Dear Joburg Readers,
Please join us for the Joburg launch of The Fourth Boy by Andrew Robert Wilson. Andrew will be in conversation with Michael Boyd, the author of The Weight of Shade.
LOVE BOOKS, Tuesday, 17 June 2025, 5.30 for 6PM
Hope to see you there!
The literary festival season continues and we are delighted to announce that the following Karavan Press authors will be participating in the Kingsmead Book Fair this year:
Meet the Freckolions and the Spots who are bitterly arguing over Face’s vast landscape. Then one day an alien craft descends on Face and sends the Freckolions and Spots into panic! SA actress Lisa Trudoux introduces her first charming and quirky children’s book Dot To Dot which teaches kids the invaluable lessons of self-love and kindness towards others in the most enchanting way.
Sewela Langeni (Making Friends with Feelings) provides a safe space for Jeffrey Rakabe (Led by Shepherds) and Thobeka Yose (In Silence My Heart Speaks) to chat about transferring pain to the page.
Amy Heydenrych (Chasing Marian) examines the creation of the powerful women at the centre of the works of Zukiswa Wanner (Love Marry Kill), Michelle Kekana (The Fragile Mental Health of Strong Women) and Qarnita Loxton (What’s Wrong with June?).
Penny Haw (Follow Me To Africa: A Novel), Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (The Creation of Half-Broken People) and Louisa Treger (The Paris Muse) discuss facets of historical fiction – beyond the period in which it’s set – that really matter with Michael Boyd (Weight of Shade).
Merle Levin (World According to Merle: Memoir of a Deliciously Daring Granny), Costa Ayiotis (Matriarchs, Meze and the Evil Eye: A Memoir) and Glenn Orsmond (Crash and Burn: A CEO’s Crazy Adventures in the SA Airline Industry) tell Karina Szczurek (Karavan Press) about their weird uncles and the strange lady from the office.
Peter-Adrian Altini (Salt Water Pool Boy) and Charl-Pierre Naudé (The Equality of Shadows) discuss style and complexity with Craig Higginson (The Ghost of Sam Webster).
Khaya Dlanga (Life is Like That Sometimes) and Gavin Evans (Son of a Preacher Man) tell Anna Stroud (Who Looks Inside) about what they have learned while writing about themselves.
Onke Mazibuko (Canary) follows Nick Clelland (Good Hope), Siya Khumalo (The Queer Book of Revelation) and Sam Wilson (The First Murder on Mars) into the detailed, fresh worlds of their books.
Queen bees Karina Szczurek (Karavan Press), Melinda Ferguson (Melinda Ferguson Books) and Zukiswa Wanner (Paivapo Publishing) underline the importance of curating stories from a feminine perspective with Sewela Langeni (Book Circle Capital).
The Karavan is hitting the road and celebrating all things literary in the wonderful Book Town of Richmond at the end of October/beginning of November. It is time for Madibaland @ BookBedonnerd Literary Festival again and we hope to see many of your there.
Karavan Press titles on the programme:
THURSDAY, 31 OCTOBER 2024
| 08h00 – 08h55 | COFFEE & WRITING WORKSHOP WITH KARINA M. SZCZUREK |
| 12h10 – 12h35 | Michael Boyd, The Weight of Shade |
| 12h35 – 13h00 | Thobeka Yose, In Silence my Heart Speaks |
FRIDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2024
| 08h00 – 08h55 | COFFEE & WRITING WORKSHOP WITH KARINA M. SZCZUREK |
SATURDAY, 2 NOVEMBER 2024
| 14h00 – 14h30 | C. J. Driver, Dayspring |
| 14h30 – 15h00 | Gail Gilbride, Cat Therapy |
To see the exciting list of all participants, click here: Authors
For the full programme, click here: BookBedonnerd Literary Festival
The 2024 Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists have been announced on Sunday, and the Fiction Prize longlist features four Karavan Press titles as well as one title we distribute locally:
Congratulations to Mike, Andrew, Sarah, Nick, Lethu and all other longlisted Authors!
This is the 21st year of the Sunday Times fiction prize. The criteria stipulate that the winning novel should be one of “rare imagination and style … a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction”.
Siphiwo Mahala – Chair
Mahala is an award-winning author, playwright and academic, with a PhD in English Literature. He is the author of the novel, When a Man Cries (2007), two short story collections, African Delights and Red Apple Dreams and Other Stories, and two critically acclaimed plays, The House of Truth and Bloke and His American Bantu. His latest book Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi (2022), won the Creative Non-Fiction Award at the SA Literary Awards. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, Senior Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study and editor of Imbiza Journal for African Writing.
Michele Magwood
In her long career Magwood has worked in radio, magazines and television and for 20 years was the Books Editor of the Sunday Times. She is the winner of two Mondi awards and the SALA award for literary journalism. A sought-after interviewer at book festivals, she currently works as a writer and editor and assesses manuscripts for publishers. She writes a books column for Business Day Wanted magazine. Magwood has a BA Honours degree from UKZN.
Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele
Cele is an experienced doctor with a demonstrated history of working in the pharmaceutical & health care industry. She is skilled in clinical skills, quality patient care, analytical skills, communication, and medicine. She holds a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery – MBBCH focused in Medicine from University of the Witwatersrand and a postgraduate diploma (cum laude) in medicine development at University of Stellenbosch. She is also the co-founder of The Cheeky Natives, a literary podcast primarily focused on the review, curatorship and archiving of black literature. In 2019, she was named one of the Mandela Washington Fellows to undertake a prestigious fellowship in the United States. She was also named one of the Mail & Guardian’s top 200 Young South Africans in 2019.
Dear Readers of Joburg,
The super-talented Anna Stroud is launching her stunning debut novel, Who Looks Inside, at Love Books on 19 June 2024. She will be in conversation with Michael Boyd, the author of The Weight of Shade.
Please join them for this celebration!
Literary love,
Karavan Press
PS Do not forget to RSVP.
About the book:
The news of her mother’s death pulls Hannah back from South Korea to her childhood home in the Karoo where she discovers that she has never escaped her abusive father and passive mother. That, in fact, she has been there all along, baking bread and raising a son whose father might be a local farmer she is having an affair with. Her world unravels as she struggles to separate the life she has built for herself from the one she survived. Unsettling, eerie and evocative, Who Looks Inside explores themes of childhood trauma in a working-class Afrikaans family.
“Poetic, atmospheric and haunting—Who Looks Inside is an intricate and compelling exploration of family trauma, small-town secrets and the decisions that seal our destinies.” — JENNIFER MALEC
Read the full article and interview by Liani Jansen van Rensburg here:
I have started to walk everywhere. I tell myself it is because I want to research my next novel. I’ve had an idea, and it involves walking the streets of the city. It’s got a big concept, but I want it to be written with a low-key, tangible realism. There are angels and monsters. I want the reader to experience Johannesburg from the ground. So, I walk to the shops whenever we need anything. I find myself making excuses to go, despite the winter darkness approaching earlier and earlier. Even better. But it’s not just the unwritten novel that pulls me onto the road. It’s not that I need to be healthier now. It’s not that I want to get my 10 000 steps each day. The real reason is more complicated. I want to hold onto the present. Be present. Slow down time. Slow it down so much that I might somehow return to a time before now, when I used to walk more.
I listen to the city move around me. The ever-present highway hums in the distance, in time to my step and the passing cars and the other walkers. To feel a part of this great madness, I realise, makes me feel smaller. And that’s what I need right now. As I pass under the shadows of the bare trees in the pale winter sun, I am reminded of what one of the main characters from my novel says: “I don’t know what to believe anymore … it all feels so heavy on my mind. The weight.” Although I was able to explain this away with convoluted literary ideas when asked about it at book launches, for the first time I understand it for myself. The weight of thoughts can have a bearing on one’s spirit …
Continue reading: LitNet
Nothing – not headwinds delaying flights, nor loadshedding threatening with darkness – could distract from the welcoming, warm atmosphere of the launch of Michael Boyd’s Cape Town launch of The Weight of Shade at Exclusive Books Cavendish. Readers, family and friends arrived to celebrate this mysterious, beautiful debut novel. Michael was in conversation with Penny Haw.
Thank you to Linda McCullough and the EB team for hosting the event. Thank you, Penny and Mike, for the fascinating conversation. And thank you to everyone who attended!
Dear Cape Town, You will not want to miss this! We had such a great time launching the book in Johannesburg, and we hope to make the Cape Town launch just as special. Mike will be in conversation with Penny Haw. Can't wait! See you on the 15th!
karavanpress.com 