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lauren beukeslatest news & developments
Equipped: A woman looks around in the Michaelis Art Library within the Johannesburg City
Library on 9 August 2025. Photo: OUR CITY NEWS/James Oatway

How funding apartheid fails young library users

Lack of funds prevent provinces from carrying out their mandate to manage public library services

Aced it: The winning Grahamstown Adventist Primary School team at
the Phendulani Literary Quiz. Photo: Nozipho Maphalala

Give children high-quality books from Grades R-12: they will likely read them

Research shows that classroom libraries increase reading frequency by 70% compared with centralised libraries

Uhuru Phalafala, Radna Fabias, Ishion Hutchinson and Toni Stuart in an Open Book Fesival panel in 2019. This year, the festival has moved online. (Photo: Retha Ferguson)

Cape Town’s Open Book Festival turns over a new leaf

In the midst of the pandemic the literary festival is hosting podcasts instead of livestreamed panels

Nanna Venter’s covers are inspired by punk and flowerbomb typeset detail she encountered in the US edition of Afterland.

The Portfolio: Nanna Venter

‘Artsronaut’ Nanna Venter lets us in on her process for designing book covers, including for Lauren Beukes’s ‘Afterland’

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)
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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

Broken Monsters: A concatenation of nanospaces

SA’s trending author has expertly embraced new media as a medium of horror, and the characters of her female protagonists defy casual stereotyping.

Sparkle and flair from UJ Prize writers

UJ Prize winners Lauren Beukes and Dominique Botha have penned well-crafted novels that are innovative and refreshing reads.

Lauren Beukes’s ‘Zoo City’ comes to life in the urban jungle

An exhibition based on Lauren Beukes’s "Zoo City" taps into the gritty energy of Jo’burg while exploring the concept of the human and urban animal.

Taking a page from a book of art

Bestselling author Lauren Beukes has a way with violence–a dark twisting of words.It’s not a platform for cheap thrills, though.

Leonardo DiCaprio buys rights to Lauren Beukes’s novel

South African author Lauren Beukes’s "The Shining Girls" will be adapted for television by US actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s company Appian Way.

The Shining Girls.

Grisly death passes without comment

Lauren Beukes’s latest novel, a nightmare tale of a time-hopping women-killer, is a publisher’s dream but leaves little in its wake.

Lauren Beukes: At the forefront of the global invasion

By ditching the tired narratives of contemplation and guilt, Beukes’s otherworldly novels have beefed up the anaemic world of South African fiction.

City meets celluloid

Film rights to Lauren Beukes’s <i>Zoo City</i> have been awarded to a local producer. We spoke to Beukes about adapting her award-winning novel.

What’s behind sashaying for the sash
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What’s behind sashaying for the sash

A local documentary about a beauty pageant for cross-dressers has a delicate, unexpected message.

Science fiction’s Very Big Deal

Science fiction’s Very Big Deal

South African author Lauren Beukes speaks to the <i>M&G</i> about winning the Arthur C Clarke Award.

Modest prize for prestigious writing award

Modest prize for prestigious writing award

South African author Lauren Beukes will receive exactly £2011, the same figure as the current year, after winning the Arthur C Clarke Award.

SA writer wins Arthur C Clarke award

SA author Lauren Beukes has won the Arthur C Clarke Award for <i>Zoo City</i> for the best science fiction novel of the year published in the UK.

Lauren Beukes: ‘Ideas for novels develop like a Polaroid’

Lauren Beukes is the author of <em>Moxyland</em> and <em>Zoo City</em>, both novels that look at SA society through a futuristic, dystopian lens.

Jo’burg during the fall

Jo’burg during the fall

The best science fiction writers are those who can make you part of an extended universe without resorting to that awful trick of the padded series.