The Castaways emerged in the early seventies as both an historical exploration of South Africa, and as a metaphor for the oppressive apartheid society of that time. The story is set in the eighteenth century and brings together the catastrophe of a shipwreck and the turmoil of a mental breakdown.

Sheila Fugard takes the reader on an inner contemporary journey, while simultaneously exploring the struggle of the survivors of the actual wreck. The scrutiny is intense, the language evocative and filled with resonances of both past and present.

The themes of colonial conquest, the paranoia of terrorism, and the eternal quest for the self are expressed in superb lyrical passages. Many diverse voices from different ages in Africa echo through the text and will no doubt speak to a new generation of readers, with the same eloquence and riveting power as they did when the novel made its original debut.

The Children’s Day is a literary chronicle – at times shocking, funny, and tender – of a boy’s coming of age in the Free State village of Verkeerdespruit, during the apartheid years of the sixties. Through a series of finely drawn and illuminating situations, the novel captures the essence of what it was like to grow up in a world fraught with strange and sometimes violent contradictions of class, race, gender, and language. The widening world of adolescence, in all its allure and confusion, is explored through the acute but puzzled eyes of Simon, who struggles to make sense of the adult world around him – torn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong.

The novel is peopled with poignant, vulnerable and sometimes eccentric characters, through whose lives Simon comes to understand something of the complexity of what love can mean: Mr de Wet whose eyes look 20 degrees to the right, Betty the Exchange without a chin, Klasie the postmaster who finds and loses love on the Boer War battlefields, Miss Rheeder with her red shoes and Trevor with his blonde fringe and pink shirt. And then there is Fanie, the poorest boy in the school – epileptic, taciturn, infuriating and yet strangely charismatic…

Michiel Heyns went to school in Thaba Nchu, Kimberly, and Grahamstown, and studied at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. He now lectures in English at the University of Stellenbosch. This is his first novel.

The Children’s Day is a literary chronicle – at times shocking, funny, and tender – of a boy’s coming of age in the Free State village of Verkeerdespruit, during the apartheid years of the sixties. Through a series of finely drawn and illuminating situations, the novel captures the essence of what it was like to grow up in a world fraught with strange and sometimes violent contradictions of class, race, gender, and language. The widening world of adolescence, in all its allure and confusion, is explored through the acute but puzzled eyes of Simon, who struggles to make sense of the adult world around him – torn between scorn for his surroundings and a desire to belong.

The novel is peopled with poignant, vulnerable and sometimes eccentric characters, through whose lives Simon comes to understand something of the complexity of what love can mean: Mr de Wet whose eyes look 20 degrees to the right, Betty the Exchange without a chin, Klasie the postmaster who finds and loses love on the Boer War battlefields, Miss Rheeder with her red shoes and Trevor with his blonde fringe and pink shirt. And then there is Fanie, the poorest boy in the school – epileptic, taciturn, infuriating and yet strangely charismatic . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michiel Heyns went to school in Thaba Nchu, Kimberley, and Grahamstown, and studied at the universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. Following the huge success of his remarkable debut novel, The Children's Day, he now writes full time. He has published three novels, The Children’s Day, The Reluctant Passenger and The Typewriter’s Tale, all published by Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Softcover B-format R115
ISBN: 978-1-86842-299-9
March 2008
Category: Fiction
The Children’s Day - Michiel Heyns

To outsiders, St Patrick's High School in Johannesburg is a model of excellence, producing well-balanced young adults equipped to claim their inheritance as the new leaders of the fledgling democracy. But behind this façade lies a dark secret: the school is dominated by 'Ess Club', a powerful group of senior students who have adopted the values of the business and political elite of a post-Mandela South Africa – pride and its six deadly offspring: greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth. Bright, privileged and utterly ruthless, they manipulate the school for their own gain, their antics invisible behind the polished exterior of the exclusive institution.

It is 2007 and senior member Mammuso Mazibuko is hot favourite to become the next chairman of Ess Club. Life could not be better. But when her naive younger brother Jacob attracts the attention of a brutish fellow Club member, Mammuso is drawn into a sinister and increasingly desperate battle of wits to protect him.

With wonderfully drawn characters and a riveting plot, Bulbring paints an extraordinary and often chilling portrait of the life of the young elite in Johannesburg today.

The Author: Edyth Bulbring is the author of two young adult novels. The Summer of Toffie and Grummer (OUP) was published in February 2008, and Cornelia Button and the Globe of Gamagion (Jacana) was published in April 2008.

Sales Price:R 160.00
ISBN: 978-1-86842-312-5
Sept 2008
Trade Paperback
pages ± 300
World rights
Category: SA Fiction

On a sheep farm in the Stormberg region of the north-eastern Cape, novice biographer Jeremy Cranwell researches the life of a British war general who fell from grace there during the Anglo-Boer War. Even in that rural fatness, however, the past proves no match for the present and Cranwell soon finds himself drawn into South Africa’s conflict. Stitching strands of imperial history to the routines of sheep farming and the peculiarities of an isolated community, John Conyngham examines a spectrum of issues, among them the patterns of desecration and the notions of success and failure.

John Conygnham was born in Durban in 1954. He spent his early life on a sugar farm and was educated in South Africa, England and Ireland. After his national service he taught briefly before joining The Natal Witness as a sub-editor and was appointed editor in 1994. Married, with a son and daughter, he lives near Pietermaritzburg.