Home Affairs by Onyeka Nwelue
Lethabo Khumalo, a weary Home Affairs official in Pietermaritzburg, is a mother of three who has long carried life alone until a chance encounter draws her into a web of corruption that promises relief from the quiet depression of unpaid bills and leaking roofs. What follows is a story of moral compromise so subtly rendered that the reader, like Lethabo herself, scarcely notices the ground shifting until it is too late. It is a novel about the weight of silence, the architecture of complicity and the stubborn, fragile hope of reclaiming one’s own soul.
Worth the Fight by Jonathan Jansen
Jansen takes readers inside chaotic classrooms as he works alongside teachers to reverse years of decline. He exposes the complex web of low expectations, dysfunctional organisational culture and bureaucratic interference that keeps underperforming schools trapped in failure.
Part memoir, part case study and part call to action, Worth the Fight is about what it takes to turn a working-class school — and the South African education system — around.
The Common Good Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
Our economic system is broken. The climate crisis is accelerating. Inequality is deepening. Public trust is crumbling. Wealth concentrates in fewer hands while governments scramble to fix what markets can’t do, rather than to shape them from the outset. In The Common Good Economy, Mazzucato establishes a new theory of the common good, one which allows governments and businesses to develop purposeful economic relationships, creating value and building spaces where human flourishing can happen.
A Mask the Colour of the Sky by Bassem Khandaqji
Nur, a Palestinian refugee from a camp near Ramallah, is often mistaken for an Ashkenazi Jew. When he discovers an Israeli ID card in the pocket of a secondhand coat, being fluent in Hebrew and with a degree in archaeology, he assumes a false identity and is hired for an archaeological dig near Megiddo. Passing as an Israeli, he moves through a world previously off-limits and gains insight into the lives of those he’s been taught to perceive as enemies. As Nur’s borrowed identity deepens, so does the rift within.