Burn after Reading: Top 10 Books in SA, what Stephen Grootes is reading, trending books and more

No Images? [Click here]( Dear {NAME}, "Equinox" – a funny word that crops up each September. It's the day when the amount of night ("nox") is equal ("equi") to the amount of day. Come the 23rd of the month and you can expect increasingly less darkness to while away, reading books, until next March. Best get cracking then! Burn After Reading brings you a whole world of books to hoard: just scrawl as you scroll and make your nighttime plans. Enjoy this newsletter and, as always, meet you in the blank white spaces at the edges of print – Ben PS – Burn After Reading is co-produced with [The Reading List]( – why not send me some feedback on [Twitter](? Daily Maverick Best Sellers Here are the bestselling books in the land, courtesy our exclusive Top Ten Best Sellers list. Ten. Manage Your Money Like a F*cking Grownup by Sam Beckbessinger ... Nine. Becoming by Michelle Obama ... Eight. Tobacco Wars: Inside the Spy Games and Dirty Tricks of Southern Africa's Cigarette Trade by Johan van Loggerenberg ... [Click here for our official Top Ten Best Sellers](. The grapevine: Books that have South Africans talking Reads everyone's been pushing into your feeds. 1. Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies by Jonathan Ancer. What does it take to deceive those closest to you? How do you lead a double life and not lose yourself? These are the themes that Ancer explores as he tells the tales of some of South Africa’s most unusual and successful spies. 2. Zephany: Two Mothers One Daughter by Joanne Jowell. In August the Gauteng High Court gave Zephany Nurse, who was kidnapped at two days old from a Cape Town hospital, the go-ahead to reveal her identity. Miché Solomon will thus be at the Open Book festival this week to discuss her story, one of a normal South African upbringing – normal, that is, until the day a DNA test changed everything. 3. The Longest March by Fred Khumalo details what happened when war came to the goldfields of Johannesburg in 1899. Namely, 7,000 Zulu mineworkers marched back to Natal, covering the 500km in 10 days. A portrait of courage, the book follows the theme of resurrecting lost SA histories for which Khumalo’s previous novel, Dancing the Death Drill, received such acclaim. 4. Shots from the Edge: A Journalist’s Encounters with Conflict and Resilience by Greg Marinovich, member of the Bang-Bang Club and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Alan Paton Award. Here, he documents more than two decades of turbulent history, recounting his experiences in conflict zones across Africa and many other parts of the world. 5. The Bosasa Billions: How the ANC Sold its Soul by James-Brent Styan and Paul Vecchiatto is the story of how Bosasa exploited the greed of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats to establish an extensive tender network stretching right to the top of the government. Yes, Angelo and Gavin are in it; no, no one comes out smelling of roses. 6. Coconut Kelz’s Guide to Surviving This Shithole by Lesego Tlhabi. First, it has the best title we’ve seen in ages. Second, it’s Kelz, man – Kelz! Drinking her Woolies water and dropping her truth bombs, with handy tips on how to catch yourself a white guy (“elongate your vowels, get yourself into white spaces”), the best suburbs to live in and how to host the perfect Caucasian shindig. Later babes! On my bedside table: Stephen Grootes Each month a Daily Maverick writer shares what they’re reading. Here’s what’s on Stephen Grootes’ bedside table. I have a weakness for really bad science-fiction. At the top of the by-the-bed-pile is Prador Moon by Neal Asher. It’s about giant alien crabs that attack human space-stations to eat them (the humans, not the space-stations). Seriously. It’s nonsensical, stupid, and crazy. I couldn’t put it down. Another book I couldn’t put down was Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. It can be a little gruesome at times, but it demonstrates how we would behave if we could swap bodies, and even take the bodies of other people convicted of crimes. Gory! Underneath that, still unfinished, is my copy of Cyril Ramaphosa: The Road to Presidential Power, which is the book that proves its author, Anthony Butler, is the top expert on the president. I feel ashamed to say that I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m working on it. If you want to understand our politics, read it. Under that is a copy of a book my wife gave me for my birthday: Identity Crisis by Ben Elton. Some of Elton’s work on the “reality TV” era is the funniest fiction I’ve ever read. This book is good, but not quite in the same class as his earlier stuff. Unfortunately for bookshops everywhere, I am an absolute convert to my Kindle. Once, I cracked the screen in a gym and shed real tears. Currently, I’m switching between Bill Bryson’s Made in America and an old John Grisham. There is something about Grisham. The themes, about justice, race, and the law are universal, but I think, in the end, it’s about his ability to tell a story. You know what you are going to get, and you are happy to pay the price for it. That’s what is next to my bed at the moment. No, I’m not proud of it. But it makes me happy. The dog ear: Brief notes on forthcoming books Coming soon to a bookshop near you, a pick 'n mix of new books. The Cape Cod Bicycle War and Other Stories by Billy Kahora charts “a millennial Kenya we’ve never seen in fiction before: drunks and zealots, farmers and whistle-blowers, locals and migrants, mothers and brothers, the rich and the poor and those who slip in between,” says Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift. Out this month. Sticking with shorts, the new collection of short fiction from Zadie Smith looks terrific. Says the publisher of the forthcoming Grand Union, it moves "exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian”. October can’t come soon enough. If there’s anyone whose petty misdemeanours – you know, leaking the details of the US’s mass surveillance programme to the world, and so on – are likely to follow him around for the rest of his days, it’s Edward Snowden. The whistle-blower, living in exile in Russia, is publishing his memoir later this month – called, appropriately enough, Permanent Record. I wonder if there’s a book tour planned… probably not. On the other hand, there probably is a book tour planned for Bassie: My Journey of Hope by Basetsana Kumalo – or a glitzy launch, at the very least. It's billed as an “intimate, candid and inspiring account” of the media mogul’s life and times. Watch for more details in October. Ever heard of “griplit”? If not, meet Alex van Tonder, who writes novels about contemporary life that have a killer twist – quite literally in the case of her new book, A Walk at Midnight. Jane is a devoted wife, a mother, a writer and, well, possibly a murderer? You have to read to the end to find out. Out this month. Finally, brace yourself for The Water Dancer, the debut novel from Ta-Nehisi Coates. Yes, that Ta-Nehisi Coates, the writer who has shaken things up on the US race relations scene like very few others this century. His book centres on Hiram Walker, born into bondage. When his mother is sold away Hiram is robbed of his memory of her – but gifted with a mysterious power that saves his life. The book has received many advance rave reviews; you’ll be able to get your copy before Christmas. COLUMN It feels like we’re characters stuck inside Kurt Vonnegut’s Creative Writing 101 class One of Vonnegut's writing principles is: “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them.” So far, so 2019. But not all is lost. Vonnegut also advises writers to create characters they can root for – and in that spirit, here are three authors from real life to cheer on. [Read Ben's column.]( EXCERPTS Two excerpts from books causing respective stirs 1. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo “These women broke my heart and I won’t forget them,” says Gillian Anderson of Taddeo’s book, a revelatory, brave and heartbreaking examination of female desire; both a sustained journalistic feat and a compulsively readable narrative. Taddeo spent eight years and thousands of hours tracking the women whose stories comprise Three Women, even moving to the towns they lived in to better understand their lives. [Exclusive to Maverick Life, read the excerpt here](. 2. After Dawn: Hope After State Capture by Mcebisi Jonas South Africa needs to create new national obsessions around which stakeholders can cohere and push difficult policy decisions that will break our low-growth, high-inequality trap, writes former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas in this extract from his new book After Dawn. [Read the excerp]([t here](. INTERVIEW Oyinkan Braithwaite Braithwaite’s debut novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer, was longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. The author is in Cape Town this week for the Open Book Festival. We caught up with her for a chat. At what point did Braithwaite realise she had a major literary hit on her hands? I am still reeling. I did not think that this would be the story that put me on the map. At first, I self-published it, in its novella form, with the goal of perhaps a few hundred downloads. So, to see it soar like this, is amazing. [Read our interview with Oyinkan Braithwaite here.]( Hey, also read Marianne Thamm’s interview with Jonathan Ancer, author of Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies. [Find the interview here](. THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT Current literary awards Keep up with all the key literary awards that other people are winning. They only went and did it: that’s right, the extremely tardy organisers of the 9mobile Prize for African Literature, which released its most recent shortlist in January 2018, have finally – finally – 20 months later – announced the £15,000 prize’s winner. Congratulations to Nigerian author Ayòbámi Adébáyò, who won the gong for her novel Stay With Me. The £50,000 Booker Prize released its shortlist of six this week, which features Nigerian Chigozie Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities) and British author Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other), who has Nigerian heritage. Go Naija! The prize has a new sponsor, by the way – no more shall it be called the “Man Booker”, or any other kind of Booker, as the sponsor has mercifully declined to add its branding to the prize’s name. Good call: Crankstart is the name of the new sponsor. Who would want to win the Crankstart Booker? The South African English Academy has announced its Southern Africa Awards for writing; and Short Story Day Africa, one of our most important literary organisations, named its annual winner, Egyptian Adam El Shalakany, for his story "Happy City Hotel". [Get more details on these awards and use them to practice the art of articulate conversation at tonight’s dinner party](. THE TICKET Two litfests to attend this week, in Cape Town and Jozi 1. Open Book, Cape Town South Africa’s most ambitious literary festival started its five-day run in Cape Town on Wednesday and will see the curtain fall this Sunday afternoon. Hats off to Mervyn Sloman and Frankie Murrey, who run the show bringing great literature to Cape Town in a way that few other litfests do for other cities, anywhere, since 2010. [Click here for the Open Book programme and to buy tickets](. 2. The South African Book Fair, Jozi Starting tomorrow and running through Sunday, the third edition of the South African Book Fair takes place at the Women’s Gaol, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg – a terrific new venue for what is shaping up as one of Jozi’s most important annual literary gatherings. [Click here for the SABF programme and to buy tickets](. The Recipe: Delicious three-cheese mushroom pie from My Vegetarian Braai by Adele Maartens My Vegetarian Braai is not about trying to convert carnivores, but rather to broaden the horizons of every braaier. What better way to begin than with this delicious Three-cheese Mushroom Pie! [Click here for the complete recipe](. Further Reading: Book links galore At The Reading List, we’re trainspotters for book links, and we’ve collected a host of them – including author interviews, book excerpts and generally notable book items. Want to know where to find the first excerpt of Margaret Atwood's The Testaments? Or the pick of the tributes for Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison? [Click here to browse and enjoy at your leisure]([.]( [The Reading List]( Visit [The Reading Lis](t for South African book news, daily. Copyright 2019 Daily Maverick, All Rights Reserved. You are receiving this mail because you are awesome and on the Maverick Life subscriber list. [Like]( [Tweet]( [Share]( [Forward]( [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](