Uncovering Modjaji Books: August Exhibition, audio books, and new title
It’s our 15th birthday! Come join us in celebration at the Spin Street Gallery where we will be holding an exhibition of some of our beautifully crafted book covers from the 4th-13th of August. We are delighted to be sharing covers by Carla Kreuser, Jesse Breytenbach, Tammy Griffin, and Hannah Morris along with many other talented artists who’ve made covers for Modjaji. Stay tuned for further information on the event!
Our first audiobooks are being released!
Some of Modjaji’s top titles are being launched as audiobooks beginning August 1st.
Names and titles to look out for:
Sally Partridge’s The Girl Who Chased Otters voiced by Daniel Lasker
Futhi Ntshingila’s Do Not Go Gentle voiced by Sima Mashazi
Keep your eyes peeled for these audiobooks on BiB, Africa’s Audio Library. Check out their Instagram and website.
Forthcoming titles
#ModjajiGems Series
We’re thrilled to be launching our #ModjajiGems series this month! Our first two titles include Do Not Go Gentle by Futhi Ntshingila and Bom Boy by Yewande Omotoso. Both titles have been bestsellers for us and we’ve sold international rights. The two titles have been nominated for and won several awards. Also, these two titles were important stepping stones in both writers’ careers.
Do Not Go Gentle by Futhi Ntshingila
In her second novel, Do Not Go Gentle, Futhi Ntshingila once again introduces us to a cast of strong women who have little, but are determined to shape their own destinies. Do Not Go Gentle explores both humour and tragedy in this modern-day fairy tale set in the shacks on the margins of Mkhumbane township, outside Pietermaritzburg.
Bom boy by Yewande Omotoso
We first published this Modjaji Gem back in 2011 and are thrilled to have it relaunched! Thank you to Karen Jennings who edited Bom Boy back then. Congratulations to Yewande whose writing career and international stature have grown in leaps and bounds since then! We’re proud to be part of your story, Yewande!
Bom Boy tells the tale of Leke, a troubled young man living in the suburbs of Cape Town. He develops strange habits of stalking people, stealing small objects, and going from doctor to doctor in search of companionship rather than a cure. Through a series of letters written to him by his Nigerian father whom he has never met, Leke learns about a family curse; a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Bom Boy is a beautifully crafted, complex narrative written with a sensitive understanding of both the smallness and magnitude of a single life.
Thicker than Sorrow by Khadija Heeger
In this much anticipated second collection, Thicker than Sorrow, Khadija Heeger focuses on appreciating and honouring her roots and unearthing her history.
In rummaging through the drawers and closets of her blood family and the family she has chosen, the poet discovers inspiration and beauty in the most ordinary places: a bowl of rice, a kitchen, a daisy chain, a sunflower garden, a galvanised bath. The poems reveal a poet who is, “falling in love with my roots & me, life. And it’s just the beginning. I am a multitude of voyages.”
We are launching Thicker than Sorrow on the 9th of August at the Spin Street Gallery during exhibition week.
Khadija Heeger will also be at the beloved 2022 Open Books Festival in September. Check out the full list of participants here, and stay tuned for the programme.
More Exciting News
We’re thrilled to have two debut authors we published in 2021 nominated for this year’s Sunday Times Literary Awards for fiction. Congratulations to our Modjaji nominees Michelle Edwards for Go Away Birds and Uvile Sami Ximba for Dreaming in Colour. We are so proud of you both! For more information on the awards and other contenders, click here.
Dreaming in Colour by Uvile Ximba is longlisted for the 2022 Sunday Times Fiction Award and praised by Sya Khumalo for News24.com
Uvile Ximba’s Dreaming in Colour continues to receive dazzling praise. In a recent review for News 24, Sya Khumalo, author of You Have to be Gay to Know God, called Dreaming in Colour “exceptionally well-written.” According to Khumalo, it “deserves to be read widely because it’s only by grappling with the lived realities at the margins of our neurotypical, heteropatriarchal world that we’ll know what’s abnormal about “normal” books.[…] Her debut novel is exceptionally well-written and uses simple, gorgeous language. But the raw complexity of her characters’ challenges will test readers who aren’t already familiar with these themes, while beautifully deepening the understanding of those who are more conversant in them.” Read the full review here.
Making Way by Joan Metelerkamp is launched in Cape Town
Thanks to everyone who joined us in June for the powerful and moving Cape Town launch of Joan Metelerkamp’s Making Way and Linda McCullough at Cavendish Exclusive Books for hosting. It was deeply moving to hear Joan read from her collection.
In Making Way, Metelerkamp demonstrates once again her unrivalled command of poetry of movement and process. The reader embarks on a series of intertwined journeys – from doubt to understanding, from the past to the future, from continent to continent – all of which is embodied in a poetry of breathtaking lyricism and acute, unflinching perception.
Making Way is being sold at bookstores across South Africa, or through our online store.
