Books published by Modjaji Books

The Only Magic We Know is a celebration of all the poets Modjaji has published. This anthology offers a taste of the range and diversity of the poems that have appeared in the individual poets' collections. The authors include:ingrid andersen • marike beyers • melissa butler • margaret clough • christine coates • colleen crawford cousins • phillippa yaa de villiers • isobel dixon • sarah frost • elisa galgut • dawn garisch • megan hall • kerry hammerton • khadija tracey heeger • colleen higgs • eliza kentridge • haidee kotze • sindiwe magona • michelle mcgrane • jenna mervis • joan metelerkamp • helen moffett • malika ndlovu • tariro ndoro • azila talit reisenberger • shirmoney rhode • beverly rycroft • arja salafranca • karin schimke • katleho kano shoro • thandi sliepen • annette snyckers • jeannie wallace mckeown • crystal warren • robin winckel-mellish • wendy woodward • makhosazana xaba • fiona zerbst

Fall Awake is a study in contrasts, exploring belonging and unbelonging; tracking the coming to terms with a fluid sexuality, and examining how relationships work or don't work. Jeannie McKeown also confronts head-on the terrifying life-changing experience that is motherhood. Sometimes irreverent, always heartfelt, the poems in this collection speak to a particular life, and to what it is to reach the middle of one, and still find yourself with new horizons and more to learn.

A man is travelling to Africa from Europe. And yet it is also about waiting - waiting for Africa.Volker, a German, leaves his home in Frankfurt for Windhoek. He leaves a lover, he is leaving for a long time, and he does not have a return ticket. He does not know anything about Africa, to him it is one country, not a continent, neither does he really know where he is going to; he just knows that he wants to leave Europe.Lufthansa, the airline that carries him stops at Charles de Gaulle airport and here he waits and waits and waits. And in the airport he observes and describes and thinks. The text is a stream of consciousness, Volker's thoughts. Interspersed with this are stories of people he encounters in the airport; a murderer, a terrorist, a person with dwarfism, a trans woman, a porn star, a terrorist, a child trafficker, a paedophile. All are connected, with each other, with Volker and with us, the readers.Adair's novel is innovative in form, self-conscious and self-critical; it challenges conventional Western assumptions that all good novels have a clear story line, a good plot and fully rounded characters.

A page turning, gender and genre-bending novel set on the Cape Flats in Capetown, South Africa; a story of people who live in a place of violence which involves drugs, corrupt clergy, queerness, friendships - and how these survive in a society that is dysfunctional due to historical social problems; very much a novel of now, the 21st century. A book that will change the literary landscape of South Africa.This work is based on the research supported by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences

This is Joan Metelerkamp's ninth book of poems. Her previous book, also published by Modjaji, Now the World Takes these Breaths (2014) was one of three on the short list for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her poems have appeared in many South African anthologies. As well as poems she has written reviews and essays about South African poetry, and read in most festivals in South Africa as well as in Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. She has been an associate of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa, as a part-time teacher on the MA in creative writing at Rhodes University; before that, for five years, she edited New Coin poetry journal.

Three incarnations of women: a mother, a daughter and an old crone. A haunting of past, present and future selves. Drawing loosely on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, this poetic text explores the process of individuation, the inevitability of a young girl's journey into the shadow and into the unknown, of the bonds that connect mothers and children to each other, of loss and the dense beautiful soaring life that we are all traveling through.

You wear silencesitting on the concrete floor of a librarya shroud like speechLanguage does not belong to you…An honest exploration of dislocation and (un)belonging in its forms: exile from language, exile from country, and exile from sanity. In her debut collection of poetry, Ndoro divides and intermingles national and personal history in an attempt to reach herself. Within its fragmented prose and lyrical poems, Agringanda is not only a celebrated capture of language but also of its intriguing subversion as it navigates meetings of class, gender, nationality and race.

Two women, one from the Netherlands and the other one from the Free State Goldfields, meet in a hospital hall in Bloemfontein. Fifty years later Hester tells the story of how life formed them as nurses, community workers, bakers, artists and life partners.In this memoir, she tells of the key moments in her life that led her to leave the strictures of her upbringing in order to find out who she was. Her decisions take her from the Free State to District Six and Venda, to the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to Heideveld and Hanover Park and, eventually, to McGregor. Her humble story tells of the spiritual isolation of all "refugees" who leave the irreversible values of their "home" (whether physical or ideological) and find new ways to create a life. It also describes the wonder of finding love and a partner along the way.

This is the fourth edition of the African Small Publishers' Catalogue. The catalogue is a showcase of the variety and extent of independent and small publishing in Africa.

Her poems are as subtle and intimately telling as the differences between the three languages in which she writes and battles to live and dream. These verses touch and tug at one another like the Afrikaans of her childhood, the German of her husband and the South African English of her homeland. They agree to differ in all sorts of nuanced ways.

The book contains listings of well over 40 different publishers. There are useful resources for writers and publishers. The back of the catalogue contains articles and short essays about the publishing scene in mostly, but not only Anglophone Africa. There are also items and innovations that are of interest to writers, booksellers, publishers, librarians, and all of those who are interested in the world of African publishing and book development.

Carol Trehorne's only child, Max, is in ICU with severe burns. Max, a performance artist, has set himself alight. He recovers but it becomes clear that he is planning further performances that will put him at risk of serious injury or death. Carol, a single parent and a GP in a busy suburban practice, is worried that her son is not the genius his friends think he is, but might be on drugs or going psychotic. As she discusses her concerns with her son's psychiatrist, she wonders if her past behaviour, in particular her relationship with the adventurous and anti-social Jack, has influenced Max's determination to use his body as a site of violent art in the pursuit of revelation. Carol cannot accept that Max's self-harm will have any effect other than to add to the meaningless violence in the world. Accident raises questions about what kind of life is worth living and what death is worth dying. It explores the different responses artists and scientists can have to violence and self-destructive behaviour, and throws into sharp relief the difficulties parents face when their children me decisions that appear incomprehensible.

This edition is a re-release of Xaba's first poetry collection (first publised in 2005) due to demand from readers and academics. A powerful, ground breaking work that placed Xaba firmly as an important voice the SA literary scene.WordsWhenever I take the pulseof my existence,feel the pinchof my persistenceagainst the grinding grainof my resistanceto the pounding punchof their insistence,words transmit to mea drumroll of deliverance.

Greenwashing, corporate intransigence and bloody secrets. Maggie Cloete,s back. After working in Berlin and Joburg, she returns to present-day Pietermaritzburg as the day news editor for The Gazette. When a well-known environmentalist commits suicide, Maggie finds herself caught in the crossfire of conflicting interests. This escalates as loggers for Sentinel, a local paper company, unearth a gruesome find in the forest. As South Africa,s present confronts its past, Maggie faces the most bitter surprise of her life.

In this second collection Messages from the Bees Robin Winckel-Mellish shows the same qualities as A Lioness at my Heels, but this time runs deeper, darker and stronger. She delves not only into the riotous colours of southern Africa: birds, bees and caracals, but also climate change, while different kinds of love are pinpointed. Her poems of loss and grief are candid and even sensuous, showing the beauty of simplicity in bleakness. Both delicate and reflective these poems honour the wild while retaining a deeply-felt sense of connection with all that is relevant to our lives.