JENNIFER PLATT | Don’t upset the uncles, but please chalk up a read on Eldos

On Saturday we’ll be halfway through the year. Like most people, my mind and body still feel like they’re in February, and this column of books to look out for monthly seems to be coming around much more quickly. Even though there is still an obscene number of books I want to read from previous months, July has more to add to the pile I’m excited about.

First up is Don’t Upset ooMalume! A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game by Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka, a Xhosa ambassador and agriculturalist. Nqandeka was worried knowledge of Xhosa heritage and culture will be lost to future generations and in writing this book she hopes to help reconnect Xhosa people to their roots. The blurb is hilarious and it seems the book will be too: “Returning to the family homestead in the Eastern Cape these holidays, and worried that your city ways and less than perfect knowledge of Xhosa culture will get you a wagging finger in the face from oomalume, the uncles? No need to fret, this book aims to capture the essence of Xhosa heritage and culture and explores the many unique characteristics of village life.” Nqandeka has an effortless and clear voice, and, most important of all, a funny one. Don’t Upset ooMalume is also in English and Xhosa.

Talking about strong, unique voices, one of the books I am in awe of is Terry-Ann Adams’s latest, White Chalk, a collection of short stories set in Eldorado Park, Soweto. It’s not easy to write authentically without second-guessing how to offer something universal — to agonise over whether people will understand what you are saying. But the 20-year-old author writes effortlessly in slang and there’s no need to explain the colloquialisms because her storytelling is so powerful. Each short is better than the next, offering a vision of the everyday lives of those living in Eldos. It is poignant, vibrant, with underlying sobriety. Adams knows how to masterfully communicate her view of her world. Please read it.

I feel that if I met Reese Witherspoon we would be instant friends. We have the same taste in fiction and I’ll always read whatever she picks for her book club. The latest is Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen. Witherspoon wrote on Instagram: “This page-turner follows Ava, a rule-abiding lawyer who has ticked all of life’s boxes until she gets wrapped up in a counterfeit handbag scheme with one of her best friends. #CounterfeitBook is full of compelling twists, riveting adventures, and of course luxury handbags.” Chen, obviously delighted by this, said in a podcast on Editors Unedited that she came up with the idea for her new novel while buried in research for her second book, Bury What We Cannot Take: “When I was in the thick of that research, I turned to my spouse and said: ‘The third book that I write is going to require zero research, and is therefore going to have to be about handbags, which is the only thing I’m already an expert in.’ It was a complete joke, but several months later, I read this article in the Post about a real-life con artist who had created this really foolproof counterfeit handbag scheme, and that’s when I thought: ‘OK, this could be the idea for a novel’.”

Quite a bit has already been written about Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath by Bill Browder, but it’s finally being released here. I needed to read quite a lot about it to understand its intricacies, but here is the blurb for a quick insight: “When Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230-million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime. As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money.” The Guardian says even though it’s a true account, “it reads like a thriller”. Sure sounds like a must read.