In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, seventeen-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life. Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's what she can't have that leads to her breakdown. Meanwhile, in Zaire, a disgraced former nun, Delilah,...

The story of the Ashleighs, an upper-class English family at the turn of the century, whose men defend the outposts of the empire. The novel features a tyrannical grandfather, obsessed with the death of a son in the Sudan War, while belittling his grandsons who are fighting the Boer War.

A novel inspired by the life of Dr. James Miranda Barry follows a penniless Irish girl who adopts the identity of a boy in order to enter medical school, and embracing the freedom of living life as a man, becomes one of the most well-respected physicians in nineteenth-century Cape Town. Born in Cork, Ireland, Margaret Perry "died" and Jonathan Mirandus Perry began "his" journey to enter medical school and provide for family. Perry embraced the new-found...

"Wicomb's majestic new novel Still Life juggles with our perception of time and reality as Wicomb tells the story of an author struggling to write a biography of long-forgotten Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, whose only legacy is in South Africa where he is dubbed the "Father of South African Poetry." In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the writer summons the specter of Mary Prince, the West Indian slave whose history Pringle had once published, along...