Jonathan Ball Publishers: 173 books

I sat there divided. Though my grandfather was visibly shaken by the force of this memory, I felt a bubbly thrill because this was such good stuff, and I remember turning my eyes away from his distressed face to make sure the wheels of the dictaphone were still turning. When Daniel is tasked...

In this new biography of Chris Barnard we not only learn about the life of South Africa’s most famous surgeon, from his Beaufort West childhood through his studies locally and abroad to his prominent marriages – and divorces – but James Styan also examines the impact of the historic heart transplant...

Martin Meredith documents the remarkable life of Bram Fischer in his biography Fischer’s Choice. Fischer was born into an aristocratic Afrikaans family but became one of South Africa's leading revolutionaries. Regarded in his youth as having a brilliant career ahead of him, he rebelled not only...

From the international best-selling author of A Lion in the Bedroom, Pat Cavendish O'Neill, comes another glimpse into her extravagant and adventurous life ... In 1968, Pat Cavendish O'Neill reluctantly left her magical years in Kenya behind to join her mother in Somerset West, South Africa. She left...

At a prayer meeting on a cold Rotterdam night, the young clerk Aart Anthonij van der Lingen - a pale, sickly, hunchbacked 'fish from the North' - is held in the charismatic Reverend Johannes Kicherer's thrall. Lured by Kicherer's passion, he leaves his grey and loveless life to land at the Cape of...

'Some people think it a very bad thing to have an opinion about anything. Blend in, don't make too much noise, just be happy with what you know and do. I can't do that.' South African DJ personality and Idols judge Gareth Cliff likes to shoot from the hip. Whether on air or judging a trembling Idols...

Liz McGregor follows the fortunes of South African Fana Khaba, a boy from a severely disadvantaged township background, a former taxi-driver, who achieves celebrity status and a cult following as the most popular DJ on Gauteng’s new youth radio station, only to die tragically and prematurely from...

South Africa is a land of contrasts, as the tourist brochures promise, and this is true for the game of rugby. From the Pretoria heartland to the aspirant Eastern Cape, from the hardscrabble Cape Flats to the islands of privilege at Bishops and Grey College. No other rugby-playing nation has to grapple...

The Dead Will Arise tells the story of Nongqawuse, the young Xhosa girl whose prophecy of the resurrection of the dead lured an entire people to death by starvation. The Great Cattle-Killing of 1856-57, which she initiated, is one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood events in South Africa's...

'I was made in Coffee Bay. Right there on the beach, in the sand.' From the opening lines, we are drawn in and engrossed by this startling memoir of a singular childhood. Suzan is adopted as a newborn in the late 1960s into a seemingly loving and welcoming family living in Pietermaritzburg. But Suzan...

In the last five years Riaan Manser has re-written the definition of tenacity and become the epitome of determination. Riaan rose to prominence when he became the first person to cycle around the entire perimeter of Africa. For over two years, he padalled a mammoth 37,000kms through 34 countries;...

Everyone said it couldn't be done; even internationally renowned sports scientists such as Dr. Tim Noakes. Certainly no-one had done it before, though many had tried: to run the Great Wall of China, end to end, non-stop. The journey would start in the Gobi Desert, cross the jagged Taihang Shan range,...

Mickey Arthur was one of SA's longest-serving and most successful coaches. In 2008, along with the national team, he created history when the Proteas beat both England and Australia on their own turf. Beating Pakistan away from home the year before, set in motion an unprecedented journey to the number...

From the day he joined a ramshackle Kenyan cycling club made up of orphans and street children, Chris Froome was destined for greatness. Froome: the Ride of his Life chronicles Froome's journey from the dusty mountain tracks outside Nairobi to the historic roads of the world's most famous bicycle...