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Promising reads: Many good books will be published in 2020

Great reads to look forward to

Theresa Mallinson selects 20 you should pick up — and won’t want to put down — to be published over the course of the year

Not just Gregs: Cricket South Africa would do well to accord its fan base some respect. (Moeletsi Mabe/Gallo Images/Sunday Times)

CSA: A bee in my binnet

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, the Official Proteas Supporters Club emailed its fans

City of pain: Celebrations in Cairo after Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011. (Mahmoud Khaled/AFP)

The city wins — but Egypt loses

A novel inspired by Arab Spring activists is brutally honest about what happened — and what keeps happening

Phumlani Pikoli.
(Delwyn Verasamy)

Pikoli’s Fish out of water

‘Born Freeloaders’ seems like a light read but under that is a layered look at post-apartheid privilege

Mustafa Aboulseoud, who co-owns and manages the Obsession Cafe in Fordsburg, Johannesburg. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Slice of life: Life’s hard but  ‘tomorrow’s a new day’

For a young man from a poor family, post-revolutionary Egypt did not provide many opportunities

Unafraid: Sarah Ladipo Manyika brings stories to us that the publishing industry has studiously ignored — stories, for instance, about sensuous, older black women. (Paul Botes)

Storytelling is in her blood

Evading gatekeepers helped the author write the African stories she wanted to read

With former UK prime minister Theresa May’s announcement on Tuesday morning that Boycott is to be knighted, his past conviction has once again been thrown into the spotlight. (Reuters/Andrew Boyers)

The inconvenient truth about ‘sir’ Geoffrey Boycott

Beating up a woman is no impediment to knighthood

(John McCann/M&G)

Tall inside, but not short of opinions

Navigating the world as a little person is no big deal. But it can be exhausting when other people feel entitled to comment on your height

Through her eyes: Writer and professor of comparative literature Antoinette Tidjani Alou writes in both French and English, and across multiple genres. (Photo: Jean-Marc Zaorski/Getty Images)

Vignettes on our lives and dreams

The Jamaican-Nigerian writer explores living between cultures in her first short story collection

Deprivation: Refugees at the Manus Island processing centre lived as if in prison. They could choose to be deported but few did, fearing returning to the country they had fled. (Eoin Blackwell/AAP/MINDS)

Words that shatter the silence

The author writes from experience about Australia’s inhumane refugee policy and offshore prisons