Short-listed for the Whitbread Novel Award, The Catastrophist is a haunting novel set in the politically charged landscape of the Belgian Congo just before independence. At its heart is the passion between novelist James Gillespie and the fiery idealistic journalist … [ more ]

When The Sheltering Sky was first published in 1949, it established Paul Bowles as one of the most singular and promising writers of the postwar generation. Its startlingly original vision has withstood the test of time and confirmed Tennessee Williams's … [ more ]

In Cape Town, South Africa, an old woman is dying of cancer. A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has been opposed to the lies and brutality of apartheid all her life, but has lived insulated from its true horrors. Now she … [ more ]

Disgrace -- one of only four works of fiction -- was chosen by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven Best Books of the Year. … [ more ]

With the same electrical intensity of language and insight that he brought to Waiting for the Barbarians and The Master of Petersburg, J.M. Coetzee reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe?and in so doing, directs our attention to the seduction and … [ more ]

In a South Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael … [ more ]

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Immediately hailed as a classic (Atlantic Monthly called it the best contemporary novel on colonialism to be written by an African woman), Nervous Conditions is a wrenching chronicle of the coming of age of Tambu, a teenage girl in 1960s … [ more ]

A monumental new novel by an award-winning, international literary figure. … [ more ]

Set amid the chaos of West Africa's civil wars, Emmanuel Dongala's striking new novel tells the story of two teenagers growing up while rival ethnic groups fight for control of their country. … [ more ]