South African English

It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a 23-year-old slave named Robert Smalls did the unthinkable and boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces.

Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction This “elegant” and “unfailingly empathetic” narrative (The New York Times) follows three ordinary South Africans living through the most extraordinary reckoning with race and power any modern country has ever faced. Dipuo, who...

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s...

African-American reverend Joshua Clay welcomes the chance to minister in South Africa. Once there, however, he is caught between others' expectations and his own beliefs. Turning to God, Joshua must gather the strength to search for answers and bring some peace to a grief-stricken land.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award. An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the Great Mississippi...

An epic account of one remarkable woman's quest for justice from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow of the South and A Separate Country. In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock--the "Widow of the South"--has quietly built a new life...

Winemaking is as old as civilization itself. For thousands of years, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to its current status as a global industry, the history of wine has been directly related to major social, cultural, religious and economic changes. Oz Clarke takes a look at over 100 bottles that mark an evolution in the story of wine, capturing the innovations and discoveries that have had the biggest impact along the way.

This “exuberant celebration of Black women’s joy as well as their achievements” (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author) novelizes the life of real estate magnate Josephine N. Leary in a previously untold story of passion, perseverance, and building a legacy after emancipation in...

In this powerful, edgy, and funny debut novel about making right and wrong choices, Bump gives us an unforgettable and lovable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude is a young black man in search of a place where he can fit; born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. After a riot consumes his neighborhood, Claude decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new life and identity. But he discovers, there's no escaping the people and places that made him.

A powerful, vibrant novel about the life-changing weekend shared between two strangers, from the award-winning writer Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."​ On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man...

The Hurston-Wright Award Finalist makes her long-awaited return with this electrifying saga—as moving and indelible as The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, The Turner House, and The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois—that explores three generations of a family trying to overcome trials and trauma and...

They Came Across South Mountain is a love story of four generations of one family, free people of color surviving the holocaust of slavery and Jim Crow America. The book was written by Elayne Bond Hyman and designed and crafted in collaboration with Sarah Matthews.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it. Throughout her prolific...

At the age of nine, Issac J. Bailey saw his hero, his eldest brother, taken away in handcuffs, not to return from prison for thirty-two years. Bailey tells the story of their relationship and of his experience living in a family suffering guilt and shame. Drawing on sociological research as well as his expertise as a journalist, he seeks to answer the crucial question of why Moochie and many other young black men - including half of the ten boys in his own family - end up in the criminal justice system. What role did poverty, race, and faith play? What effect did living in the South, in the Bible Belt, have?

This groundbreaking book tracks the massive wealth amassed from slavery from pre-Civil War to today, showing how our modern economy was built on the backs of enslaved Black people—and lays out a clear argument for reparations that shows exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is...

Eve L. Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures - they're an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings.

A “gripping and important” (The Guardian) account of nine tumultuous days, as the assassination of Nelson Mandela’s protégé by a white supremacist threatens to derail South Africa’s democratic transition and plunge the nation into civil war. Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson...

In the vein of The Book of M comes a “dynamic, fast-paced debut” (Publishers Weekly) and character-driven literary apocalyptic novel that explores life, love, and loss in a post-truth society. In the aftermath of a deadly outbreak—reminiscent of the 1962 event of mass hysteria that was the...

“The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling….A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind.”— David Wroblewski “A new Tom Franklin novel is always a reason to get excited, but...

The long-awaited second volume of Nelson Mandela’s memoirs, left unfinished at his death and never before available, are here completed and expanded with notes and speeches written by Mandela during his historic presidency, making for a moving sequel to his worldwide bestseller Long Walk to...