At the southern tip of the great African continent lies a land of superlative landscapes, where the fertile ground is laced with diamonds and gold, uninterrupted plains teem with wildlife, and nature's bounty continues to brim over into the everyday lives of many peoples. These are the images of South Africa, and this is the story they tell. Commencing in the Western Cape, up the West Coast, across the arid Karoo to the Wilderness then on up through the Eastern Cape along the East Coast to KwaZulu Natal, to the game and marine conservation areas. Then across to the Kruger Park and Mpumalanga, and Gauteng down through the Free State ending with the Kalahari.

Scenic South Africa

Arts & Photography

Fraser, Sean

Photography & Video

Jonathan Ball Pub.

Scenic Cape Town takes the reader on a photographic tour of the City, starting with Robben Island and Table Mountain, running through the City Centre, the Malay Quarter, Gardens and the Waterfront. Then along the Atlantic Seaboard through to Cape Point, back along the False Bay coastline to Constantia, Kirstenbosch and Southern Suburbs. The West Coast, Stellenbosch and the Winelands are also featured ending with Hermanus, Gordons Bay and Cape Agulhas. Mark Skinner’s photography is outstanding, and all the photography featured has been specially commissioned for this book. Mark contributed most of the Cape material for the highly successful Scenic South Africa. A concise introduction and extended captions are provided by Sean Fraser who wrote the text for Scenic South Africa, and Seven Days in Cape Town.

Scenic Cape Town

Skinner, Mark

The Story of an African Farm

Literature & Fiction

Schreiner, Olive

Literary

The Story of an African Farm is Olive Schreiner’s landmark novel, set in the rural Karoo towards the end of the last century. The story was originally published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. When it was later revealed that the author was a woman, the news was received by many Victorian readers, who were shocked by the forthright feminism and negative comment on the social structures that formed the basis of their colonial society. Olive Schreiner proved to be a woman of vision and an author of skill. She evokes the bleakness and beauty of the farm in the Karoo, which she uses as the backdrop of the stories of Lyndall and Walso – unlikely soul mates whose lives reflect their frustrated quest for a better reality and their dreams of self-fulfilment. Schreiner’s radical views on marriage, class distinction and religion remain relevant to this day and The Story of an African Farm maintains an important place in South Africa literature. This edition contains an informative introduction by Cherry Clayton.

The chronological arrangement of the stories traces a rich inheritance. Beginning with San/Bushmen and African oral tales, first collected and translated in the mid-19th century, the selection concludes literally in the new 21st century, in a post-apartheid, globalizing South Africa. Acknowledged talents of the past like Olive Schreiner, Pauline Smith, Herman Charles Bosman, C Louis Leipoldt and Alan Paton share the pages with writers of the present day: Nadine Gordimer, Es’kia Mphahlele, Hennie Aucamp, Ahmed Essop, Njabulo S Ndebele, Peter Wilhelm, Sindiwe Magona, Marlene van Niekerk, and Ivan Vladislavic, among them. Translations ensure representation in English of South Africa’s cultural diversity. This diversity is reflected in the storytelling imagination. The oral tale co-exists with the colonial yarn, the shebeen sketch with the story of irony and implication. The apartheid landscape yields to current challenges of a society re-inventing itself to retell its story, or stories. In the short story – Michael Chapman says in his Introduction – ‘this country has an achievement of which to be justifiably proud.’ You are invited to enjoy a good read!

Omnibus of a Century of South African Short Stories

Michael Chapman

Contemporary

Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa

Politics & Social Sciences

Allister Sparks

Social Sciences

The Number: One Man's Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs

Jonny Steinberg

Old Towns and Villages of the Cape is the first comprehensive study of the physical history of the older towns of the former 'Cape Colony'. It contains over seven hundred illustrations, including hundreds of previously unpublished pioneer photographs and early watercolors. Many detailed aerial photographs, few of them ever seen in print, some dating back to the 1930s, allow the reader to step back in time and view the original towns before modern developments brought about irrevocable changes in the townscape. Covering almost one hundred towns, villages and hamlets, Old Towns and Villages of the Cape not only examines the role of surveyors, and other factors, in their initial layout and subsequent growth, but also describes the formation of new drostdy districts, new Dutch Reformed church congregations, boeredorpe, harbor settlements and mission towns. Hans Fransen applies his extensive knowledge and insight to present the information, research and insights, most of it previously un

Old Towns and Villages of the Cape: A Survey of the Origin and Development of Towns, Villages and Hamlets at the Cape of Good Hope

History

Fransen, Hans

Africa

Cycling an average of 90km a day, often in extreme conditions on badly-maintained gravel and sand roads, being thrown into jail in Equatorial Guinea by aggressive and drunken border police, and facing possible death when taken hostage by drugged Liberian teenage rebels may not be a conventional idea of truly ‘living’, but, in September 2003, Riaan Manser rode out of Cape Town, determined to become the first person to circumnavigate Africa by bicycle. He thought it would take him a year – it took him over two. At the end of 2005, he cycled back into Cape Town, 14kg lighter and having covered 36,500 km through thirty-four countries. Intending to use his journey to generate local and international awareness of the often appalling standard of living in Africa, Riaan was also propelled by a strong desire for African adventure, a desire that was inevitably fulfilled. While Riaan’s journey allowed him to experience some of the greatest generosity and kindness that he had ever encountered, often from the poorest of the poor, his adventures were also often of a more harrowing kind. In Around Africa on my Bike, Riaan allows the reader to relive the toil, excitement and occasional terror of his journey - negotiating the Sahara and Libyan deserts, learning French, Portuguese and Arabic, eating monkey, rat and bat, standing in front of the pyramids, being awarded the freedom of the Red Sea in Egypt, feeding hyenas mouth to mouth, and standing on the highest, as well as at the lowest, points in Africa. Riaan arrived safely in Cape Town on 25 November 2005.

Around Africa on My Bicycle

Travel

Manser, Riaan

Following on the huge success of Down South: Homes and Interiors in South Africa (Jonathan Ball 2004), writer Paul Duncan and world-acclaimed photographer Fritz von der Schulenburg have again teamed up to produce a second book, Down South 2: More Homes and Interiors from around South Africa, again bringing together a diverse and fascinating selection of South African homes all around the country, from high-flyer city homes on the Highveld to enviable Plettenberg Bay beach houses and Cape Dutch homesteads in Cape Town and the Winelands. This is a sumptuously illustrated book featuring many homes never seen before in print: celebrated historical homes include Groote Schuur, Stellenberg and Morgenster; there are modern architectural classics from Johann Slee and Andrew Makin; top game lodges, including the newly opened Samara in the Great Karoo and the Waters at Royal Malewane in the bushveld, world-class decorating from Graham Viney, Boyd Ferguson and Tessa Proudfoot.

Down South Two: Homes and Interiors in South Africa

Duncan, Paul

Schulenburg, Fritz Von Der

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