Hot from the Press
September is both #NationalTranslationMonth and #WorldKidLitMonth, and to celebrate both at once, here’s an amazing reading of his YA novel Halley’s Comet by author and translator Hannes Barnard, as part of Translators Aloud’s month long celebration.
Caroline Kurtz, author of the memoirs A Road Called Down on Both Sides and recently released Today is Tomorrow, is giving a reading at Wordfest in Longview, Washington this coming Tuesday at 6pm PST, and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, Windham Campbell Prize winning author of The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, got a nice mention in Lizzy Attree’s LA Times review of Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel.
And finally, ICYMI, check out the announcement for Panel & Page, our newly launched graphic novel series which kicks off with the 2023 releases of Pearl of the Sea and KARIBA. Pre-orders available now
In other news…
St. Martin’s Press will publish Angela Merkel’s political memoirs, London mayor Sadiq Khan is releasing his first book, The Washington Post’s book section is making a comeback, and foodie romance is officially mainstream. In adaptation news: South Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada will direct a limited series adaptation of R. O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries and Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s adaptation of William Gibson’s The Peripheral hits Amazon Prime next month.
Lots of awards news this week: the 2022 Hugo Award winners were announced, as were the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Awards, the Kirkus Prize finalists, and the Booker Prize shortlist.
#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 December 4-10!
In more awards news, several writers of African descent were listed on the American Book Awards list, here are the winners of the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s Elizabeth Nunez Awards 2022, and the shortlist for South Africa’s Sunday Times Literary Awards. N.K. Jemisin took home her fifth Hugo Award, and NoViolet Bulawayo became the first woman to ever have their first two novels shortlisted for the Booker (she was also the first Black African woman and first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted with her novel We Need New Names). The Nommo Award winners were announced, as were the nominees for the new The Book Behind Awards in South Africa and the longlist for the 2022 African Writers Award.
Wow, it was a big week for Nigerian literature: the 2022 Kendeka Short Story Prize longlist was released this week, featuring mostly Nigerian authors, the Nigerian Prize for Literature shortlist announced this week was the youngest ever, Nigerian poet Huassain Ahmed took home the Orison Poetry Prize, and Rose Okeke took home the 2022 James Currey Prize for African Literature.
Writers Space Africa—Ghana announced a new literary magazine, Awens3m, Wole Soyinka is now a professor at NYU Abu Dhabi (sign me up), and in my opinion, the coolest news of the week: the O. Henry Prize Series has, for the first time, invited five African literary magazines to make submissions (after a long history of exclusively considering works featured in American magazines).
And lastly, here’s a great feature piece on Denne Michelle Norris, editor-in-chief of Electric Literature and the first Black, openly trans woman to head up a major literary publication!
From the Backlist
In honor of #NationalTranslationMonth, I thought I’d throw it back to two of our OG Catalyst titles, the first we ever released: Dark Traces by Martin Steyn (translated by the author) and Sacrificed by Chanette Paul (translated by Elsa Silke).
Dark Traces written and translated by Martin Steyn
“A tense and grisly debut novel of suspense from South Africa.” —Kirkus (starred review)
In his debut novel in English, Martin Steyn explores two different sides of murder—killing for love, killing for pleasure. The body of a teenage girl is found in the veld near an upper middle-class suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. And she’s not the first. When the pathologist discovers she was hanged, she remembers a similar case. The last thing recently widowed Detective Jan Magson feels like taking on is a serial killer file, but alongside Inspector Colin Menck he follows the trail: the teacher with a past; “love letters” mailed to the girl’s parents by, in all likelihood, the murderer; a pool cleaner who likes to take pictures of teenage girls. Magson has to look the mothers and fathers in the eye. He has to answer their questions. And he can’t. He has no answers. He can’t even answer his estranged son’s questions about how, exactly, his wife died.
Another girl is found in a field, leading to a new number of potential suspects. Magson, by now in therapy and trying hard to make a new life for himself, descends on them in earnest. Then two more girls disappear within two days. Magson and Menck are racing against the clock—a weekend, according to the pattern—to try to find them. And every time a lead reaches a dead end, Magson finds himself looking down at another dead girl, wondering how he’s going to make it through the dark traces of yet another night, alone, a service pistol at his side.
Martin Steyn began writing Stephen King-inspired horror stories in his teens. After obtaining degrees in Psychology and Criminology, he studied serial killers and profiling, writing seven true crime profiles for the Crime Library website. Dark Traces is his first novel in English.
Read an excerpt from Dark Traces here, or check out the discussion guide.
Sacrificed by Chanette Paul, translated by Elsa Silke
“[A] page-turner that will keep you reading long past the moment the midnight oil burns out … Sacrificed places Chanette Paul among the classiest thriller writers of our day.” —Janet Levine, New York Journal of Books
The U.S. debut of bestselling South African writer Chanette Paul, translated from Afrikaans. Rejected by her parents, sister, husband, everyone except her extraordinary and unusual daughter, Caz Colijn lives a secluded life in her own little patch of Africa. But a single phone call from her estranged sister shatters her refuge. Caz learns that her elderly mother is on her deathbed in Belgium—and that the old woman isn’t really Caz’s biological mother.
This phone call is just the first step down an ever-widening tunnel into Caz’s painful past.
Jetting between Belgium and Africa, she’s desperate to learn who her biological parents are, why they gave her away, and whether this has anything to do with her daughter’s exceptional nature: she is black, born to two white parents during the period of apartheid. Caz is so caught up in discovering the truth about the past, she almost doesn’t notice the man who is falling in love with her. Or the meaning behind the key she receives. Or the two Congolese men who are following her every move in search for something they’re willing to kill for.
From the Congo’s sparkling diamond mines to Belgium’s finest art galleries, from Africa’s civil unrest to its deeply spiritual roots, Sacrificed seamlessly crosses borders and decades with a fiercely captivating story.
Chanette Paul has published 41 best-selling romance, thriller and crime novels in her native Afrikaans in South Africa. This is her first book translated into English.
Read an excerpt from Sacrificed here, or check out the discussion guide.
