Hot from the Press
Congratulations to Bridget Krone who was named a 2022 Skipping Stones Honor Award winner this week, for her debut novel Small Mercies! We are honored to publish both Small Mercies and Bridget’s second middle grade novel, The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap, which comes out this September. Pre-order your copy now!
Also this week, The History of Man author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu was featured in this amazing interview with The Rumpus to discuss the book’s complicated main character, Zimbabwean writers, Siphiwe’s literary influences, and more. And don’t miss this interview with our Catalyst Press staff on The Mystery of Writing!
This Wednesday July 13th at 12pm EST, tune in to this virtual event with the 2022 AKO Caine Prize shortlisted authors, including our very own Idza Luhumyo, whose short story “Five Years Next Sunday” is featured in Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa. Register here, and while you’re at it, check out this great feature of Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa on Brittle Paper!
Visit Women Writers, Women’s Books to read a new essay from Today is Tomorrow author, Caroline Kurtz on the difficulties and rewards of writing memoir.
And lastly, huge congrats to Futhi Ntshingila for being longlisted for the 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards, announced this week! We were lucky enough to publish Futhi’s novel We Kiss Them With Rain back in 2018.
In other news…
Penguin launched a Penguin Classics Marvel edition (and Michael Dirda’s a little upset about it), the HarperCollins’ employee union is on strike, and Carmen Giménez, award-winning queer Latinx poet and founder of Noemi Press, is the new publisher and executive director at Graywolf Press, after the press announced the retirement of longtime publisher Fiona McCrae. The Duffer brothers, the creative duo behind Stranger Things, and their new production company (named Upside Down, of course) are slated to produce Stephen King’s The Talisman for Netflix.
Dubai opened a massive book-shaped library [Editor’s Note: Bury me there, please and thank you] and a London bookstore is running a pay-it-forward campaign to give lower-income customers the opportunity to take home books. LitLit is back in LA this year, and Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi was found dead off of the coast of Okinawa.
In awards news, Jay Gao took home the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize and Pippa Curnick won the Alligator’s Mouth Award. The Blue Peter Books Awards have pulled the plug after 22 years, and Scholastic is expanding The Lollies in response.
#ReadingAfrica roundup
In this section, we share publishing news, book recs, and more all focused on African and African diaspora authors. Don’t forget to mark your calendars for our sixth annual #ReadingAfrica week, this year Dec 4-10!
The inaugural fellows for Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors Fellowship were announced this week, and three authors of African descent (Renée Watson, Carole Boston Weatherford, and Rita Williams-Garcia) were named as finalists for the 2023 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature and Young Adult Literature. Jesmyn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing, was awarded the 2022 Library of Congress Fiction Prize.
The shortlist for the James Currey Prize for African Literature was announced this week, and they’ve also announced the line-up for the inaugural James Currey Literary Festival in Oxford this September, featuring headliners like Margaret Busby, Alexandra Pringle, Dr. Wale Okedira, Okwiri Oduor, and more.
London’s Africa Centre is reopening after a decade, and the new interim council of the Pan African Writers Association was just appointed. And here’s a behind the scenes look at the 2022 NYrobi Book Festival!
From the Backlist
It’s the middle of winter here in Cape Town, and nothing says cozy winter’s night like a thriller to stay up reading by the fire. Need a recommendation? Max Annas’ The Wall (Translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds) which NB Magazine calls a “breathless, irrepressible thriller that packs a punch”, will keep you company all night long.
The Pines, a gated community in the South African city of East London, protects homeowners from crime. But nobody’s going to protect the young man trapped behind its walls.
Moses wants one thing: to get home, where his girlfriend and a cold beer are waiting for him. But his car breaks down on an empty street, not a single human being in sight. Moses slips into The Pines, a gated community, in hopes to find help from a university classmate who lives there. Over there, in the “white” world, everything seems calm, orderly, safe. But once inside, he feels like more of an outsider than ever. And he makes a terrible mistake.
Mistaken identities, racial profiling, and class politics form the backdrop of this intense thriller. Winner of the 2017 German Crime Fiction Prize, The Wall (translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds) tackles the issues of gun violence, racism, and exclusion in contemporary South Africa—problems that are equally relevant to the United States.
Available in paperback or ebook. Order now, or read an excerpt here!
Praise for The Wall
“75 Notable Translations of 2019” —World Literature Today
“The story takes place over just two short hours — filled with twists and turns and non-stop chases along the way. The Wall is an intense thriller, with second-by-second near misses […] An exploration of racial profiling, class, exclusion, and chance.” —Shelf Unbound Magazine
“A taut, captivating thriller. Highly recommended.” —Sam Wiebe, award-winning author of Invisible Dead and Cut You Down
“The Wall keeps the reader running alongside the protagonist who goes searching for help in the wrong place at the wrong time. Set in South Africa, this movie-like thriller is a must-read for anyone who loves fast-paced action.” —Anja Gutbrod-Pollitz, Towne Center Books, Pleasanton California
“Sometimes a crime novel comes along that hits pay dirt. The Wall is one of those. It takes you up and rushes you through to the mad-cap ending and leaves you wanting more. The characters are wonderful, their antics more so, and, to top it all, the story is laugh out loud hilarious. Long have I suspected that this is how life plays out in South Africa’s gated communities. If you like your crime fiction fast and funny, then The Wall is your book.” —Mike Nicol, author of Agents of State and Sleeper
“The Wall was a thrilling chase through an unusual and surprisingly frightening setting: a well-to-do gated community in South Africa […] Moses is a compelling every-man protagonist, caught up in a case of mistaken identity, and the cinematic quality to the story telling takes you running right alongside him as he eludes capture.” —Natalie Draper, Richmond Public Library
“[Annas] turns this cat and mouse game into a life and death struggle that catches you up in its drama and suspense.” —Lively Arts magazine
