By Sewela Langeni
A few weeks into 2025, we have already been teased by local publishers on some of the exciting reads to look forward to. We hope that you were able to finish your TBR (To Be Read) stack from 2024 because 2025 is promising to be yet another lit year when it comes to local literature. Whatever your taste, you are guaranteed to find something to enjoy reading.
In this compelling and harrowing account of a whistleblower, Onke Mazibuko creates a nail-biting, paranoid thriller about a good man pushed to the limit. Drawing from all too real instances of corruption and collapse, this book shows what such a system does to those who still listen to their conscience. What is a good man to do when your own company made the bullet with your name on it?
Onke Mazibuko is a psychologist, author and educator. He has experience working in state owned entities, which informed the writing of Canary. His first book, The Second Verse, received glowing reviews from the press and public. Penguin Random House
Azania Mafu receives a call from former politician Joseph ‘Lefty’ Mafu’s lawyer to notify her of Lefty’s death. Why on earth would a father she never knew make her the sole heir to his estate? She decides to go to Knysna to seek answers about his life and the circumstances surrounding his death. But soon her quest for closure becomes intertwined with detective Florian Welter’s investigation. Detective Welter was recently transferred to Knysna after his dyslexia had led to a mistrial in an important case. He is called to investigate Mafu’s apparent suicide, but there are various inconsistencies at the crime scene. The duo must follow the threads and hope the clues lead them to whoever is pulling the strings. Kwela Books
Juliette Mnqeta is a Xhosa chick from the Miya Clan. She works as a legal transcriptionist and isiXhosa translator. If The Dead Could Talk is her debut novel and a product of her obsession with the mystery
crime genre
Azania Mafu receives a call from former politician Joseph ‘Lefty’ Mafu’s lawyer to notify her of Lefty’s death. Why on earth would a father she never knew make her the sole heir to his estate? She decides to go to Knysna to seek answers about his life and the circumstances surrounding his death. But soon her quest for closure becomes intertwined with detective Florian Welter’s investigation. Detective Welter was recently transferred to Knysna after his dyslexia had led to a mistrial in an important case. He is called to investigate Mafu’s apparent suicide, but there are various inconsistencies at the crime scene. The duo must follow the threads and hope the clues lead them to whoever is pulling the strings. Kwela Books
Juliette Mnqeta is a Xhosa chick from the Miya Clan. She works as a legal transcriptionist and isiXhosa translator. If The Dead Could Talk is her debut novel and a product of her obsession with the mystery
crime genre
Life is like that sometimes draws readers into the unforgettable personal experiences that have shaped Khaya Dlanga’s world. Weaving heartfelt and often hilarious tales, from his rural Eastern Cape childhood to the profound losses he has faced as an adult, Khaya reflects on life’s unpredictability with warmth and wit.
The vivid stories explore love, loss, loyalty, forgiveness, tradition, chance, mischief, justice, responsibility and resilience, offering insights on relationships, identity and the lessons found in life’s toughest moments. Both deeply moving and laugh-out-loud funny, Life is like that sometimes is an exploration of personal growth, faith and the power of storytelling to find meaning in it all. PanMacMillan SA
Khaya Dlanga is the author of three previous books. His memoir, To Quote Myself, was shortlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize and These Things Really Do Happen To Me was a runaway bestseller. By day Dlanga is a marketing executive and has held senior positions in some of the country’s and world’s most recognisable brands.
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until, betrayed and broken-hearted, she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America, but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? Jonathan Ball Publishers
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions and many others