character of his father vividly to life, along with the hopes and dreams of his generation.

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Fools & Other Stories

These stories from the closing days of apartheid rule in South Africa won the Noma Award, Africa's highest literary award, and announced Njabulo Ndebele as an assured and impressive literary voice. He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African continent today.

Ndebele evokes township life with humor and subtlety, rejecting the image of black South Africans as victims and focusing on the complexity and fierce energy of their lives. “Our literature,” says Ndebele, “ought to seek to move away from an easy preoccupation with demonstrating the obvious existence of oppression. It exists. The task is to explore how and why people can survive under such harsh conditions.”

The stories in Fools and Other Stories deal with the formative experiences of growing up in a Johannesburg township during the Apartheid years. “Fools,” the title story of the collection, is a tale of generations. Zamani, a disgraced middle-aged teacher and Zani, a young student activist, are inadvertently bound together by affection and hostility in an intense and unpredictable relationship. Finding each other means finding the common ground of their struggle. It also means re-examining their lives—and, notably, their relationships with women.

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The Heart of Redness

Shortlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize

In The Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda sets a story of South African village life against a notorious episode from the country's past. The result is a novel of great scope and deep human feeling, of passion and reconciliation.

As the novel opens Camugu, who left for America during apartheid, has returned to Johannesburg. Disillusioned by the problems of the new democracy, he follows his “famous lust” to Qolorha on the remote Eastern Cape. There in the nineteenth century a teenage prophetess named Nonqawuse commanded the Xhosa people to kill their cattle and burn their crops, promising that once they did so the spirits of their ancestors would rise and drive the occupying English into the ocean. The failed prophecy split the Xhosa into Believers and Unbelievers, dividing brother from brother, wife from husband, with devastating consequences.

One hundred fifty years later, the two groups' descendants are at odds over plans to build a vast casino and tourist resort in the village, and Camugu is soon drawn into their heritage and their future—and into a bizarre love triangle as well.

The Heart of Redness is a seamless weave of history, myth, and realist fiction. It is, arguably, the first great novel of the new South Africa—a triumph of imaginative and historical writing.

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Moxyland

Lauren Beukes’s frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future.

Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect from her corporate employers. Tendeka, a hot-headed activist, is becoming increasingly rabid. Toby, a roguish blogger, discovers that the video games he plays for cash are much more than they seem.

On a collision course that will rewire their lives, these characters crackle with bold and infectious ideas, connecting a ruthless corporate-apartheid government with video games, biotech attack dogs, slippery online identities, a township soccer school, shocking cell phones, addictive branding, and genetically modified art. Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, Lauren Beukes spins a tale of a utopia gone wrong, satirically undermining the idea of progress as society’s white knight.

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