Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
fictionlatest news & developments
Third episode: Author Steve Toltz explores themes such as love, death, religion, dread and angst in his latest novel ‘Here Goes Nothing’. Photo: Nigel Bluck

Here Goes Nothing: Novel holds mirror to our social egos with sharp humour

Having explored the fear of life and death in the first two novels, Steve Toltz’s third novel delves into public opinion

CA Davids’s new book is a soulful, lyrical fictional guide to turbulent times.

‘How to Be a Revolutionary’: A timely catalogue of individual and societal failures

CA Davids’s new novel, ‘How to Be a Revolutionary’ is a soulful, lyrical fictional guide to turbulent times

Transplanted: Steven Yeun (centre) plays Jacob, the husband in family drama Minari, which can be streamed on Showmax. Photo: (A24)

Screen Grab: An eastern western, way down South

In the acclaimed ‘Minari’, now streaming on Showmax, a Korean family start farming and fuming in the Ozarks

Colonial troops: The first regiment of Senegalese infantrymen, in Longchamp, France in 1913. African soldiers’ contribution to World War I is rarely taught in French schools. (Branger/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

David Diop’s Booker win makes African soldiers’ history visible

David Diop won the prestigious annual International Booker prize for translated fiction for his second novel, ‘At Night All Blood is Black’

In the Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola places the most bizarre creatures within the limits of our current experience

African science fiction: rereading the The Palm-Wine Drinkard

Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola wields language as the ultimate form of technology

‘Partner’ by Mercy Thokozane Minah. (Digital oil painting, 2020)

‘The Sweetest Ache’ extract: Dark brown and midnight black magic

An activist’s encounter with an attractive waitress leads her to take an inventory of her own body in Mercy Thokozane Minah’s ‘The Sweetest Ache’

War is the backdrop of The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. (Photo: Nina Subin)

Maaza Mengiste: ‘We are now catching up with the past’

As war drums beat again in Ethiopia, author Maaza Mengiste finds new language to memorialise the Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Mermaid Fillet is, among other things, an intricately woven tale of wannabe gangsters.

Extract from ‘Mermaid Fillet: A Noir Crime Novel’ by Mia Arderne

This extract from Mia Arderne’s debut work of fiction, ‘Mermaid Fillet: A Noir Crime Novel’ introduces readers to Uncle ‘M16-in-your-bek’

(John McCann/ M&G)

‘Adaptation’: New short fiction from Phumlani Pikoli

Phumlani Pikoli’s latest piece is a metafiction based on what could happen if spike jonze and Ira Glass met

Spookily comforting: Lauren Beukes latest novel, Afterland, was five years in the making and the depth of research imbues the book with an intensity that is rivetting. (Nazreen Essack)
Video

Review: ‘Afterland’ — a novel that foreshadows the Covid-19 pandemic

For the past five years, Lauren Beukes has been working on a book set in the aftermath of a global epidemic. Its release couldn’t have been more timely

The Humanities Awards 2020: Book, Creative Collection and Digital Contribution has attracted more than 100 entries from creatives across the country

Achieving the litmus test of social relevance

The HSS Awards honours scholarly works based on their social relevance and contribution to the humanities and social sciences