Bücher veröffentlicht von Modjaji Books

'A tender exploration into the beating heart of a community that endured through culture and sacrifice, with such detailed references to life in the 1960s for Indians in Johannesburg and Durban. Smita will live long in the memory of the reader. Well-recommended.' -Shubnum KhanGrowing up in Bakerton, Springs in the 1950s and '60s, Smita (Smeets) Maharaj is puzzled by a great deal of adult behaviour. Why must her tall, handsome father be so obsequious to the police? Why must brown people sit in separate train carriages from white people? Why can't her mother see how much more important it is for her to get a good education than to learn to make the perfect roti?Caught between the beloved traditions of India and life in a quickly modernising South Africa, between family roots in Natal and a prosperous present in the Transvaal; between the madness of apartheid and the pull of her own desires, Smita struggles to find her feet in a world beset by contradictions. As the Maharaj family expands and grows, and her mother's twin obsessions with producing a son and finding suitable boys for her daughters to marry dominate the family's discourse, Smita wrestles with satisfying her parents' wishes and following her own path as she navigates her way through school and life - and comes to terms with a long-held, painful family secret.

In Thicker than Sorrow, Khadija focuses on appreciating and honouring her roots and unearthing her history. Rummaging through the drawers and closets of her blood family and the family she has chosen, she discovers inspiration and beauty in the most ordinary places: a bowl of rice, a kitchen, a daisy chain, a sunflower garden, a galvanised bath. The poems reveal a poet who is, "falling in love with my roots and me, life. And it's just the beginning. I am a multitude of voyages."A powerful meditation on identity and belonging. Stylistically fluid, the work ranges from visceral lyrical explorations of personal and collective memory, to political protest to exuberant praise poetry. Heeger celebrates her mixed ancestry and her rootedness in African soil through the interplay of standard English and Afrikaans, as well as dialect and indigenous languages. By turns melancholy, angry and joyful, the collection is an emotional whirlwind that carries the reader from the Overberg and the Cape Peninsula all the way up the African continent and back into the intimate world of the poet- Annel Pieterse, University of StellenboschHeeger's words are a rallying cry, a praise poem and a soothing ballad. Rooted firml) inside her bloodline, her culture, and her land, she writes for us. The most powerful kind of Love: one chosen over and over again, through trauma, and inter-generational pain, through ancestral erasure and the continued silencing and impoverishment of an entire community, by today's political, social & economic realities. Her voice is that of the griot, and the sage. And through it all, the soft caress of a Cape wind blows, saying: and still we are here, and still we love.- Toni Stuart, poet

In this novel about being seen and what is not seen, the previously hidden is revealed when the unexpected happens. In the soaking winter of 2010, two teenage girls set off to a party and disappear without a trace. Six years later, during a catastrophic drought, a young woman vanishes while on her way home from work. In the days following these events, those closest to the missing women are forced to question how well they really know them. Tracey Hawthorne is the author of many non-fiction books, including an award-winning biography of the artist John Meyer. Flipped is her first novel.

In the Shadow of the Springs I Saw is an exploration, and stories, of people who live in the Art Deco buildings of Springs. It is the imagined lives of those who live in a space that is not theirs historically but one that they have reclaimed. This work, in times of doom and complaint, creates a new narrative: one of revival, vigour and celebration. 'The writing tries to capture the "grain" of a place, object or conversation, as if a swatch were cut from a larger fabric. One could trace the use of similar techniques back to the canonical modernist works of James Joyce, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, William Carlos Williams or to a later experimenter like Burroughs ... Adair uses these techniques with flair and purpose ... the book's method is to declare and contradict, to present one side and then another, keeping both present.'Ivan Vladislavic Barbara Adair is a novelist and writer. In Tangier we Killed the Blue Parrot was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2004. Her novel End was shortlisted for Africa Regional Commonwealth Prize.

A Bed on Bricks offers the gift of nine stories, each tracing complex psychological journeys and relationships threatened by incompatibilities of culture, age, gender, class, sexuality and race. Fumbling for one another across these divides, characters are as rich and diverse as the African landscapes they inhabit. This collection of stories explores difficult but profound truths about human nature and the intricacies of our interactions across the sub-Saharan region. In doing so, A Bed on Bricks rewards readers who enjoy tales that rupture cliches through original and challenging narratives.

In her debut collection of short stories, Lindiwe Nkutha takes us through the minds of people you may overlook on an ordinary day: The wayward neighbour you vaguely remember seeing every day as a child until the day he vanished. The face you see every weekend at the local drinking hole, you exchange a polite nod but know little about, not even her name. The young woman who is caught between her faith and her love for a woman. Their lives are untidy, tainted with the pain, joy and violence as they share with us stories they wouldn't share with anyone else. Nkutha's words weave in and around the weights we drag behind us from one place to another, with a sensitivity and wit required for such vulnerabilities and intimate moments.

Carol Trehorne's only child, Max, is in ICU with severe burns. Max, a performance artist, has set himself alight. He recovers but it becomes clear that he is planning further performances that will put him at risk of serious injury or death. Carol, a single parent and a GP in a busy suburban practice, is worried that her son is not the genius his friends think he is, but might be on drugs or going psychotic. As she discusses her concerns with her son's psychiatrist, she wonders if her past behaviour, in particular her relationship with the adventurous and anti-social Jack, has influenced Max's determination to use his body as a site of violent art in the pursuit of revelation. Carol cannot accept that Max's self-harm will have any effect other than to add to the meaningless violence in the world. Accident raises questions about what kind of life is worth living and what death is worth dying. It explores the different responses artists and scientists can have to violence and self-destructive behaviour, and throws into sharp relief the difficulties parents face when their children me decisions that appear incomprehensible.

Turning her back on what is considered conventional, Makhosazana Xaba engages with her subject-matter on a revolutionary level in Running and Other Stories. She takes tradition , be that literary tradition, cultural tradition, gender tradition , and re-imagines it in a way that is liberating and innovative. Bracketed by Xaba,s revisitings of Can Themba,s influential short story, The Suit, the ten stories in this collection, while strongly independent, are in conversation with one another, resulting in a collection that can be devoured all at once or savoured slowly, story by story. By re-envisioning the ordinary and accepted, Xaba is creating a space in which women,s voices are given a rebirth.

Swimming with Cobras is a memoir about a journey to find a foothold in a foreign land grappling with its own identity, offering rare and important insight into a corner of South Africa's past. Rosemary Smithis life as an activist in the Eastern Cape began when she moved from England with her South African born husband in the mid-1960s. They made their home in Grahamstown where they raised four children. As a member of the Black Sash she participated in events spanning three decades in an intensely politicised and oppressed province. Through her involvement she made the transition to full integration in a country that at first struck her as alien and strange.

Eloquent Body explores the juxtaposition of healing and creativity both from a personal as well as medical point of view. Dawn Garisch works as a medical doctor and a writer in equal measure and advocates dialogue between our bodies and our creative selves. Her novel Trespass was nominated for the Commonwealth Prize in Africa.

'These are poems of drowning and coming up again. Of surviving with lungs that breathe water and sunlight. These are poems of longing and loss. Of searching for a foothold in a world where all slides and changes. Sarah Frost is a new voice in South African poetry. A clear and strong and exciting voice. Read her.'- Kobus Moolman Sarah Frost is 37 years old and a single mother to a six year old boy. She works as an editor for Juta Legalbrief in Durban, South Africa. Sarah has been writing poetry for the past fourteen years. She has completed an MA in English Literature, and also a module on Creative Writing.

When Jane Katjavivi becomes involved in London in support of change in Southern Africa, she meets and marries a Namibian activist in exile. Moving with him to Namibia at the time of Independence in 1990, she faces a new life in a starkly beautiful country. She starts to publish Namibian writing and opens a bookshop. In Windhoek she develops friendships with a group of strong, independent women, who have also come from other countries, and are engaged in different ways to overcome the divisions of the past. Over coffee, drinks and food, they support each other through times of happiness and sadness, through juggling careers and family, and through illness and death. When her husband is made Ambassador to the Benelux countries and the European Union, and later Berlin, Jane has to build a new identity as the wife of an ambassador, and come to terms with her own ill-health without her friends around her to support her. Set against the backdrop of the historical, political and social development of newly independent Namibia, Undisciplined Heart tells the story of Janeis love for her family, friends and her adopted country, in a gentle and honest way that reflects the joys and tragedies of life

Kerry Hammerton is a poet, writer and alternative health practitioner. She is a graduate of The University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and The College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (Reading, UK). Her poetry has been published in South African literary journals such as Carapace, New Contrast and New Coin, online at Litnet and Incwadi. She has also been a contributor to The Empty Tin Readings (May 2010) and The Poetry Project. These are the lies I told you is her fi rst poetry collection. Kerry has fewer wrinkles than she should have at her age n or so her friends tell her.

Ten stories. Ten voices. Ten diverse perspectives of what home has meant to South Africans that countryis challenging history. In this thought provoking collection we are drawn into the lives of others. From an old widower who seems content on the outside but feels that his world is unravelling in the new South Africa, to an immigrant who has fled racial persecution in 1930s Europe and now finds himself on a barren sheep farm in the Karoo, to a Polokwane teacher confronted with the moral dilemma of xenophobic sentiments in her township, This Place I Call Home, leaves the reader deeply aware of local realities. Even though these powerful stories are often characterised by hardship and personal loss, one cannot help but emerge inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit and the resilience of South Africais people.

Arja Salafranca is an accomplished writer, having twice won the Sanlam Literary Award in South Africa. The stories in her new book engage and reel in the reader on that 'thin line' from the start. The carefully drawn characters are haunting: Corinna trapped in her huge teenage body, Cleo in love with a married man after all these years, and poor skinny Mark, as he sees his love teeter away from him.'Ten Minutes to Hate' tells of an armed robbery in a packed theatre, and its effect, emotionally and psychologically, on two of the people involved. 'Collage' is the story of a possessive love so fierce, that only death can resolve it. Searingly honest, sometimes painfully so.

Ingrid Andersen was born in Johannesburg, read for a degree in English literature at Wits and is presently completing her Masters. Her work has been published in literary journals for 16 years. Excision, her first volume of poetry, was published in 2004. Her influences include the French Romantic poets, Imagism and the writings of Basho. She is the founding editor of Incwadi, an SA journal that explores the interaction between poetry and image. An Anglican priest, she works in human rights, healing and reconciliation.

Strange Fruit is a courageous debut with a remarkable range in theme and tone, from the nostalgic to the comedic to the bawdy, and to the angry, the melancholic and the steadfast and comforting. It will delight, shock, anger, induce laughter, shock more, delight more. And make you blush. It's a full range. There are poems of brutally honest self-scrutiny - the heart of the collection being a series of poems on the ageing body, loss of love and infertility - and there are poems that capture landscapes with imagist skill and the botanist's detail.

Azila Talit Reisenberger is a Bible scholar, a rabbi, a mother, a wife, and a poet. In all these selves she grapples with translating her life from Hebrew to English and back again. Life in Translation is full of wry humour, longing, bitterness, sweetness, playfulness, and subversions of traditional meanings and texts - a delightful book that charms and surprises anew with each reading.