Modjaji Books – förlag

It is 1979. The first Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit on African soil is due to take place in Zambia, graced by Queen Elizabeth herself. Barely a week before this much anticipated event, a white British couple, Henry and Laura Hinckley, are brutally killed on their farm on the outskirts of the capital city, Lusaka. The unknown perpetrators are at large, their motive unclear. Fearing a media backlash, the British government applies pressure on the Zambian authorities to bring the culprits to book, threatening to cancel the Queenís trip altogether ñ a move that would result in huge embarrassment for the Zambian government. Detective Maxwell Chanda, head of the Special Crimes Investigative Unit, is the man tasked with leading the investigation. He is a wise, steady hand, but will he be able to piece together the seemingly disparate evidence in just five days? Will he be able to hold firm under the intense political pressure which insists on putting expediency above accuracy? Five Nights Before the Summit offers a rich tapestry of context and character in a story that engages the reader in the pursuit of justice.

Azila Talit Reisenberger is a Bible scholar, a rabbi, a mother, a wife, and a poet. In all these selves she grapples with translating her life from Hebrew to English and back again. Life in Translation is full of wry humour, longing, bitterness, sweetness, playfulness, and subversions of traditional meanings and texts - a delightful book that charms and surprises anew with each reading.

I'm gonna tell you all about it, Mom. I'm gonna tell it like I'm on the end of your bed, talking to you. I'm not gonna cover up, cause there's no need. You'll see how it's all a flippin miracle. The whole weird year. It's only one year in my life, Ma, but it's all the stuff you slept through when I was a kid. All the stuff you fished through when you got up. I'm warning you, Ma, this is the truth. Startling poetry in the grittiest of emotional word go ... raw, tender and laugh-out-loud Whiplash digs its nail into you from the funny - a kickarse gem of a book. Told with landscapes, Whiplash puts Farren on the map as a wordsmith of astonishing talent.

Malika Ndlovu takes us right into the heart of her grief - the loss of her third child, who was stillborn. The book breaks the silence around stillbirth, often seen as a non-event, something women are expected to "get over" as soon as possible, Invisible Earthquake is placed in the wider South African context by Sue Fawcus, who writes tenderly and expertly about stillbirth from the point of view of an obstetrician, and by Zubeida Bassadien and Muriel Johnstone, social workers who accompany women going through this shattering experience.

Sindiwe Magona's poems conspire with her. Even years after being written, they still seem warm from her lips, and it is this residue of her telling them that draws you into their confidence. From the languid innocence of the poems about her village, to her shattering images of Africa at war, Magona leads you headlong into her fireside circle where archetypes flicker like shadows on a face that has seen, and been. Please, Take Photographs is defiant and tender, horrific and homely, at once irreverent, outspoken and beautiful.

Oleander explores life's complexities, both beautiful and poisonous-love, death, art, the aftermath of war and genocide, travel, religion, revelation. More wide-ranging than Zerbst's previous volumes, Oleander charts experiences through which the self may be transformed.

Strange Fruit is a courageous debut with a remarkable range in theme and tone, from the nostalgic to the comedic to the bawdy, and to the angry, the melancholic and the steadfast and comforting. It will delight, shock, anger, induce laughter, shock more, delight more. And make you blush. It's a full range. There are poems of brutally honest self-scrutiny - the heart of the collection being a series of poems on the ageing body, loss of love and infertility - and there are poems that capture landscapes with imagist skill and the botanist's detail.

Burnt Offering is Joan Metelerkamp's seventh colllection of poems. The title comes from a poem in a cycle that embodies the labours of the medieval alchemists - heating and burning, transformation of passionate intensity, the search for an enduring element. In the process malignant doubt is burnt off, and what takes its place is trust in the everyday: "e;take this day, here, take it all its clarity, all its gold"e; - Like all of Metelerkamp's work, these generous poems draw on and weave together, with her distinctive energy and passion, the details of family and rural life, dreams, landscapes and journeys.

Melissa Butler lives in Cape Town and Pittsburgh, PA. In the US, she teaches kindergarten. In South Africa, she writes and works with pre schools in the Eastern Cape. She has a Masters degree in Curriculum Theory from Penn State University and a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. This is her first book of poetry.

The bed, dressed in hand sewn quilt or threadbare blanket, may in and of itself be memorable, but it is what happens in the bed ñ the sex and lovemaking, the dreams, the reading, the nightmares, the rest, giving birth and dying ñ which give ëbedí special meaning. Whether a bed is shared with a book, a child, a pet or a partner, whether lovers lie in ecstasy or indifference, whether ëbedí relates to intimacy or betrayal, it is memories and recollections of ëbedí, in whatever form, which have triggered the writing of these thirty stories by women from southern Africa. Well known writers Joanne Fedler, Sarah Lotz, Arja Salafranca, Rosemund Handler and Liesl Jobson will delight, but you will discover here new writers from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia, each with a unique voice as they cast light on the intimate lives of women living in this part of the world and the possibilities that are both available to and denied them. The BED BOOK of short stories ñ some quirky and tender, others traumatic or macabre ñ is the perfect companion to take to bed with you, to keep you reading long into the night.

Ingrid Andersen was born in Johannesburg, read for a degree in English literature at Wits and is presently completing her Masters. Her work has been published in literary journals for 16 years. Excision, her first volume of poetry, was published in 2004. Her influences include the French Romantic poets, Imagism and the writings of Basho. She is the founding editor of Incwadi, an SA journal that explores the interaction between poetry and image. An Anglican priest, she works in human rights, healing and reconciliation.

The bed, dressed in hand sewn quilt or threadbare blanket, may in and of itself be memorable, but it is what happens in the bed , the sex and lovemaking, the dreams, the reading, the nightmares, the rest, giving birth and dying , which give ,bed, special meaning. Whether a bed is shared with a book, a child, a pet or a partner, whether lovers lie in ecstasy or indifference, whether ,bed, relates to intimacy or betrayal, it is memories and recollections of ,bed,, in whatever form, which have triggered the writing of these thirty stories by women from southern Africa. Well known writers Joanne Fedler, Sarah Lotz, Arja Salafranca, Rosemund Handler and Liesl Jobson will delight, but you will discover here new writers from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia and Zambia, each with a unique voice as they cast light on the intimate lives of women living in this part of the world and the possibilities that are both available to and denied them. The BED BOOK of short stories , some quirky and tender, others traumatic or macabre , is the perfect companion to take to bed with you, to keep you reading long into the night.

Arja Salafranca is an accomplished writer, having twice won the Sanlam Literary Award in South Africa. The stories in her new book engage and reel in the reader on that 'thin line' from the start. The carefully drawn characters are haunting: Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, Cleo in love with a married man after all these years, and poor skinny Mark, as he sees his love teeter away from him.'Ten Minutes to Hate' tells of an armed robbery in a packed theatre, and its effect, emotionally and psychologically, on two of the people involved. 'Collage' is the story of a possessive love so fierce, that only death can resolve it. Searingly honest, sometimes painfully so.

Kerry Hammerton is a poet, writer and alternative health practitioner. She is a graduate of The University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and The College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (Reading, UK). Her poetry has been published in South African literary journals such as Carapace, New Contrast and New Coin, online at Litnet and Incwadi. She has also been a contributor to The Empty Tin Readings (May 2010) and The Poetry Project. These are the lies I told you is her fi rst poetry collection. Kerry has fewer wrinkles than she should have at her age , or so her friends tell her.

Ten stories. Ten voices. Ten diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans that country,s challenging history. In this thought provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others. From an old widower who seems content on the outside but feels that his world is unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled racial persecution in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobic sentiments in her township, This Place I Call Home, leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities. Even though these powerful stories are often characterised by hardship and personal loss, one cannot help but emerge inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit and the resilience of South Africa,s people.

When Jane Katjavivi becomes involved in London in support of change in Southern Africa, she meets and marries a Namibian activist in exile. Moving with him to Namibia at the time of Independence in 1990, she faces a new life in a starkly beautiful country. She starts to publish Namibian writing and opens a bookshop. In Windhoek she develops friendships with a group of strong, independent women, who have also come from other countries, and are engaged in different ways to overcome the divisions of the past. Over coffee, drinks and food, they support each other through times of happiness and sadness, through juggling careers and family, and through illness and death. When her husband is made Ambassador to the Benelux countries and the European Union, and later Berlin, Jane has to build a new identity as the wife of an ambassador, and come to terms with her own ill-health without her friends around her to support her. Set against the backdrop of the historical, political and social development of newly independent Namibia, Undisciplined Heart tells the story of Jane�s love for her family, friends and her adopted country, in a gentle and honest way that reflects the joys and tragedies of life

Megan Hall's first collection of poems, Fourth Child, has the texture of a carefully wrought, hand-stitched garment. It is something you want to bury your face in, like the familiar scented fabric of an item of clothing that belonged to a beloved who is gone. The Poems combine a dark humour and terrible grief with a lightness and restrained sensuality. Her language has the qualities of dance: uninhibited and polished, accomplished and vivid. Fourth Child shows a poet courageously facing deep feelings while being committed to accurate writing, making beautiful and living things out of the fabric of loss, grief, and emptiness.

Hester se Brood, in Afrikaans, is set in a small town in the Little Karoo, where Hester van der Walt bakes bread in a woodfired oven for the local market in MacGregor. The book is inhabited by the spirit of the poets C. Louis Leipoldt and Martin Versfeld, as Hester van der Walt has the same deep rooted, intuitive connection between food and soul, especially food that is prepared with traditional ingredients and methods. Along with generous portions of soul food comes a down to earth delicious recipes that show you how to bake classic European breads, like ciabatta, focaccia, kitke and baguettes as well as good old-fashioned sourdough breads. Van der Walt''s fine sense of humour, and her valuing of the magic interplay between fire and wood, grain and salt, water and yeast and time - the basics elements necessary for baking real bread, makes this book as irresistible as the savour of freshly baked bread, as it comes out of the oven.

Colleen Higgs launched Modjaji Books, the first publishing house for southern African women writers, in 2007. Her first collection of poetry, Halfborn Woman, was published in 2004. She lives in Cape Town with her partner and her daughter.

This brave and moving collection of stories by South African lesbian women from different backgrounds reminds us, again, that rights are never finally won in legislatures or in court rooms. They are won by people exercising them. The authors of the stories and poems in this book have done just that. They have stood up to celebrate the dignity of lesbian women in South Africa. Each contribution is different. And each intensely personal. And each one reminds us of the urgent need for us to stop hate crime and to create a safe society for all LGBT South Africans.