Happy publication day to Andile Cele and Holland House Books! Today, Andile’s debut novel, Braids & Migraines, runner-up in The Island Prize for unpublished African novelists 2023, is officially making its way into the world. Together with Protea Distribution, we are delighted to be the South African distribution partner for the moving debut novel. Please join us on Thursday, 24 April 2025, for the Cape Town launch of Braids & Migraines at The Book Lounge. Andile will be in conversation with Karen Jennings, founder of The Island Prize. Can’t wait!
Akhona’s Journey – A true life story from the Lulibo Project is about a young girl who grows up in a township and faces difficulties that threaten her childhood and family life. Through this seven-part book and the accompanying animated video, discover the profound impact of her experiences and the critical choices she makes to forge ahead.
In partnership with ACT Ubumbano, Lulibo Project is launching this series along with a transformative resource pack, which is intended to help educators and facilitators guide conversations and activities with young people about the issues raised in the series. The purpose is to support young people in difficult circumstances to avoid the challenges Akhona faces and to prevent and reduce the harm related to crime and exploitation.
The launch of Akhona’s Journey is not just about a series: it’s about igniting change. And that’s why the authors – Pharie Sefali and Deborah Ewing – created the resource pack, designed to equip activists and community members with the tools to spark thought-provoking conversations and inspire young people to become agents of change in their community.
If you are a bookseller, please contact Protea Distribution to order copies of Akhona’s Journey. If you are a reader / educator / activist, please ask your local bookshop to order the book for you via Protea Distribution.
WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE THAT KARAVAN PRESS IS THE SOUTH AFRICAN DISTRIBUTION PARTNER FOR BRAIDS & MIGRAINES BY ANDILE CELE, RUNNER-UP FOR THE ISLAND PRIZE2023.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“A novel of insight and emotion. Cele has the talent to both shatter and uplift, making her an invaluable new voice in South African literature.” The Island Prize Judges
“The beauty of this novel is that while it takes a close-up look at human strife, in doing so it shines a light on the humanity we all share.” From the Foreword by Rachel Edwards
When Nomandla is awarded a scholarship to attend the prestigious Cameron House for Girls in Durban, she thinks her life will improve. Instead it falls apart. Growing up in Ziyabuya township, Nomandla battles poverty, racism, and her own mental health. She is pursued by visions which result in her being hospitalised, and is then made to accompany her father on Saturdays to his gardening job at the home of the Smith family. It is here that she first encounters Casey, a girl who will play a significant role in turning her life upside down, destroying her hope of a better future. Meanwhile, at Cameron House, Nomandla learns that, as a scholarship girl, she is expected to showcase gratitude as well as her culture, being regarded as little more than a display of transformation, unity and acceptance. Unfortunately, the reality is very different.
Andile Cele’s beautiful debut novel considers the complexities around identity, its ties to shame, grief, and to South Africa’s painful history. Braids & Migraines follows Nomandla as she comes to a place of personal understanding and acceptance, without compromise.
South African distribution partner: Karavan Press
Publisher: Holland House Books, UK
Publication date: 17 April 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7391047-6-4
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDILE CELE is a writer and communications specialist, born and raised in Stanger, KwaZulu-Natal. She was born in 1986, when apartheid was nearing its end – to a mother who has worked as a domestic worker all her adult life. She has three siblings; one of them, a brother, is autistic and nonverbal. Andile’s advocacy for mental health awareness stems from the experiences they faced as a family – with a member who was and still is, for the most part, misunderstood. Andile has a degree in Journalism from the Tshwane University of Technology, and a Creative Writing and Theory of Literature degree from the University of South Africa. She is an MA candidate at Stellenbosch University, where she is examining the depiction of intergenerational trauma in selected South African women’s writing. She is the current holder of the Gwen Knowles-Williams Bursary, administered by the English Academy of Southern Africa. She dedicates her writing to her mother. Her short fiction has been published in Botsotso and Short.Sharp.Stories.
If you are a bookseller, please contact BOOKSITE to order copies of Braids & Migraines. If you are a reader, please ask your local bookshop to order the book for you via Booksite.
Together with the Protea Distribution Team, Tamsin Doubell (on the very left above) has been a supportive, caring and significant behind-the-scenes driving force of Karavan Press’s success. I have known Tamsin in her bookseller days for well over a decade and have been working with her at Protea Distribution for the past five years. Today marks her last day at Protea Distribution, and I cannot express how sorry I am to see her go. All I can say is: THANK YOU, Tamsin! – for everything you have done for Karavan Press and our authors and books! May the next chapter in your life be a great adventure. We will miss you!
WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE THAT KARAVAN PRESS IS THE SOUTH AFRICAN DISTRIBUTION PARTNER FOR SAND ROSES BY HAMZA KOUDRI, RUNNER-UP FOR THE ISLAND PRIZE2022.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Tourists know it as the City of Joy. For Ouled Nail dancers, Bousaada is a city of horrors.
It is 1931 when two sisters arrive in Bousaada bursting with dreams of becoming successful dancers. But the city, occupied by the ruthless French colonial army, changes their lives forever.
When they kill a soldier in self-defence, Fahima and Salima must outsmart the French Colonel who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. The sisters are driven further into a cycle of violence with every attempt to hide their crime. Risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones, the dancers find themselves at the heart of a civilizational clash.
Sand Roses is a tale of resistance, sisterhood and the shameful past of two colliding nations. This extraordinarily immersive narrative thrusts its reader into the Algerian city of Bousaada during the 1930s and the story of the Nailiya dancers.
“… an extraordinarily immersive narrative, and a fascinating story of the little-known Ouled Nail dancers.”
HAMZA KOUDRI has an MA in English Literature and Civilization and has been working in education and international development since 2008. Research for his novel took the better part of a decade, seeking traces of a muted past between the folds of visual documentation and oral histories. In 2022, Sand Roses was shortlisted for the Island Prize for unpublished African authors. Currently serving as the Country Director with the British Council in Algeria, he oversees a portfolio of English, STEM, higher education and cultural programmes, working closely with public sector teachers and institutions. Over the years, he has created and led courses and projects for youth and educators across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and beyond.
During a year-long fellowship in the United States, he helped establish a mentorship programme for a social equity course at Penn State University and a teacher training certificate program for Indiana University. He also took a creative writing course with award-winning author, Elizabeth Kadetsky, during which time he started working on Sand Roses.
If you are a bookseller, please contact BOOKSITE to order copies of Sand Roses. If you are a reader, please ask your local bookshop to order the book for you via Booksite.
THE BOOK In these twenty short stories of inquiry, transgression, osmosis and transformation, we embrace the fluid nature of humanity.
THE CONTRIBUTORS The anthology’s contributors are largely established South African authors who have a track record in the publishing industry, as well as exciting emerging writers. The writers include Peter-Adrian Altini, Diane Awerbuck, K. L. Bohle, Anna Hug, Kingsley Khobotlo, Yuwinn Kraukamp, Alex Latimer, Keith Oliver Lewis, Lerato Mahlangu, Shari Maluleke, David Medalie, Mabel Mnensa, Lerato Moletsane, Nadine Moonsamy, Shanice Ndlovu, Vuyokazi Ngemntu, Robyn Perros, Bridget Pitt, Lorraine Sithole, Jarred Thompson and Andrew Robert Wilson.
THE EDITORS JOANNE HICHENS has to date edited seven highly praised anthologies of South African short stories, including Bad Company, Bloody Satisfied, Adults Only and Die Laughing. She has published several crime novels, including Divine Justice and Sweet Paradise, and a memoir, Death and the After Parties.
KARINA M. SZCZUREK is the (co)editor of, among others, Touch: Stories of Contact, Encounters with André Brink, Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa and Hair: Weaving and Unpicking Stories of Identity. She is also the author of Invisible Others and The Fifth Mrs Brink.
FOREWORD: Lorraine Sithole
ISBN/EAN: 978-0-9946805-7-0 PUBLICATION DATE: May 2023 PUBLISHER: Tattoo Press
TATTOO PRESS is an independent small publisher, specializing in contemporary South African short fiction.
If you are a bookseller, please contact BOOKSITE to order copies of FLUID: The Freedom to Be. If you are a reader, please ask your local bookshop to order the book for you via Booksite.
WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE THAT KARAVAN PRESS IS THE SOUTH AFRICAN DISTRIBUTION PARTNER FOR DOV AND JOANNE FEDLER’S HAUNTING NOVEL, GAGMAN.
A prisoner in a WWII concentration camp discovers a superpower that could keep him alive – he can make the commandant laugh by telling jokes. Pushed to ends of his wit and humanity, Gagman is propelled into a spiralling madness in which he would sell his soul for a gag simply to live another day.
Evoking themes from The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Fedler weaves the story of a Faustian bargain brokered in hell, where redemption only comes in the form of a punchline. He must stay funny – or die.
Enhanced by Fedler’s own haunting illustrations, Gagman masterfully juxtaposes humour and pathos, while exploring themes of survivor guilt, desperate determination and the search for the meaning of life in the wake of the Holocaust. Swapping his yellow star for a tattered comic book, Gagman roams the new world and our consciousness determined to find answers to the deepest questions about loss, hope and belonging.
Gagman is a touching and unique tale of survival through unimaginable horror.
“Gagman is a daring and uncompromising work, both allegory and achingly real — a confronting, haunting, and disturbing descent into hell, drawing on word and image to create a world in which to remain sane one must go mad. Dov Fedler totally inhabits his protagonist, and pushes his craft and his imagination to the limits to expose the horrors of Nazism, and to explore the redemptive power of art, humanity and humour.” — Arnold Zable
“Dov Fedler, in Gagman, has plunged the reader into a crazy world where the Holocaust collides with Superman and Nietzche and the result is a virtuosic graphic and written allegory. It is a very original take on a highly contested history – who can tell the story of the Holocaust? Through a pastiche of Talmudic scholarship and confronting black humour, Gagman is a way of looking into the abyss. A 21st century Scheherazade, a tale for our times.” — Sydney Jewish Museum
“Gagman is a searing and brilliant book which does more to expose the horrors of the Nazis than any book since Eli Wiesel’s Night.” — Alan Gold
“With a humour so searing and audacious it made me gasp, revered cartoonist Dov Fedler bears witness to the horrors of the Holocaust in this extraordinary work of startling originality and ingenuity.” — Suzanne Leal, author of The Deceptions
“Gagman is an extraordinary piece of work — strange and haunting and uniquely itself.” — John Maytham
“Can we transform suffering into art and, more outrageously, into humour? Two Jews walk into my heart with a book that made me laugh and cry at the same time. Gagman treads the edge of the forbidden joke, speaking to the histories of all marginalized people. A book of bitter and sweet nuance in which ‘everything is speakable’.” — Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DOV FEDLER, one of South Africa’s legendary political cartoonists (now retired), has been working on this story for 35 years. His earliest dream was to work for Walt Disney but he ended up working for The Star newspaper as their cartoonist in the early 1970’s instead, and had a career that spanned half a century. Gagman is his fourth book. His previous titles include his memoir, Out of Line (Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2015), If You Can Write, You Can Draw (Joanne Fedler Media, 2018) and Starlite Memories (Tafelberg, 2020).
JOANNE FEDLER is an internationally bestselling author of 14 books, speaker and publisher. Her book Things Without a Name has been optioned for a TV mini-series. She is Dov’s writing mentor, editor and middle daughter.
If you are a bookseller, please contact BOOKSITE to order copies of Gagman. If you are a reader, please ask your local bookshop to order the book for you via Booksite.
We are delighted to announce that, together with Protea Distribution, Karavan Press is the South African distribution partner for Penny Haw’s novels, Nicko and The Wilderness Between Us.
Long-time journalist and columnist, and latter-day author, PENNY HAW has written for many South African publications including Business Day, Financial Mail and Sunday Times. Her children’s book, Nicko, was first published in 2017. It was followed by her debut novel for adults, The Wilderness Between Us, which again expounds her interest in strong women and her love for animals and nature. Penny’s two works of historical fiction will be published by Sourcebooks in 2022 and 2023. She lives in Hout Bay and, when not writing, Penny can be found hiking in the mountains or to the beach with her husband and three dogs.
Based on the true story of Alice Kirk and Nicko, the baby vervet monkey who was abandoned near Alice’s farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, Nicko tells the remarkable tale of inter-species friendships between humans and animals, both domestic and wild.
Author Penny Haw is Alice’s granddaughter. Here, in Alice’s voice, Penny retells the story of Nicko and his antics, adventures and misadventures with his many friends, as she recalls hearing it throughout her childhood.
It is a heart-warming and humorous story about the love and playfulness of animals and their human friends, which will delight children and animal lovers of all ages.
Praise for the book
“The perfect antidote to modern life with all its stresses, Nicko is on my bookshelf next to Jock of the Bushveld. It’s that kind of a special heart-warming African animal tale. Nicko and his friends will worm their way into your heart and never leave.” Consuelo Roland, author of The Good Cemetery Guide and Lady Limbo
“Oh, what a pleasure! Full of common sense and understanding, and adorned by soft pencil drawings, which catch character and expression deliciously. A gentle delight to read in this modern world.” Jay Heale, reviewer of youth literature for Bookchat, the Children’s Book Network and Book Choice on Fine Music Radio
“A great read because it’s a book for all ages and it is written seemingly effortlessly. I found myself completely invested in the characters while glued to the edge of my seat. Nicko’s playful, mischievous personality leads him into many adventures with his hilarious friends. I greatly recommend this book to anyone.” Mia de Klerk, Grade 5, St Cyprian’s School
Faye and her friends’ anorexic daughter Clare are thrown together when a flood separates them from their hiking group in the remote, mountainous Tsitsikamma region of South Africa. With Clare critically injured, Faye is compelled to overcome her self-doubt and fears to take care of the younger woman, who opens her heart to Faye.
As their new friendship takes the women on an unexpected journey of discovery, the rest of the group wrestles with the harrowing aftermath of their own near tragedy. When the hiking party is reunited, their number is reduced by one.
Juxtaposing physical and psychological intrigue, The Wilderness Between Us is a tale of two fragile women who unexpectedly find clarity, independence and renewed purpose as they fight to survive. It is a fast-moving story about family, friendship, adventure and the healing power of nature and compassion.
Praise for the book
“A thrilling read fraught with the tension of unravelling relationships, betrayal, broken bones and callously revealed secrets.” Tracy Going, television anchor, and author of Brutal Legacy
“Fans of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild should definitely add Haw’s book to their TBR list.” Diane Barnes, author of More Than
“I expected a tale of family, friendship and adventure, but the added layers of emotional angst and deep heart-searching of the main players took it to a whole new level.” Karen Byrom, The People’s Friend and National Federation of Occupational Pensioners Members’ Magazine, Scotland
Publisher: Köehler Books
Publication date: July 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64663-414-9
If you are a bookseller, please contact Protea Distribution to order copies of Penny Haw’s books. If you are a reader, please ask your local bookshop to order the books for you via Protea Distribution.
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