Umuzi imprint: 97 books

Since the publication of his debut volume, Inside, which was awarded the 1984 Ingrid Jonker Prize, Jeremy Cronin has always, compellingly, managed to combine political conviction with poetic clarity. In the words of Ingrid de Kok, Cronin is "our most experimental, demanding and, despite his disclaimers,...

Luck matters. Life is chancy. Springbok legend, war hero, thriving businessman - that was JJ Kitchen, known to all as Kitchen Boy. His was a life as large as a sports stadium, as thrilling as baling out of a burning war plane. Now he lies dead in his coffin in a Durban cathedral and his life is relived...

When the caravan of the Mobile Church of the Holistic Christ rolls into a sleepy town on a hot spring day, all hell breaks loose. Dominee Donges, undisputed moral authority of Nylsdorp, faces a direct challenge from the charismatic Reverend Grant, with his fire-and-brimstone sermons and his miracle...

“You are too close to the water,” Paul whispered. “There are barbels in the mud. They will wake up if you step on them.” When Paul and Dominique are sent to boarding schools in Natal, their idyllic childhood on a Free State farm is over. Their parents’ leftist politics has made life impossible...

When a reclusive printmaker dies, his friend inherits the thousands of etchings and drawings he has stored in his house over the years. Overwhelmed by the task of sorting and exhibiting this work, she seeks the advice of a curator. What compulsion drove the printmaker to make art for four decades,...

In 1857 a young Englishwoman arrives in Port Natal from India to make a new life for her family among settlers, homesteaders, and sugar-cane farmers. She is with her daughter and the child’s ayah, and has been travelling for eleven months to join her husband, already deep in the hinterland. Her...

1782:In the bustling settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, traders, politicians, farmers and fortune-seekers compete for goods, land and power. It is here that Geert Baardwijk, a wealthy Dutch heir, finds himself drawn to Lena, a young slave he has inherited from his father. Bartered and sold into...

‘Taut, sensual, funny and full of bodily intelligence. Are you there? Is it only me? these poems ask – as they look you in the eye.’ – Sarah Nuttall. The poems in Bodyhood open widely to the inside while looking outwards at the connecting points of body and being – in love, in feeling, in...

‘There’s no escaping this one,’ he says, but not to me. He says it to the ground and the sky and the thin arms of the waiting trees, but not to me. A film-maker by profession, Catherine has the perfect family: a supportive husband and a bright ten-year-old daughter. But Catherine’s beloved...

Eleven-year-old Nolitye's granny used to say: if you mess with a woman, you mess with a stone. When Nolitye finds a magical stone on the dusty streets of Phola, her granny's words take on a new meaning. Along with her two friend - the somewhat pampered Bheki, and Four Eyes, a reformed member of the...

“Hillbrow, 1967. The New York of Africa. Someone wrote that the place would soon have more people per square kilometre than Tokyo. Everyone quoted that article to everyone. Some even cut it out and kept it folded in their wallets.” While other boys daydream about racing cars and football, eleven-year-old...

“You don’t notice your nose much, but when it changes direction, it does get your attention.” Jethro ricochets through life with little to help him along the way other than his ability to bounce. His best friend tries to lend a hand, as does the therapist he sees after burglars break into his...

Enslin Kruger is a dying man, but he is the top prisoner in C-Max prison, and must name his successor. This means blood. Kruger sees an unexpected opportunity to achieve this and at the same time exact revenge on his old nemesis, Yudel Gordon. He will anoint as his heir the man who slaughters Gordon’s...

Salena, the elder of two Cape sisters, is light-skinned and demure, an easy one to marry off to a husband of her parents’ choosing. Zuhra is dark and wilful, refusing tradition and leaving the country in pursuit of her own destiny. 'The shoots of their lives grow apart and interlace again. Salena...