Charm

A unique South African urban fantasy focused on a gritty, magical Johannesburg filled with interesting, yet flawed characters…

Irene Kerry has grown up with the memory of her mother's suicide, and has been in love with her gay best friend Rain for as long as she can remember.

She thinks she's dealing with both just fine until the day her best friend falls in love with a much older man. A man who knew her mother, and believes Irene is a magician like her.

In order to protect her friend and family, Irene gets dragged into a hunt for an ancient magician who steals and eats magic, and discovers that the things she thought she knew about her mother's death were all lies.

View on Amazon | Unavailable via Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

Welcome to Our Hillbrow

Welcome to Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbingride through the chaotic and hyper-real zone of Hillbrow—microcosm of all that is contradictory, alluring, and painful in the postapartheid South African psyche. Everything is there: the shattered dreams of youth, sexuality and its unpredictable costs, AIDS, xenophobia, suicide, the omnipotent violence that often cuts short the promise of young people’s lives, and the Africanist understanding of the life continuum that does not end with death but flows on into an ancestral realm.

Infused with the rhythms of the inner-city pulsebeat, this courageous novel is compelling in its honesty and its broad vision, which links Hillbrow, rural Tiragalong, and Oxford. It spills out the guts of Hillbrow—living with the same energy and intimate knowledge with which the Drum writers wrote Sophiatown into being.

“In Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Mpe captured the dislocation and despair of people who moved in the late ’90s from rural South Africa to Hillbrow, a rough neighborhood in downtown Johannesburg with overcrowded high-rises and a large population of immigrants from elsewhere in Africa. In the South African literary imagination, Hillbrow has come to represent everything frightening and promising about the new South Africa; it is at once a scene of drugs, crime and xenophobia toward immigrants and also what theorists enthusiastically call ‘Afropolitan,’ a space that transcends national boundaries.” —The New York Times

(A special thank you to book club member, Jennifer Koen for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Elephant Whisperer

Lawrence Anthony devoted his life to animal conservation, protecting the world's endangered species. Then he was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. His common sense told him to refuse, but he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them.

In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.

The Elephant Whisperer is a heartwarming, exciting, funny, and sometimes sad memoir of Anthony's experiences with these huge yet sympathetic creatures. Set against the background of life on an African game reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, Anthony's unrelenting efforts at animal protection and his remarkable connection with nature will inspire animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.

“…Anthony’s bone-deep mission is bracing and his courage is inspiring.” —Kirkus Reviews

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Restless Supermarket

Winner of the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize

It is 1993, and Aubrey Tearle’s world is shutting down. He has recently retired from a lifetime of proofreading telephone directories. His favourite neighbourhood haunt in Johannesburg, the Café Europa, is about to close its doors; the familiar old South Africa is already gone. Standards, he grumbles, are in decline, so bad-tempered, conservative Tearle embarks on a grandiose plan to enlighten his fellow citizens. The results are disastrous, hilarious and poignant.

A classic novel about the post-apartheid era, brimming with surprising perspectives, urban satire, riotous imagery and outrageous wordplay.

(A special thank you to book club member, Jennifer Koen for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Dragonfriend

Gold Award winner - 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards

Stabbed. Burned by a dragon. Abandoned for the windrocs to pick over. The traitor Ra’aba tried to silence Hualiama forever. But he reckoned without the strength of a dragonet’s paw, and the courage of a girl who refused to die.

Only an extraordinary friendship will save Hualiama’s beloved kingdom of Fra’anior and restore the King to the Onyx Throne.

Flicker, the valiant dragonet. Hualiama, a foundling, adopted into the royal family. The power of a friendship which paid the ultimate price.

This is the tale of Hualiama Dragonfriend, and a love which became legend.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Jock of the Bushveld

Jock of the Bushveld is the classic and much-loved story based on the true experiences of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and his Staffordshire bull terrier, Jock.

The story begins in the 1880s, at the time of the South African gold rush, when a young Fitzpatrick worked as an ox-wagon transport rider in the old Transvaal. There he came across a man who was in the process of drowning a puppy, the runt of the litter. He saved the dog and the story of his ever-faithful and loving companion was born.

First published in 1907, Jock of the Bushveld has been reprinted many times since. Now, with a fresh and engaging cover, and in a new (and handy) medium-sized paperback format, this timeless South African classic retains the charm of the original story along with the original illustrations by Edmund Caldwell.

It will no doubt continue to be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

Please keep in mind that older books include some things nowadays considered unsavory, outdated, or wrong such as racism.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Spud

“Spud is one of those books which could easily be dismissed as nothing more than an adolescent read at first glance, but once you pick it up, it's almost as if the pages turn themselves. All in all, a wonderful book.” —Metrobeat

Spud is a scholarship student at an elite boys' boarding school in South Africa writing down his disturbing yet often hilarious exploits in his diary. As the year begins, the president decriminalizes the African National Congress and releases Nelson Mandela from prison, but not even these massive cultural changes can get pre-pubescent boys to think about something other than girls or stop them from playing tricks on one another.

John “Spud” Milton takes his first hilarious steps toward manhood in this delicious, laugh-out-loud boarding school romp, full of midnight swims, raging hormones, and catastrophic holidays that will leave the entire family in hysterics and thirsty for more.

“Funny, fast-paced, and wonderfully observant...” —The Daily News

“Funniest book of the year.” —The Citizen

“Spud is South Africa's Catcher in the Rye.” —Alexander McCall Smith, author of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Story of an African Farm

The Story of an African Farm (first published in 1883) marks an early appearance in fiction of Victorian society’s emerging New Woman. The novel follows the spiritual quests of Lyndall and Waldo, who each struggle against social constraints in their search for happiness and truth: Lyndall, against society’s expectations of women, and Waldo against stifling class conventions.

Written from the margins of the British empire, the novel addresses the conflicts of race, class, and gender that shaped the lives of European settlers in Southern Africa before the Boer Wars.

Highly acclaimed ever since its first publication in 1883 for the bold manner in which it dealt with some of the issues of the day, it also caused some controversy over its frank portrayal of freethought, feminism, premarital sex, pregnancy out of wedlock, & cross dressing.

Please keep in mind that older books include some things nowadays considered unsavory, outdated, or wrong such as racism.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Obsidian Worlds

Jason Werbeloff’s short stories have been downloaded over 50,000 times. Obsidian Worlds brings together his 11 best-selling sci-fi shorts into a mind-bending philosophical anthology.

In Your Averaged Joe, a man’s headache is large enough to hold the multiverse. Q46F is an obsessive-compulsive android who finds love in a zombie-embroiled apocalypse. The end of the world isn’t all that bad – The Experience Machine will fulfill your every desire (and some you hadn’t considered). A sex bot dares to dream of freedom in Dinner with Flexi. But mind what you eat, because The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost. Don’t fret though: The Cryo Killer guarantees that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. Unless, that is, you’re The Man with Two Legs.

Plug into Obsidian Worlds for these and other immersive stories, including the hilarious Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer.

Your brain will never be the same again.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Strong Medicine

Erin du Toit's 9-year old daughter has been kidnapped by Johannesburg's most powerful witchdoctor. Can Erin save her child before she's chopped up for muthi?

Erin’s first instinct is to go to the police, but the South African Police Force is paralyzed by corruption and overwhelmed by hundreds of open cases. Cases just like Erin’s.

Erin delves into the dark underbelly of Johannesburg to find the man who took her daughter. When she realizes that the police are protecting him, she must decide between disobeying a violent police force and giving up on her daughter.

”Strong Medicine is an unsettling and engrossing jaunt through the high streets and back alleys of Johannesburg. Filled with memorably kick-ass women, a poignant take on suspended grief, and a plot that will keep you on your toes, this is the perfect book for late nights and bad dreams.” —Dirge Magazine

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Into the Planet

From one of the world’s most renowned cave divers, a firsthand account of exploring the earth’s final frontier: the hidden depths of our oceans and the sunken caves inside our planet

More people have died exploring underwater caves than climbing Mount Everest, and we know more about deep space than we do about the depths of our oceans. From one of the top cave divers working today—and one of the very few women in her field—Into the Planet blends science, adventure, and memoir to bring readers face-to-face with the terror and beauty of earth’s remaining unknowns and the extremes of human capability.

Jill Heinerth—the first person in history to dive deep into an Antarctic iceberg and leader of a team that discovered the ancient watery remains of Mayan civilizations—has descended farther into the inner depths of our planet than any other woman. She takes us into the harrowing split-second decisions that determine whether a diver makes it back to safety, the prejudices that prevent women from pursuing careers underwater, and her endeavor to recover a fallen friend’s body from the confines of a cave. But there’s beauty beyond the danger of diving, and while Heinerth swims beneath our feet in the lifeblood of our planet, she works with biologists discovering new species, physicists tracking climate change, and hydrogeologists examining our finite freshwater reserves.

Written with hair-raising intensity, Into the Planet is the first book to deliver an intimate account of cave diving, transporting readers deep into inner space, where fear must be reconciled and a mission’s success balances between knowing one’s limits and pushing the envelope of human endurance.

“Breathtaking . . . Written in cinematic detail, Into the Planet is a thrilling portrait of bravery, innovation, and the extreme limits of human capability. . . . one of the most hair-raising accounts of extreme exploration I’ve read in recent memory.” —Gizmodo

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Story of Hong Gildong

The quintessential Korean classic: the Robin Hood story of a magical boy who joins a group of robber bandits and becomes a king.

Selected as a Best Book of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post

The Story of Hong Gildong is arguably the single most important work of classic Korean fiction. A fantastic story of adventure, it has been adapted into countless movies, television shows, novels, and comics in Korea. Until now, the earliest and fullest text of this incredible fable has been inaccessible to English readers.
 
Hong Gildong, the brilliant but illegitimate son of a noble government minister, cannot advance in society due to his second-class status, so he leaves home and becomes the leader of a band of outlaws. On the way to building his own empire and gaining acceptance from his family, Hong Gildong vanquishes assassins, battles monsters, and conquers kingdoms. Minsoo Kang’s expressive and lively new translation finally makes the authoritative text of this premodern tale available in English, reintroducing a noble and righteous outlaw and sharing a beloved hallmark of Korean culture.

“Hong Gildong is an iconic figure in the Korean literary canon…He’s the mythic center of a sometimes-delightful, sometimes-unsettling tale, and it’s time the Western world gets to know him.” —NPR

“[A] marvel-filled swashbuckler…Besides being half fairy tale, half social protest novel, The Story of Hong Gildong possesses a profound resonance for modern Koreans.” —The Washington Post

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book

At Least We Can Apologize

“The Korean apology is satirized to harrowing effect in the darkly comic book.” —The New Yorker

“Flying out of far left field like some crazed winged gecko and climbing the padded walls in a white straitjacket, the twisted world of Lee Kiho's At Least We Can Apologize hits you like a bucket of cold water… To a modern Western reader, the sheer physicality of Lee Kiho's world can be a shock. Physical barbarity seeps through the paragraphs like sweat through a rag.” —Korea.net

This satirical story focuses on an agency whose only purpose is to offer apologies—for a fee—on behalf of its clients. This seemingly insignificant service leads us into an examination of sin, guilt, and the often irrational demands of society.

Jin-man and Si-bong live at “the institution,” a disreputable mental ward that doubles as a sock-packaging plant. Fluorescent lights burn 24 hours a day and the staff subdues residents with pills. “When I first entered the institution I was beaten almost daily,” Jin-man recounts. “I was beaten in the morning, beaten at lunchtime, and beaten before bed.” As he goes through the menu of brutality, a certain giddiness sets in. But falsely confessing to random wrongdoing—swearing at their superiors, throwing out medication—results in milder punishment, so Jin-man and Si-bong learn to game the system.

A kaleidoscope of minor nuisances and major grievances, this novel heralds a new comic voice in Korean letters.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Hole

Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Named One of the Top 10 Thrillers to Read This Summer by Time Magazine. Misery meets The Vegetarian in this psychological thriller about loneliness and the dark truths we try to bury.

In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house.

But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. As Oghi desperately searches for a way to escape, he discovers the difficult truth about his wife and the toll their life together took on her.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Good Son

“Ingeniously twisted.” —Entertainment Weekly, “Must List”

“Will leave even the most seasoned crime fiction readers guessing.” —CrimeReads

“[Jeong] maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist’s fate until the bitter end.” —The Wall Street Journal

The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bad Seed in this breathless, chilling psychological thriller by the #1 bestselling novelist known as “Korea’s Stephen King” 

Who can you trust if you can’t trust yourself?
 
Early one morning, 26 year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home—he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can’t remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?
 
Thus begins Yu-jin’s frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency.

Named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Bustle, CrimeReads, Lit Hub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and Brit + Co

(A special thank you to book club member, Sarah Howe for the group read suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Vegetarian

Winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize

Named one of the best books of the year by The NY Times Book Review, Publisher’s Weekly, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly,  Time, Wall Street Journal, Bustle, Slate, Elle, The Economist, & Huffington Post 

Featured in the NY Times selection of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century” 

A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul
 
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself.
 
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

(A special thank you to book club member, Neha Mehta for the group read suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Please Look After Mom

Winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize

When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom?

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

Kyung-Sook Shin is the author of numerous works of fiction and is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She was the first woman to be awarded the Man Asian Literary Prize.

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the group read suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

City of Ash and Red

Named an NPR Great Read of 2018

From the Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of The Hole, a Kafkaesque tale of crime and punishment hailed by Korea’s Wall Street Journal as “an airtight masterpiece.”

Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle to survive in the streets of this foreign city gripped with fear of contamination and reestablish contact with his company and friends in order to clear his reputation.

But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems. From the bestselling author of The Hole, City of Ash and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

I'll Be Right There

Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief.
 
Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West.

”Shin writes wonderfully about intimacy and the longing of lonely people. ...I'll Be Right There is a hopeful work about the power of art, friendship and empathy to provide meaning to people's lives.” —LA Times

“Tender and mournful, the latest novel from best-selling South Korean novelist Shin (Please Look after Mom, 2011) considers young love and loss in an era of political ferment...Shin's uncomplicated yet allusive narrative voice delivers another calmly affecting story, simultaneously foreign and familiar.” —Kirkus

“Known for her beautiful imagery and lyrical prose…in I’ll Be Right There, Shin utilizes vivid, searing imagery…balanc[ing] the gentle beauty of language with bold images throughout her writing.” —Korean Quarterly

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Your Republic is Calling You

A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day to return to headquarters. He hasn’t heard from anyone in over ten years. Why is he being called back now? Is this message really from Pyongyang? Is he returning to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Has someone in the South discovered his secret identity? Is this a trap?

Spanning the course of one day, Your Republic Is Calling You is an emotionally taut, psychologically astute, haunting novel that reveals the depth of one particularly gripping family secret and the way in which we sometimes never really know the people we love. Confronting moral questions on small and large scales, it mines the political and cultural transformations that have transformed South Korea since the 1980s. A lament for the fate of a certain kind of man and a certain kind of manhood, it is ultimately a searing study of the long and insidious effects of dividing a nation in two.

View on Amazon | Unavailable via Bookshop.org | SecondSale used book