Fiction & Poetry

A story about a family whose bonds are tested by loss and hurt through the generations. The opportunity to heal is promised in a new life.

"Wisdom is chilled out and gentle as fuck, cracking new intelligent jokes, not the old ones he rehashes when they are smoking trees. Amanda is laughing, a unique kind of laughter. It is restrained when it starts – a chuckle – then explodes with fullness and freedom, fragrance and youthfulness."

Deliverance is the story of a boy brought from the village to live in the city. Her aunt takes him to church for deliverance when things starts missing in the house. He is delivered, only for the real thief to be discovered shortly afterwards.

As a child, clinging to my father's side, my hand tightly grasping his calloused one, we arrived at the boarding school gates. Tears streamed down my face, a testament to my yearning for home's safety and comfort.

Hlín Leifsdóttir is a classical singer and writer from Iceland.

This year Antjie Krog turns 70 and her passions and commitments, forged in the 1970s, show no waning. For decades she has represented the important role that a poet can play in public life in a fractured country.

As he boards a Nairobi-bound Kangaroo Shuttle, her teary face is on his mind. She stands there motionless, looking on. The Shuttle leaves as the stage is ruffled with hooting vehicles, revving car engines, stale sweat and farts from touts, and the scramble for passengers.

Miss Duduzile Zwane is a modern young woman with the perfect life in Johannesburg. But she is troubled by persistent strange feelings. Following an encounter with a soothsayer, she embarks on a pilgrimage to a sacred cave - where she finds an unexpected source of enlightenment.

Your father, with a dagger deeply planted in his heart, must have died in great pain. How would you want to die?