Our second book event with the wonderful Pippa Smith of The Book Revue will take place on Thursday, 4 September, at 10.30AM in Constantia and will feature Andrew Robert Wilson and his debut novel, The Fourth Boy. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Open Book Festival. Looking forward to another beautiful literary occasion!
LONE WOLF LIVING
by Werner Pretorius
illustrated by Dawn Bolton
Introducing Lone Wolf Living™
Sign up for the programme today and your life will be instantly more rewarding and less miserable. Take a look at our Platinum Package starring James Bond, who, as it turns out, is from Pretoria West, and Bernie de Villiers, who is falling in love with all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. Our Gold Package offers UFOs over Jansenville and sinister nightly encounters in Cape Town. Don’t miss the exodus to Mars or get stuck at an outpost left to fend for yourself while, on a distant planet, betrayals and a betrothal take place. Buy now and avoid disappointment!
Werner Pretorius lands with this collection of lost loves and eerie worlds. Broken hearts and peril combine in these stories that scratch beneath the surface of the mundane to find the crawling things that keep us up at night.
About the author
WERNER PRETORIUS holds degrees in Publishing and English from the University of Pretoria and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. His stories and short fiction have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Lone Wolf Living is his first collection. He lives and works in Cape Town.
About the illustrator
DAWN BOLTON is a multi-faceted creative working in various media. She is a skilled jeweller, hand-crafting items in metals and recycled plastics. Her visual art language includes painting, pencil and ink drawing, and embroidery. This is her first collection of digital drawings.
Publication date: September 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0370-9172-8
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE is a collection of anarchic essays written by a new generation of everyday thinkers, activists and scholars who are figuring out their relationship to feminism. It is a radical appraisal of the home and a call to critically rethink the mechanisms that govern the ‘private’. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the home as decolonial space.
CONTRIBUTORS: Ijeoma Chidi Opara • Shakeelah Ismail • Mbali Mazibuko • Chan Croeser • Aneeqa Abrahams • Simphiwe Rens • Cassidy Robinson • Imologang M. Morulane • Nada Faleni • Waratwa Zanokuhle Miya • Ché Adams • Chelsea Holland • Charisse Louw • Kiasha Naidoo • Ernst van der Wal • Joy Watson
PRAISE for Burning Down the House:
The house in South Africa is an intimate, bordered thing, abrupt with nearness. At home in this taunting, compulsive setting, the chapters in Burning Down the House inhabit the everyday in undaunted and visionary ways. In my own agony of unrootedness in which feminism has been an anchor, I found their writing at once unmooring and consoling. This is a book I am turning into an architecture and a map. — GABEBA BADEROON, author of The History of Intimacy
This intergenerational conversation about the home as a political and contradictory space presents us with opportunity to ask critical questions and to think of what it means to become better humans in the world. — DINA LIGAGA, author of Women, Visibility and Morality in Kenyan Popular Media
In refusing the ideology and contradiction of home offered to us, they offer a feminist reimagining of home that we must fight and love for, just that vision of a home that we may eventually embody for a new generation. — PROF PEACE KIGUWA, Psychology,
University of the Witwatersrand
Stirringly intimate, it is a powerful reminder that our feminist architectural imagination is one of our most urgent and precious tools to seize upon in our ongoing question for liberation and equality. — DAPHNE A. BROOKS, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution:
The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
In ‘Bringing Feminist Theory Home’, the introduction to Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed urges us to think, feel, work and live differently – at the same time that we ‘burn down’ the doctrine and relationships that oppress us. This book, drawing together a range of essays that expose heteropatriarchal, colonial and classist assumptions about home, responds powerfully to Ahmed’s call. — DESIREE LEWIS, Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape
Publication date: September 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0370-9371-5
The shortlist for the CANEX Prize for Publishing in Africa — honouring the publishers who bring bold, brilliant African stories to the world — has been announced and we are thrilled that Thobeka Yose’s In Silence My Heart Speaks is among the selected titles. Congratulations to all shortlisted authors and publishers!
Thobeka, literary love and gratitude for the grace, courage and compassion with which you have shared your story with readers!
Meet all five unforgettable books chosen by the judging panel, chaired by Prof. Egara Kabaji:
• ‘No Pink in a Rainbow’ by Angel Patricks Amegbe, published by Masobe Books – A profound meditation on loss and the enduring power of quiet love, beautifully crafted both in prose and in print.
• ‘Dear Zimi’ by Chiziterem Chijioke, published by Quramo Publishing – A tender, courageous story of motherhood and resilience, positioning Chijioke as a significant voice in contemporary African literature.
• ‘The Comrade’s Wife’ by Barbara Boswell, published by Jacana Media – A bold, emotionally honest narrative that confronts personal and political betrayal in post-apartheid South Africa with feminist clarity.
• ‘Broken: Not a Halal Love Story’ by Fatima Bala, published by Masobe Books – A moving exploration of faith, identity, and forbidden love, balancing personal truth with spiritual devotion.
• ‘In Silence My Heart Speaks’ by Thobeka Yose, published by Karavan Press – A luminous memoir tackling mental health, abuse, betrayal, and sexual identity with honesty and defiance.
The winner will be revealed at CANEX@IATF2025 in Algiers, Algeria (4–10 September 2025) – the ultimate gathering for Africa’s creative industries.
Whether you’re a reader, writer, or culture lover, these books belong on your list.
Wonderful advice by Cathy Park Kelly, author of Boiling a Frog Slowly:
I only went to the monthly literary event, a conversation between author James Whyle, author of We Two from Heaven, and John Maytham, a local radio personality, at our local library because I had to.
I’m on the Friends of Fish Hoek Library committee and we were on duty one recent wintery Saturday morning.
The blurb of the book had done the opposite of grab me – words on the back like ‘palimpsest’ and ‘four-part fugue’ had convinced me it was not my kind of book. It sounded like hard work to read, and too ‘literary’ to enjoy.
But the interview with the author, James Whyle, by resonant-voiced and insightful John Maytham, convinced me otherwise. Whyle’s responses to the questions were sometimes rambling, sometimes off-beat, but always candid and thought-provoking. And so I bought the book.
Continue reading: “The one thing that will sell your story …”
It is time for the Prince Albert Leefees again (29-31 August 2025) and we are delighted that Andrew Robert Wilson features on the programme with his debut novel, The Fourth Boy, which is partly set in Prince Albert and the surroundings.
He will be in conversation with Karina M. Szczurek on Saturday, 30 August, 9:00-9:40AM.
Full festival programme:
Our first book event with the wonderful Pippa Smith of The Book Revue will be taking place next Wednesday at 11.30AM in the Christchurch Constantia Hall and will feature Frankie Murrey with her second collection of stories, A Collection of Gaps, published in a limited box edition. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Open Book Festival. You don’t want to miss this special celebration!
There’s this moon in the sky. And I want to say – not now,
moon, I’ve got work to do. But you know the moon. She never
listens. So I sit and watch her for a while. Admire those curves.
Whisper secrets and cigarette smoke love.
— from ‘Letter to the Night’
A COLLECTION OF GAPS
by FRANKIE MURREY
ISBN (Box Edition): 978-1-0370-9173-5
Publication date: 12 August 2025
FRANKIE MURREY worked in the book retail sector for many years before becoming the coordinator of Open Book Festival, which takes place every year in early September in Cape Town. In 2015, her work was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She resigned from Open Book Festival at the end of 2019 and started her own company, FM Project Management. Through this company, she has since been curating or managing creative events and projects that align with her interests. She also returned to Open Book in 2022, a space she’d missed intensely. She won the HSS Award for Best Emerging Author in the Fiction Category for her authorial debut, Everyone Dies, in 2024. A Collection of Gaps is her second volume of stories and will be first published in a special, limited edition as a box containing stories and other treasures.
The Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists have been announced and we are delighted that they feature five Karavan Press titles. Congratulations to all longlisted authors!
Thank you to all who make these awards possible!
Mountains of gratitude to Karavan Press authors on the lists:
FICTION
Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (co-published with Holland House Books)
Who Looks Inside by Anna Stroud
Good Hope by Nick Clelland
NON-FICTION
In Silence My Heart Speaks by Thobeka Yose
Dayspring by C. J. Driver (co-published with uHlanga Press)
For all details, see: Sunday Times Literary Awards
karavanpress.com 