“Mandela was not the only head of state taken in by Koagne. Le king kept snapshots of himself with many a man of power, among them Mobutu Sese Seko and Denis Sassou Nguesso […] He took Mobutu for 15 million dollars. Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso lost 40 million to him. Sassou, Etienne Eyadéma of Togo, several high officials of Gabon, Tanzania and Kenya, a member of the Spanish government and an ex-operative of the Israeli Mossad were bamboozled as well.” – Dominique Malaquais (Blood Money: A Douala Chronicle).
Bantu Serenade by Ntone Edjabe (featuring Nah-ee-lah) (read excerpt)
Santu Mofokeng: Trajectory of a street photographer (part1) (read excerpt)
Binyavanga Wainaina: Hell In Bed With Mrs Peprah (read excerpt)
Dominique Malaquais: Lindela (the winnie suite) (read excerpt)
Boubacar Boris Diop: Myriem (read excerpt)
Cover:
Neo Muyanga
Set in 2019, Volume 1 opens with the discovery of the mutilated body of a middle-aged white woman in the basement of Shalom Court, an abandoned block of flats in Yeoville, Johannesburg. What follows is both the struggle to identify the victim and the hunt for the killer. En route, various characters – neighbours, cops, property owners, municipal officials, as well as past and present residents of the building – co-operate or clash in terms of their own agendas and concerns.
“Utilizing brutal realism and satire, with touches of the fantastical, The Chronicles of Shalom Court delves into contemporary South Africa by cutting across cultures and classes. Its fictional universe is populated by every stratum of society fleshed out in a blend of social encodings, tonal registers and individual eccentricities. Examining competing notions of sanity, the extremes of violence and gender relations, political and bureaucratic corruption, racist phobias and everyday struggles for survival, this is truly a work of the neo-colony.” – Andries Walter Oliphant
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