Biography & Memoir - Jonathan Ball Publishers

Breaking Bread

Professor. Pundit. Public nuisance. In his columns, books and on social media, Jonathan Jansen is prolific, and he likes to speak his mind about schools and universities, race, politics and our complex South African society. He has brought incisive analysis, compassion and a sense of humour to some of the most controversial issues in our country for many years. And now, in this memoir, Jansen goes back to his early years: growing up in a loving, fiercely evangelical family on the Cape Flats, being put on the road to purpose by an inspiring school teacher and becoming the first of his generation to go to university.

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The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela

The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela is an astute examination of one of South Africa’s most controversial political figures, of the rise and fall – and rise, again, – of a woman who not only battled the apartheid regime, but the patriarchal character of the struggle itself.

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Jonathan Ball: A Tribute

Jonathan Ball, the founder of Jonathan Ball Publishers, died on 3 April 2021 after a short illness. This collection of essays, commissioned in tribute to him, is edited by Michele Magwood.

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Robert Sobukwe: How Can Man Die Better

This book is the story of a South African hero – Robert Sobukwe – the lonely prisoner on Robben Island. It is also the story of the friendship between Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund whose joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the growth of black resistance.

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Churchill & Smuts

The remarkable, and often touching, friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts. Richard Steyn, author of Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness, examines this close friendship through two world wars and the intervening years, drawing on a maze of archival and secondary sources including letters, telegrams and the voluminous books written about both men.

Also available in Afrikaans: Churchill en Smuts – Die Vriendskap

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Botha, Smuts and the First World War

Botha, Jan Smuts and the First World War by Antonio Garcia and Ian van der Waag is a first-of-a-kind volume investigates the wartime roles of these two legendary yet divisive historical figures.

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Always Another Country

In her much anticipated memoir, Sisonke Msimang writes about her exile childhood in Zambia and Kenya, young adulthood and college years in North America, and returning to South Africa in the euphoric 1990s. She reflects candidly on her discontent and disappointment with present day South Africa but also on her experiences of family, romance, and motherhood, with the novelist’s talent for character and pathos.

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High Times

High Times is the true story of Michael Medjuck, whose taste for weed, women and the good life led him from late-1960s Johannesburg to notoriety as one of the biggest hash and weed smugglers in North America.

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Quiet Time with the President

After many years of serving the country and doing his part to help rebuild South Africa, Dr Peter Friedland was given an opportunity to serve as a member of Nelson Mandela’s medical team and helped to monitor his hearing. Through many conversations had with Mandela and lessons he learnt from his life, Peter worked through some of his PTSD, his fears and the deep sense of hopelessness he felt as he came to terms with his decision to emigrate to Australia.