Pan Macmillan SA to publish THE NEAR NORTH by Ivan Vladislavić

Photo: Minky Schlesinger

We are delighted that Pan Macmillan SA have acquired THE NEAR NORTH, the latest work from Ivan Vladislavić, for publication in Southern Africa in March 2024.

Terry Morris, MD of Pan Macmillan South Africa, says: ‘A new work by Ivan Vladislavić is always a momentous literary occasion. Pan Macmillan is honoured and thrilled to be publishing THE NEAR NORTH, which showcases Ivan at his inventive, lyrical and immersive best.’

Ivan Vladislavić says: ‘I am excited to be joining the Pan Macmillan fold. Picador Africa publishes some of my favourite writers and does so with skill and flair. Their Johannesburg shelf, which includes classics such as Dangor’s BITTER FRUIT and Van Wyk’s SHIRLEY, GOODNESS AND MERCY, keeps growing all the time. My work will be at home in this company and I look forward to a productive association.’

Ivan’s agent, Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann, adds: ‘It was a great pleasure to clinch this deal, seeing the passion for Ivan’s work from the team at Pan Macmillan SA. The Near North is a book of intense acuity and quiet power and will stand in excellent company on the Picador Africa list.’

Revolving around a writer in the city of Johannesburg in different states of lockdown, THE NEAR NORTH’s narrative traces his steps along the city’s streets, as he meets its ghosts and muses on found objects, journeying through eras and examining deep divides as he walks.

Wryly playful at times, fiercely serious at others, THE NEAR NORTH is kin to Vladislavić’s award-winning PORTRAIT WITH KEYS (which Geoff Dyer described as ‘one of the most ingenious love letters – full of violence, fear, humour and cunning – ever addressed to a city’), but is at the same time an entirely original and quietly intimate work of great power.

About Ivan Vladislavić

Ivan Vladislavić was born in Pretoria in 1957 and lives in Johannesburg. His books include the novels THE DISTANCE, THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET, THE EXPLODED VIEW and DOUBLE NEGATIVE, and the story collections 101 DETECTIVES and FLASHBACK HOTEL. In 2006, he published PORTRAIT WITH KEYS, a sequence of documentary texts on Johannesburg. He has edited books on architecture and art, and sometimes works with artists and photographers. TJ/DOUBLE NEGATIVE, a joint project with photographer David Goldblatt, received the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz Award for best photography book. His work has been published in 11 languages.

His work has also won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the Alan Paton Award, the University of Johannesburg Prize and Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing Department at Wits University.

Visit Ivan's website

Praise for Ivan Vladislavić

‘Ivan Vladislavić occupies a place all of his own in the South African literary landscape: a versatile stylist and formal innovator whose work is nevertheless firmly rooted in contemporary urban life.’ – J.M. Coetzee

‘Vladislavić is among the top writers on the contemporary world stage.’ – Neel Mukherjee

‘Mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny… Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.’ – Katie Kitamura, BOMB Magazine

‘One of South Africa's most finely tuned observers’ – Ted Hodgkinson, The Times Literary Supplement

‘Ivan Vladislavić is certainly one of the most remarkable and versatile writers of our time’ – Thando Njovane, Africa in Words

Shani Akilah’s stunning short story collection FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS pre-empted by Oneworld

Photo credit: Jonathan Osibo

Fighting off a competing pre-empt, Oneworld has pre-empted UK and British Commonwealth rights to debut Black-British author Shani Akilah’s richly imagined short story collection FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS from Sian Ellis-Martin.

FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS will publish in June 2024 as a superlead title under Oneworld’s new book-club imprint, Magpie, underpinned by an extensive publicity and marketing campaign. A sampler of one of the stories will be available at Waterstones’ TikTok Festival later this month.

Partly set during the pandemic years, this collection brings to life the stories of Black-British Londoners as they navigate their way through relationships that break them, shape them, and sustain them through good times and bad. Linked to a central main character, they explore love and friendship, identity and community, loss and faith.

Shani Akilah says: ‘I'm absolutely delighted and honoured to have my debut short-story collection come to life with Oneworld. This journey has been a labour of love, and I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to be in the company of some of my favourite writers whose work has inspired me over the years.’

Juliet Mabey says: ‘Shani has brilliantly captured the Black-British and diasporic experience through a millennial lens, providing a fresh and contemporary spin on the challenges faced by a group of friends living in extraordinary times. Sitting at the literary-commercial sweet spot, it’s a stunning first outing for a writer of real strength and ambition.’

Sian Ellis-Martin says: ‘I’m thrilled that FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS has found a home with Juliet Mabey and the team at Oneworld. Shani’s beautifully crafted stories give an insight into the joys – and struggles – of the many variations of love and friendship and I can’t wait for readers to have the chance to enjoy them as much as I have.’

About Shani Akilah
Shani Akilah is a Black-British writer from South London of Caribbean heritage (Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica). She is an avid reader and book blogger and was spotlighted as a ‘Key Black Influencer’ by DoubleDay Books. Shani is passionate about community and bringing people together and is the co-founder of Nyah Network, a book club for black women and is also the founder of contributor based platform, Bankra, that explored the navigated identities of black millennials. Shani loves travelling, and has spent significant time in Ghana as part of her studies. Shani has a Masters degree in African Studies from Oxford University with research exploring counter-diasporic return and issues of home and belonging amongst second-generation British-Ghanaians.

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THE MAN WHO LOVED CROCODILE TAMERS, A LIBRARY TO FLEE and MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH longlisted for the South African Sunday Times Literary Awards

We are delighted that THE MAN WHO LOVED CROCODILE TAMERS by Finuala Dowling and A LIBRARY TO FLEE by Etienne van Heerden (translated by Henrietta Rose-Innes), have been longlisted for the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards in South Africa, in the fiction category, while MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH by Denis Hirson has been longlisted in the non-fiction category.

The Sunday Times Literary Awards are awarded annually to writers who are either South African citizens or residents, and the fiction prize goes to a novel of ‘rare imagination and style’ which is ‘so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction’. Finuala Dowling’s last novel, OKAY OKAY OKAY, was also longlisted in 2021, and past winners include Blake Friedmann authors Marlene van Niekerk, Ivan Vladislavić and Zakes Mda. The non-fiction prize is awarded to a book that demonstrates ‘compassion, elegance of writing, and intellectual and moral integrity’, and has also been won by Blake Friedmann authors Ivan Vladislavić and the late Hugh Lewin.

Published by Kwela in March 2022, THE MAN WHO LOVED CROCODILE TAMERS is a daughter’s unforgettable portrait of a complex man. Gina knows hardly anything about her father apart from the fact that he was once engaged to Koringa, a crocodile tamer, and that he is buried in an unmarked grave. In between shifts at call centre, she works on a novel about him, in a narrative that is by turns enchanting, funny, and heartbreaking.

A LIBRARY TO FLEE, published by Tafelberg in September 2022, focuses on our dangerous, turbulent times: several stories are woven together while Cape Town’s mysterious crossbow killer prepares to strike again.

In MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH, Denis Hirson looks back to his childhood in Johannesburg in the 1960s, to his relationship with his father, who was imprisoned for anti-Apartheid activism, and to his thirteenth birthday, when he visited his father in the car park of the prison. It was published by Jacana in South Africa in 2022, and will be published by Pushkin Press in the UK and US in 2024, with an audio edition from Tantor.

About Finuala Dowling

Photo: Simone Scholtz

Finuala Dowling is a prize-winning poet and novelist and an acclaimed poetry teacher. She lives in Kalk Bay, Cape Town.

Her first novel was WHAT POETS NEED, followed by FLYLEAF. HOME-MAKING FOR THE DOWN-AT-HEART won the M-Net Prize 2012 and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize in the same year. Her novel THE FETCH won the 2016 Herman Charles Bosman prize for English fiction. Her novel OKAY OKAY OKAY was published in South Africa by Kwela in 2019, with her latest novel, THE MAN WHO LOVED CROCODILE TAMERS, following in 2022.

Finuala Dowling on Poetry International

Finuala Dowling on Facebook

About Etienne van Heerden

Photo: Roger Sedres

Etienne van Heerden is the author of 28 published books, published in 12 languages and the winner of many major South African prizes. Van Heerden is an alumnus of the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program and regularly teaches at universities in Europe. He has been writer-in-residence at the Leiden University in the Netherlands and the University of Antwerp in Belgium. His classic novel TOORBERG (ANCESTRAL VOICES) has recently been re-issued in Dutch by Aldo Manuzio.

Etienne van Heerden’s website

About Denis Hirson

Photo: Adine Sagalyn

Denis Hirson is a South African writer and lecturer now living in Paris. He is the author of seven books, almost all of them at the frontier between prose and poetry and concerned with the memory of South Africa at the time of apartheid. These include THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR TO AFRICA (David Philip), as well as, from Jacana: WE WALK STRAIGHT SO YOU BETTER GET OUT THE WAY, the best-selling I REMEMBER KING KONG (THE BOXER), the poetry collection GARDENING IN THE DARK; the novel THE DANCING AND THE DEATH ON LEMON STREET (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, 2012) and WHITE SCARS, a lyrical meditation on reading and its significance in our lives, runner-up for the South African Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Prize in 2007. His latest book, MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH, was published by Jacana in South African in 2022, with Pushkin Press to publish in the UK and US in 2024.

About Henrietta Rose-Innes

Photo: Christine Fourie

Henrietta Rose-Innes is the author of the novels SHARK'S EGG (SA: Kwela 2000) and THE ROCK ALPHABET (SA: Kwela 2004) and a collection of short stories, HOMING, which features the 2008 Caine Prize winning story ‘Poison’ and the 2010 Willesden Prize runner-up, ‘Falling’. Her novel NINEVEH was published by Random House SA’s Umuzi imprint in 2011 and by Gallic Books in 2016, and her latest novel, GREEN LION, was published by Umuzi in 2015 and by Gallic Books in 2017.

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Romalyn Ante, Janice Galloway and Kaite O’Reilly made Royal Society of Literature Fellows

We are delighted that three Blake Friedmann authors, Romalyn Ante, Janice Galloway and Kaite O’Reilly, have been elected fellows of the Royal Society of Literature.

The election took place at the RSL’s annual summer party on 12 July, where the new Fellows signed their names in the RSL Roll Book, which dates back to 1825.

Founded in 1820, the Royal Society of Literature is a charity which represents the voice of literature in the UK. To be nominated as a fellow, a writer must have published or produced two works of outstanding literary merit, and nominations must be made by two fellows or honorary fellows. This was the second and final year of the RSL Open initiative, which has seen 60 new writers from backgrounds underrepresented in UK literary culture elected to Fellowship. Readers and writers from across the UK recommended writers for nomination, who were then considered by a panel. This year the panel consisted of Monica Ali, Nick Laird, Sabrina Mahfouz, Charlotte Mendelson, Daljit Nagra, Irenosen Okojie and Chibundu Onuzo, and was chaired by Damian Barr.

Damian Barr said of the new Fellows: ‘This is a list of powerful talents and pioneering trailblazers; gifted writers of all genres who lit the way and who continue to inspire us in darker times. Their recognition is richly deserved and, for some, long overdue. The Royal Society of Literature is all the richer for these new Fellows, just as the world is for their words.’

About Romalyn Ante

Photo: S Chadawong

Romalyn Ante was born and lived in the Philippines until she migrated to the UK when she was 16 years old. She is now based in Wolverhampton. Romalyn is a poet and works as a specialist nurse practitioner. She is a co-founding editor of harana poetry, and the first East-Asian to win the Poetry London Prize (2018) and the Manchester Poetry Prize (2017). She also won the Creative Future Literary Award 2017. 

Romalyn’s debut poetry collection, ANTIEMETIC FOR HOMESICKNESS, was published by Chatto & Windus and was an Irish Times Best Poetry Book of 2020, an Observer Poetry Book of the Month and a Poetry School Poetry Book of the Year 2020. It was also a National Poetry Day UK Recommended Read and is longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize.

See Romalyn’s website here

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About Janice Galloway

Janice Galloway was born in Ayrshire in 1955. Her first novel, THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING (Vintage), now widely regarded as a contemporary Scottish classic, was published in 1990. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, Scottish First Book, Italia Premio Acerbi and Aer Lingus Awards, and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year. Her second novel was FOREIGN PARTS (Vintage, 1995), which won Te McVitie's Prize. CLARA (Vintage), a fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann, was published in 2003 and won the Saltire Book of the Year.

Janice is also the author of two works of ‘anti-memoir’: THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME (Granta, 2010), was shortlisted for The Biographer's Club First Book and won Scottish non-fiction Book of the Year; ALL MADE UP (Granta, 2011) won the SMIT Book of the Year and a Creative Scotland Award. Her latest book, JELLYFISH (Granta, 2019), is a short story collection exploring sex and sexuality, parenthood, relationships, the connections between generations, death, ambition and loss.

Visit Janice's website

About Kaite O’Reilly

Photo: Hayley Madden

Kaite O' Reilly is an award-winning playwright and poet (Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Evening News Best Play of 2004, International Susan Smith Blackburn Award 2009, Ted Hughes Award for New Works in Poetry 2011), a recipient of two Unlimited Commissions, part of the Cultural Olympiad for the London Olympics (for IN WATER I'M WEIGHTLESS and LEANER, FASTER, STRONGER) and a Fellow of International Research Centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’, Freie Universität, Berlin.

Visit Kaite's website here

Click here to read about Kaite's scriptwriting