Vernon RL Head
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape)
The opening sentence crafts a magnificent stage for a dance of memories shaping the adolescence of a man, each one a glittering jewel linked on the most delicate chain. Ondaatje must surely be the greatest stylist writing in English, anywhere.
Mohale Mashigo
What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Headline)
I’ve never read a collection of short stories that made me never want to write another short story again. These are set in the future, the present and a fantastical now. It’s a book about relationships people have with each other; broken ones, odd ones and heartbreaking ones.
Pamela Power
Snap by Belinda Bauer (Bantam)
The way she writes about the children in this book is heartbreakingly poignant, plus it is beautifully written and has great suspense. No wonder it was longlisted for the Man Booker award and winner of the National Award in the UK for crime fiction.
Bill Nasson
First You Write a Sentence by Joe Moran (Viking, 2018)
Moran’s latest book is a nourishing sip of the mother’s milk of any writing - how a good sentence gives order to our thoughts. What is Professor Moran’s advice? Read Virginia Woolf and Gustav Flaubert. Go for verbs and go easy on nouns. Mix together long and short sentences. It’s an exquisite love letter to literacy.
Fiona Melrose
Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott (Hutchinson)
This is a fictional retelling of writer Truman Capote’s self-destruction after he was punished and ostracised by the group of society hostesses known as The Swans. He broke their confidence in a tell-all piece for Esquire magazine and lived to regret it. Sharp, racy, beautifully written, it’s an utter corker.
Kimon de Greef
I Want To Go Home Forever: Stories Of Becoming and Belonging in South Africa’s Great Metropolis, edited by Loren B Landau and Tanya Pampalone (Wits University Press)
This is a frank, illuminating set of oral histories documenting life at Johannesburg’s margins. We need more nonfiction like this in SA.
Nozizwe Cynthia Jele
Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree by Niq Mhlongo (Kwela Books)
I have a bias towards short stories. I love the concise form and unexpected twists. Mhlongo’s collection delivered just that. I related to the diversity of characters and their everyday journeys. He has a way of engaging critical social issues without judgment.
Sihle Khumalo
The Land is Ours by Tembeka Ngcukaitobi (Penguin Books)
A thoroughly-researched and apt book that reminds us how the black legal pioneers fought for constitutionalism, incorporating individual rights and emancipation. How they stood their ground and traded legal punches under an extremely oppressive socio-political system of the time.
John Hunt
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)
This debut novel is a very funny book. Its socially inept central character, Eleanor, is wrapped in a loneliness you can feel on every page. At the same time, you sense her warm heart and wait for the light to finally shine through. It also reminds us to be kind. To everyone.
Bibi Slippers
The Overstory by Richard Powers (William Heinemann)
I loved Powers’s fresh take on environmental debates, focusing on the plight of trees in a world obsessed with progress and economic growth, and the surprising intersection with developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Craig Higginson
The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton (Picador)
Winton is a brilliant model for how South African novelists could be. Deeply passionate about the people and landscape of Western Australia, with a rich and poetic language that’s all his own, memorable metaphors and deeply engaging storytelling. One of the world’s finest novelists at the top of his game.
Harry Kalmer
Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury)
Beautifully written, including descriptions of Jozi’s 1964 snowfall, the life of George Sand and Frederic Chopin, and growing up in a country different from the one where you were born. (Levy’s father was a political prisoner prior to their departure.) But above all, it is a (almost reluctant) celebration of the writing life. I loved it.
Maxine Case
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs (Atlantic)
This frank, fascinating memoir by Steve Jobs’s eldest daughter is about more than growing up with a famous father. I was surprised by how much I could relate to her story - the time, the hippy subculture, and coming to terms with a parent’s mortality in the face of their failings.
Simone Haysom
The History of Intimacy by Gabeba Baderoon (Kwela Books)
This exquisite book of poetry reminds you that the best ways of confronting our history and of navigating the present involve deep thought and deep feeling - and don’t lose touch with beauty.
Achmat Dangor
The White Room by Craig Higginson (Picador Africa)
This is a complex but engaging novel that explores human relations; love, sensuality, etc, countered by the reality of what fragile human emotions can do to such relationships. The language is incisively eloquent.
Compiled by Michele Magwood