Karina Author, Book, Event

Blackwell’s Oxford Events: Elleke Boehmer ICE SHOCK with Lara Feigel

Blackwell’s, Broad Street Oxford

Dec 3 from 5:30pm to 6:30pm GMT

Overview

Join us for a discussion chaired by Lara Feigel with Elleke Boehmer, author of the new book ‘Ice Shock’

Ice Shock

The year is 2010. An Icelandic volcano has thrown an ash cloud into the atmosphere and, across the world, planes have stopped flying. Leah and Niall, twenty-somethings in love, find themselves strangely restless, and set out on different but parallel paths; Niall travels to a polar station in Antarctica, where the strange, lonely beauty of the ice mirrors the fragility of his hopes, while Leah studies writing in England, surrounded by tradition yet struggling to find her place.

Separated by thousands of miles, but determined to stay connected, they learn that true communication can be as fragile as the melting landscape between them. Ice Shock is a love story that asks what it means to stay close even when we are far apart – and how love can endure, in a world changing catastrophically by the day.

“Ice Shock is a propulsive and eerie love story told frame by perilous frame. Threat lurks everywhere in the gaps, beneath surfaces that shift constantly like the melting ice floes of the characters’ real and imagined Antarctic worlds.”

— Jason Allen-Paisant, winner of the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize in 2023

Elleke Boehmer

Elleke Boehmer is the author of the novels Screens against the Sky (shortlisted David Higham Prize, 1990), Bloodlines (shortlisted SANLAM prize, 2000), Nile Baby (2008) and The Shouting in the Dark (2015; co-winner Olive Schreiner prize, 2015–18), as well as the short-story collection Sharmilla and Other Portraits (2010). To the Volcano, her second short story collection, appeared in 2019. The story ‘Supermarket Love’ was commended for the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. Her fiction probes the delicate interface between our private and public selves in haunting and unforgettable ways.

She is also Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a founding figure in the field of postcolonial literature. Her edition of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys was a 2004 summer bestseller, and her acclaimed biography of Nelson Mandela (2008) has been translated into Arabic, Malaysian, Thai, Kurdish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. She has published several other books including Stories of Women (2005), the anthology Empire Writing (1998), Indian Arrivals: Networks of British Empire (2015), and Postcolonial Poetics (2018).

Lara Feigel

Lara Feigel is the author of four highly acclaimed works of cultural history and a novel. Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she reviews regularly for the Guardian and contributes to a range of BBC radio programmes. Her new book, Custody: The Secret History of Mothers comes out in January 2026.

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: Swartbooij & Titus by Karen Jennings

IT WAS IN 1739 when the wars in the northern frontier of the Cape began. Ten settler farmers with ox wagons and trading goods, and several Khoisan servants, spent a month with the Groot Namaqua at the kraal of Chief Gal. Bribed with promises of cattle, the servants broke into the kraal. The foray resulted in several deaths, including that of the Chief. The settlers, however, reneged on their promise …

Two individuals played a key role in these events, the formerly loyal Khoisan servant Swartbooij and his son Titus. Enraged by being tricked, the two incited various raids on the settler community in retaliation. The ensuing cycles of revenge eventually led to a brutal massacre of Khoisan women and children.

Part prose, part poetry, Swartbooij and Titus reimagines the story of the unyielding father and son and the times that shaped them.

KAREN JENNINGS is a South African writer whose novel, An Island, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Her most recent novel, Crooked Seeds, came out in 2024 and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Karen has also published a collection of poetry, a collection of short stories, and several other books. From 2022 to 2024, Karen was the writer-in-residence with LEAP at Stellenbosch University, where she first came across the story of Swartbooij and Titus.

Publication date: November 2025

ISBN: 978-0-6398626-6-8

Karina Author, Book, Review

Nancy Richards reviews Tunnel by Nick Mulgrew

I have been in some unexpected, uncomfortable and unsettling situations in my book journeys. But never quite like the one that stretches out in Tunnel. The title itself conjures a certain inescapability with a darkness, at the end of which there is not always light. A tunnel is described as an ‘artificial passage – especially one built through a hill or under a building road or river’. It’s the artificial bit, that gets to me, it’s not natural and in this particular tunnel, it’s certainly not normal.

It starts out innocently enough with Andreas and Samuel sniping at each other in the familiar, but spikey the way that couples getting on each other’s nerves do. They’re in Samuel’s inherited Oldsmobile, a bad start, and headed for a much-needed weekend away – on a road that goes through a mountain, via, yup, a tunnel. If you’re from the Cape, you’ll recognize which one. But if you’re phobic about breaking down in a tunnel, better stop reading now. Because this is when the you-know-what hits the fan. Suddenly they’re not alone. Enter a khaki-clad woman just flown in from Harare, in a red rental. Turns out she’s a location scout, but the point is, she’s competent, not so the boys. And then there’s the robotic radio message. And just when you think you’ve got this, clearly this is no ordinary aborted road trip. ‘Ledi and the man’s eyes met as they listened. In the orange light of the tunnel, his eyes shone like amber, studded with inclusions, a glistening stillness at odds with his demeanor.’ Nor is it no ordinary piece of writing.

More characters enter the uncompromising tunnel and psychologies start to clash – it’s complicated, there’s a minibus full of previously screaming little girls, a diabetic driver and ‘they’, Mo, a bristly roadblock officer, with personal issues. There are ominous seismic noises off and the insistent Voice of South West.

Actually, all the entrapped have got issues, one way or another – and they’re all starting to snipe. I couldn’t possibly tell you what happens without giving you an escape route – but there’s a wreck, ants, the incisors of a grey-brown baby and a desiccating lack of liquid and food involved. Apocalyptic springs to mind. I can only suggest you take the book to bed with a large glass of water, a strong nerve and hopefully someone who will give you a reassuring hug. It’s just a story. I think.

First published on the Good Book Appreciation Society.

Karina Book, Event

Burning Down the House at the Oude Leeskamer

Burning Down the House is a fierce new collection bringing together the freshest, most vital feminist voices writing today. Part manifesto, part love letter, part act of resistance, these personal essays ignite conversations about popular culture and how the personal really is political. What happens when we set fire to the old stories and tell our own?

Join us on the 17th of November at 18:00 in Jannie se Leeskamer for the book talk discussing a feminist appraisal of space with Stella Viljoen, Chan Croeser, Che Adams, Kiasha Naidoo and Waratwa Zanokuhle Miya.

Free entry, but please book your seat here: BOOK TALK

Karina Author, Book

Karavan Press title: How to Build a House in the Mountains by Roger Lucey

‘… a songline of self, of transcending grief, shame and regret and of coming to a deep sense of peace’—HAMILTON WENDE

Roger Lucey survived a covert security police campaign which destroyed his music career. He survived the drug addiction and disaffection which followed. He survived a decade and a half as a cameraman documenting the wars of Africa and Eastern Europe. Survival was not enough though. Broken and despairing, he needed to find a way to reclaim his life and creativity. With no previous experience, but with a vague idea that the process might lead to healing, he set out to build a house in the mountains of the Breede River Valley during South Africa’s first years of democracy. This is the remarkable story of that house and the path that led Roger out of the darkness of his past back into the light of his music. How to Build a House in the Mountains is a memoir as well as a live solo show featuring stories and songs inspired by the journey.

Praise for How to Build a House in the Mountains

‘A lyrical, poignant, reflective and redemptive journey through Lucey’s colour-splattered and fully lived life of achievements and failures, anchored by a rough-hewn, hand-built home in the mountains – his private shield against the chaos that has often followed him.’—STEVEN BOYKEY SIDLEY

‘Roger writes with the same wholehearted passion and zest with which he’s lived his extraordinary life. He crafts this memoir the same way he built his house in the mountains, step-by-fascinating-step. A moving and inspiring story told by an ace troubadour.’—JOHN MAYTHAM

About the author

Born in Durban, ROGER LUCEY started writing and performing songs in the mid-seventies. His first album, The Road Is Much Longer, was banned for possession and distribution, and the security police launched a covert ‘operation’ to silence him. Roger went on to work as a TV journalist covering wars in Southern and East Africa, and later in Madagascar, Bosnia and Chechnya. After more than a decade, he left the news industry to join Theatre for Africa, an environmental theatre company. He later became editor and presenter of an e.TV nightly arts/news programme for which he received the Arts and Culture Trust Award. In May 2010, he graduated as valedictorian from Duke University’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies. His autobiography, Back in from the Anger, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Alan Paton Award. At the time, his work was featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South African Music Awards.

ISBN: 978-1-0492-1510-5

Publication date: November 2025

Karina Author

Author: Roger Lucey

Born in Durban, ROGER LUCEY started writing and performing songs in the mid-seventies. His first album, The Road Is Much Longer, was banned for possession and distribution, and the security police launched a covert ‘operation’ to silence him. Roger went on to work as a TV journalist covering wars in Southern and East Africa, and later in Madagascar, Bosnia and Chechnya. After more than a decade, he left the news industry to join Theatre for Africa, an environmental theatre company. He later became editor and presenter of an e.TV nightly arts/news programme for which he received the Arts and Culture Trust Award. In May 2010, he graduated as valedictorian from Duke University’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies. His autobiography, Back in from the Anger, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Alan Paton Award. At the time, his work was featured in the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2016, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South African Music Awards.