Karina Interview

Love Letter: A refuge for books – Karin Schimke interviews Karina Szczurek

Books are asylum

To say that Karina Szczurek finds refuge in books is to understate the matter. Books held her together through dispossession, flight and years of being a refugee. Certain books have travelled with her across three continents and four countries, through languages, and through love and loss.

For a long time, her mornings have begun with books – two to three hours of reading before the day begins. She has written, studied, translated and edited books.

Now she publishes them. The story of her publishing house – which has published a long string of disparate and often unusual books, and has accumulated several prizes in just six years of existence – is also a story of refuge …

Continue reading:

LOVE LETTER by Karin Schimke

Karina Author, Book, Event, Festival

Karen Jennings at Time of the Writer

Catch Karen Jennings at Time of the Writer this year:

A Crime for our Times – shaping violence through story: This sizzling panel focuses on crime fiction from the pen of some of the best South African crime writers. We delve deep into the dark underbelly of society, cults and psychopathy, murder and mystery.

Date: Sunday, 23 March 2025

Time: 14:00

Duration: 70min

Participants: Fiona Snyckers, Marina Auer, Karen Jennings, Zukiswa Wanner

Facilitator: Angelo Fick

Venue: Alliance Francaise, Durban

Full programme:

Time of the Writer, 18-23 March 2025

Karina Author, Book, Festival

Karavan Press at Books on the Bay 2025

Please join us between 14 and 16 March 2025 for Books on the Bay, a wonderful celebration of local literature and inspiration, now in its third year.

Karavan Press authors participating:

Saturday, 15 March 2025

10:15-11:00 METHODIST CHURCH

In the famous words of Lorrie Moore, “A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage.” Award-winning short story exponents Dawn Garisch and Diane Awerbuck discuss with Bongani Kona the joys and challenges of their relationship with the alluring genre.

13:15-14:15 METHODIST CHURCH

The art of memoir: Anthony Akerman, Lucky Bastard; Thobeka Yose, In Silence My Heart Speaks; Julia Martin, The Blackridge House. Led by Jo-Anne Richards, three leading exponents reflect on life-writing and the life-changing process of memoir writing.

Sunday, 16 March 2025

9:00-10:00 TOWN HALL

Karen Jennings – Crooked Seeds, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction

11:30-12:30 TOWN HALL

Andrew Brown – The Bitterness of Olives: In this remarkable novel set in Gaza City, Andrew Brown – current Sunday Times Fiction Award holder – explores a complex friendship battered by political forces. In conversation with Michele Magwood.

Karina Author, Book, Prize

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist has been announced and we are thrilled to share the news that Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings is among the sixteen nominated titles.

The full list in alphabetical order by author surname is:

  • Good Girl by Aria Aber (published by Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (published by Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette)
  • Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches (published by Scotland Street Press)
  • Amma by Saraid de Silva (published by Weatherglass Books)
  • Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (published by Holland House Books)
  • All Fours by Miranda July (published by Canongate Books)
  • The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)
  • Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)
  • Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (published by Scribner, Simon & Schuster)
  • A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (published by Fig Tree, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • Birding by Rose Ruane (published by Corsair, Little, Brown Book Group, Hachette)
  • The Artist by Lucy Steeds (published by John Murray, John Murray Press, Hachette)
  • Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)
  • Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette)

Congratulations, Karen and all other longlisted authors!

Karina Book

Book of the Week Special at The Book Lounge: The Fourth Boy by Andrew Robert Wilson

Journalist Grant Asher (1980s Cape Town) gets told by his mother on her deathbed that his father (who was unknown to Grant) was both gay and Jewish. Grant decides to try to find his father, which leads him to Oudtsthoorn and the news that his father has just been murdered. Grant becomes a somewhat reluctant investigator which leads him to suspect that there may be a serial killer murdering people who were part of a group of the five hundred Polish Jewish orphans who were freed from Siberia in the 1940s and were taken in by South Africa. ~ Mervyn Sloman

Set mostly in the Klein Karoo, The Fourth Boy explores notions of belonging and a myriad of other longings which I found profoundly moving. It tells the story of a young man’s search for his father against the backdrop of the 80s in apartheid South Africa and the fate of five hundred Polish WWII refugee children who arrived in Oudtshoorn in 1943. It is also a story of love, loss and betrayal. The tenderness with which Andrew Robert Wilson portrays the relationships – love and friendship – at the centre of the novel – is remarkable, and the way he resolves its greatest mystery is simply masterful. ~ Karina Szczurek, Karavan Press

You can purchase the book here (20% off):

The Book Lounge Book of the Week Special