If you are politically aware, socially mindful and grappling with increasingly shaky race relations in this country, Sorry, Not Sorry by journalist Haji Mohamed Dawjee is a must-read.
Not in the clichéd way most people refer to the latest book on the market, but in a way that will truly empower you to know and claim your place in the current conversations being had about race, privilege and power relations in South Africa.
Whether you're black or brown, but especially if you're white, this book will open your eyes to the realities of the skewed world we live in and stick a finger right in the sore that you manage to ignore most of the time, but always know is there: that we live in a world where white equals privilege, power and opportunity while black equals discrimination, racism and disregard.
Dawjee's book is a collection of essays about her experiences as a brown woman in South Africa, but its message is much more universal, focusing on the many challenges women of colour face; in relationships, the workplace and in the interpretation of history and practice of religion.
If you're white, it will probably upset or anger you. Dawjee holds no prisoners.
She writes: "I believe in confidently crossing the imaginary line of what is okay to say to white people and what is not. I believe that it is our turn to talk and their turn to listen. If they won't, it is often going to be my responsibility to tell them to shut up."
If you're black, you will relate to the many details and examples she gives to illustrate her point that people of colour have, until now, been deprived of a voice and narrative that tells their story from their own point of view.
Whether you are cringing or relating, one thing is certain: you will know that her words hold true. You will know it in your bones while you laugh at her witty humour which, even though she's scathing in her criticism of white people, partially saves them. And you'll know it while you cry over her pain, either because you've experienced it too, or because you know you are exempted from it by virtue of the colour of your skin. News 24
Discover the true stories of some of the world's incredible working dogs, and the extraordinary jobs they undertake.
Meet Molly, the diabetes alert dog whose round-the-clock job is to keep her two young owners healthy; Bailey, the Assistant Director of Seagulls whose job is to keep the pesky birds away from the heritage vessels at the Australian National Maritime Museum and Daisy, the Collie mix who is a full-time guide dog to another blind dog.
From inspirational moments of bravery in service, to tales of dogs doing the jobs that no one else can, these are the life-affirming stories of the hardest-working dogs in the world.
Wanted by Interpol, the Thunder has for years evaded justice: accumulating millions in profits, hunting endangered species and ruthlessly destroying ocean habitats. The authors follow this incredible expedition from the beginning. But even as seasoned journalists, they cannot anticipate what the chase will uncover, as the wake of the Thunder leads them to trail of criminal kingpins, rampant corruption, modern slavery, and an international community content to turn a blind eye. Very soon, apprehending Thunder becomes more than a chase but a pursuit of the truth itself and a symbolic race to preserve the well-being of our planet. A Scandinavian best-seller, Catching Thunder is a remarkable true story of courage and perseverance, and a wake-up call to act against the destruction of our environments.
For readers of Schindler's List, The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas comes a heart-breaking story of the very best of humanity in the very worst of circumstances. I tattooed a number on her arm. She tattooed her name on my heart. In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust. Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too. So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz. ----- 'Extraordinary - moving, confronting and uplifting . . . I recommend it unreservedly' Greame Simsion 'A moving and ultimately uplifting story of love, loyalties and friendship amidst the horrors of war . . . It's a triumph.' Jill Mansell
Back in print in an all-new edition, is the engaging and illuminating chronicle of the life of the “Queen of Mystery.” Fans of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and readers of John Curran’s fascinating biographies Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making will be spellbound by the compelling, authoritative account of one of the world’s most influential and fascinating novelists, told in her own words and inimitable style. The New York Times Book Review calls Christie’s autobiography a “joyful adventure,” saying, “she brings the sense of wonder...to her extraordinary career.”
The first thing to note is that the title is fake news. The president isn’t missing; he has to lie low for a bit, but spends almost all the novel surrounded by his Secret Service security detail, as well as other aides and officials. Indeed, the president himself narrates most of the book, which wouldn’t really work if he had no clue where he was or what he was up to.
Bill Clinton is not the first modern president to make a foray into fiction: in 2003, Jimmy Carter wrote The Hornet’s Nest, a well-regarded historical novel set during the revolutionary war. But for his novel, Clinton has teamed up with James Patterson, a thriller industry unto himself, whom Stephen King has not unjustly called “a terrible writer”. One character is a female assassin codenamed Bach, who, when we first meet her, is described strolling seductively through an airport with a décolleté “allowing just enough bounce in her girls to make it memorable”. Girls?
Like Clinton, Duncan met his wife at law school and has one daughter; unlike Clinton, his wife is tragically deceased
Anyway, the president of the title – president Jonathan Lincoln Duncan – is facing an enormous cyberattack, codenamed “Dark Ages”, which will bring the US to its knees. Thanks to a helpful slab of exposition by a geek halfway through, we know that this is really, really serious. It’s not just that Tinder and Alexa will stop working; all bank records will be wiped, the electricity grid will go down, water will stop running, air defences will fall silent, that sort of thing. Also, the Russians might be behind it, and Duncan might have a mole in his own ranks. So out of the White House the president sneaks: he disguises himself using makeup with the help of a famous actress friend (as you do), before meeting someone who might be able to help at a baseball game. Luckily, he is being followed by the pros.
The president is a super-decent bipartisan hero, an ideal mash-up between John McCain and, um, Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, Duncan met his wife at law school and has one adult daughter; unlike Clinton, his wife is tragically deceased and he spent time as a prisoner of war in Iraq. (His vice-president is resentful at being upstaged by her boss, a “war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor”.) His training as an army ranger enables him to wield a Glock with confidence during one early kinetic set-piece, rather like Tom Clancy’s fictional president, ex-Marine Jack Ryan.
Forever and a Day is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking readers into the very beginning of James Bond’s illustrious career and the formation of his identity.
***
M laid down his pipe and stared at it tetchily. “We have no choice. We’re just going to bring forward this other chap you’ve been preparing. But you didn’t tell me his name.”
“‘It’s Bond, sir,'” the Chief of Staff replied. “James Bond.”
The sea keeps its secrets. But not this time.
One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand.
It’s time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organized crime.
It’s time for James Bond to earn his license to kill.
In a narrative as beguiling and mysterious as memory itself--shadowed and luminous at once--we read the story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the war, all of whom seem, in some way, determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be? And what does it mean when the siblings' mother returns after months of silence without their father, explaining nothing, excusing nothing? A dozen years later, Nathaniel begins to uncover all that he didn't know and understand in that time, and it is this journey--through facts, recollection, and imagination--that he narrates in this masterwork from one of the great writers of our time.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
Set in the 1970s in a run-down, rainy industrial town, Jo Nesbo's Macbethcenters around a police force struggling to shed an incessant drug problem. Duncan, chief of police, is idealistic and visionary, a dream to the townspeople but a nightmare for criminals. The drug trade is ruled by two drug lords, one of whom—a master of manipulation named Hecate—has connections with the highest in power, and plans to use them to get his way.
Hecate’s plot hinges on steadily, insidiously manipulating Inspector Macbeth: the head of SWAT and a man already susceptible to violent and paranoid tendencies. What follows is an unputdownable story of love and guilt, political ambition, and greed for more, exploring the darkest corners of human nature, and the aspirations of the criminal mind.
Hierdie is Koos Kombuis se eerste gedrukte digbundel in meer as twintig jaar.
Hy is van plan om enkele van die gedigte in hierdie bundel te toonset en dit dan, as promosie vir die bundel, te sing by die talle eenmanskonserte wat hy gedurig in Suid-Afrika doen. Die bundel is lig en humoristies, met ‘n subtiele geestelike element.
Toeganklike poësie vir lesers in alle belangstellingsvelde.
