These are among the books that landed on my desk this month. The first four – Exit Wounds, There are Rivers in the Sky, How to Say Babylon, and The Dark Wives, are part of a list of Exclusive Books’s top reads for September. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Exit Wounds: A story of love, loss and occasional wars, by Peter Godwin (Picador Africa)

I pounced on this memoir, having thoroughly appreciated Peter Godwin’s earlier two: Mukiwa, a coming-of-age tale about growing up white in Rhodesia during the war for independence, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, about the collapse of his family as Zimbabwe itself goes into a death spiral.

His father dies in the second memoir, by which time Godwin is living in the US, having married a Yorkshire woman he met while a student in the UK. They have a son, and there is a line that struck me: their little family speaks with three different accents.

There was another bit that nearly reduced me to tears: Godwin and his sister want their mother, now elderly and poor thanks to crippling inflation, to leave Zimbabwe and go back to England, but she is resisting them. She’s lived there for 40 years or so, working as a doctor, and when her children pile on the pressure, she sends them a Rudyard Kipling poem purportedly in the voice of a Roman centurion ordered home to Rome after decades in Britain:

“Legate, I come to you in tears – My cohort ordered home!/ I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome?/ Here is my heart, my soul, my mind – the only life I know./ I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!”

But she eventually did leave, as we discover in the opening pages of Exit Wounds. She stays in London with her daughter Georgina, while Peter often flies to see her from New York.

But he says sadly: “There is a sad symmetry to our relationship. I spent the first decade of my life trying to summon my mother’s attention, and she has spent the last decade of hers trying to summon mine.”

There are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak (Viking/Penguin Books)

This novel has an extraordinarily broad sweep, from the ancient city of Nineveh to Victorian London, then on to Turkey in 2014 and finally back to London in 2018.

The cover blurb tells us this is the story of a lost poem: The Epic of Gilgamesh, two great rivers and three remarkable lives, all connected by a single drop of water, one that keeps being recycled from raindrop to earth and thence back to sky… it’s the sort of story that gets me using the word thence.

I suspect this novel may be a touch higher grade, but it gets enthusiastic shouts from the likes of the great British classicist Mary Beard (“A brilliant, unforgettable novel”) and the best-selling writers Philippa Gregory (“The story flows like the rivers from ancient Nineveh to present-day London, with characters of the distant past as bright and vivid as those of today”), William Boyd, Arundhati Roy and Ian McEwan.

How to Say Babylon – A Jamaican memoir, by Safiya Sinclair (4^th Estate)

Safiya Sinclair grew up in Jamaica, desperate to be a writer and live her own life, but she and her family were dominated by her father, a member of a militant Rasta sect who rejected Babylon, his term for the corrupting influence of the West.

She made it – she has written three prize-winning books and is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Arizona State University.

How she escaped her repressive background is the subject of what the Spectator calls “this electrifying memoir”, which was also one of the Guardian’s “best memoirs and biographies of 2023”.

Writer Elif Shafak – see above – said of Babylon: “I absolutely adored this book… Heartbreaking and heartwarming.”

The Dark Wives – A Vera thriller, by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan)

I’m an enormous fan of Ann Cleeves’s various series of detective thrillers: the Shetland novels, the Two Rivers novels and of course the Vera Stanhope novels, as personified in the TV series by the brilliant actress Brenda Blethyn. (“What’s that, pet?”)

In The Dark Wives, an early morning dog walker finds a body (early-morning dog walkers have a lot to answer for) on a common near a care home for troubled teens. He turns out to be Josh, a staff member.

Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope is called in, and finds her only clue is the disappearance of Chloe Spence, 14, one of the home’s residents. Then a second body is found near the Three Dark Wives, standing stones in the Northumbrian countryside, and “superstition and folklore begin to collide with fact”.

Ann Cleeves has dedicated this detective thriller “to teens everywhere, and especially to the Dark Wives – uppity young women with minds of their own struggling to find a place in a difficult world”.

The Super Cadres – ANC misrule in the age of deployment, by Pieter du Toit (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

Quoting ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe, former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo said in his report, into the allegations of state capture, that the strategic deployment of comrades was an important part of the ANC’s strategy to control the levers of state power.

And we know where that has led. In the prologue to what is clearly an important book about the state of our nation, Pieter du Toit writes that as the party’s secretary general during its most destructive decade, its chair since 2017 “and one of the most enthusiastic defenders of its “ruinous cadre deployment policy, [Gwede Mantashe] bears more responsibility than most for [the party’s] fate in the 2024 elections.

“Mantashe represents a refusal to reform. And the downfall of the ANC.”

In his introduction, Du Toit writes that cadre deployment was formalised as far back as 1997 as a mechanism to ensure the party’s complete dominance over power in the state.

The system, introduced during Nelson Mandela’s time at the helm of both party and country, “but formulated and implemented by [Thabo] Mbeki, ensured that the ANC’s culture of patronage politics and rent-seeking would flourish. Mbeki’s intention with cadre deployment was to ensure the supremacy of African nationalism and party control. But what it eventually led to was the severe weakening of the state, institutional corruption and the rise of a predatory class of ANC deployees focused on large-scale resource extraction”.

Du Toit says his book exposes the depravity of cadre deployment. He goes further, he says, and attempts to explain how the ANC’s super cadres, a class of political power brokers and party headmen, consolidated their power and how the ANC squandered almost every opportunity to modernise SA after 1994, bringing the country to the brink.

Blood Brothers – to Operation Smokeshell and back, by Leon Lamprecht (Jonathan Ball Publishers)

As a female, I was never conscripted into the SA Defence Force, and when I was of an age to have boyfriends and a brother in the military – all in the navy for one thing, so based at Saldanha, Gordon’s Bay and Simon’s Town – it seemed a more innocent age.

As a result I’ve never been particularly interested in the slew of books that have been written about the ghastly experiences of the troepies (and fighters on the other side) in the then South West Africa and Angola.

Journalist Deon Lamprecht was with 61 Mech in Angola, and has now written three books about the war. This one is about a battle he was not part of, which wreaked terrible damage on both sides.

But he says this book is not about glorifying a long-ago war – the battle of Smokeshell took place on a single day in June 1980 – “it is about camaraderie, mutual respect and social support in the here and now”.

It also talks about the horror that can still surface among the men who fought there, and the physical pain and disability some of them suffer to this day.

These are among the respectable haul of books that landed on my desk this month. The first three – Irascible Genius by Kevin van Wyk, Hot Tea and Apricots by Kim Ballantine, and The Tea Merchant by Jackie Phamotse, are among Exclusive Books’s top reads for the month. A fourth novel, A Short Life by Nicky Greenwall, also one of Exclusive’s top reads, will be reviewed on The Books Page on Sunday, September 1. Some of these books will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

Irascible Genius – A son’s memoir, by Kevin van Wyk (Macmillan)

I remember reading the late lamented Chris van Wyk’s brilliant and best-selling Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, and marvelling. Most other memoir writers describe what happened in their lives, while Van Wyk has you there in the Riverlea yard with him and his friends, playing cricket.

In his memoirs of life in Johannesburg’s Riverlea, Van Wyk comes across as charming and genial, and yet judging from the title of this book by his older son, the writer was certainly clever, but a man who could be distinctly short-tempered.

In a preface, Kevin writes that as his father got older, the family would find his descriptions of what had outraged him funny. He would look at their bemused smiles, and say: “Ag, you know I can be full of shit sometimes.”

Chris van Wyk, who also wrote poetry, children’s books and biographies, died of cancer in 2014. In the months leading to his death Kevin was often the person to drive him to his treatments, and the pair shared many philosophical discussions.

Kevin went to Wits to study law, and has since held various positions as a legal adviser in the banking, hospitality and telecommunications sectors.

The publishers say on the cover: “If storytelling runs in the genes, Kevin may just be proof that his father’s spirit lives on.”

Hot Tea and Apricots – A memoir of loss and hope, by Kim Ballantine (Self-published)

When you think how intricate and complicated the human body is, all the processes and bits that have to work right and in concert so that we can get on with our lives, it’s amazing how little, generally, goes wrong.

Except sometimes of course it does, spectacularly. Kim Ballantine, a Johannesburg-based industrial psychologist who made her living from talking, was taken ill on her 40^th birthday.

It starts with a violent coughing fit, followed by the desperate feeling she cannot breathe. This is because, it turns out, her throat has gone into spasm. A trip to A&E follows and she is eventually diagnosed with chronic spasmodic dysphonia, a condition of severe layrngeal spasms.

The best treatment is to have regular Botox injections into her vocal chords, which relaxes them, but which also means she cannot speak.

However, not only does her job depends on her voice, she is also a wife and mother to three young children. How is it possible she will never speak again?

In the face of this tragedy she turns to sign language – her children learn it with her – as well as writing.

This is a story of family, friendship and faith.

The Tea Merchant – part 1 of a two-book series, by Jackie Phamotse (Penguin Random House)

Luna is a young Khoisan nursing graduate, desperate for job. Waiting for a job interview at a Bellville clinic, she meets Amora, who is Xhosa. After nearly 12 hours, Luna finally goes in and does not like the doctor interviewing her.

Later that evening there is a murder in which both nurses are complicit. But they seem to have got the jobs. Three years later something else happens and they leave town at speed, along with transfer papers, to work in a clinic in Clanwilliam.

There, during a fire on their first night, Luna meets Cameron Coal, who is desperately trying to save his family’s rooibos tea farm. But Cameron’s brother, improbably called Sole Coal, has a secret that could shatter their world.

Jackie Phamotse is a writer, businesswoman, social activist and philanthropist, according to a note about “The Author”. Her debut novel, BARE 1: The Blesser’s Game, was awarded the African Icon Literary Award in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2018. She lives in Sandton.

The note adds that Phamotse’s work “revolves around the narrative of women and children in Africa. Her stories are raw, well-researched and highly thought-provoking”.

I don’t think I’m in the target audience for this novel.

Familiaris, by David Wroblewski (Abacus Books/ Jonathan Ball)

This is a saga set “in the middle of nowhere” in northern Wisconsin in 1919, about a young couple who buy a farm and launch a dog breeding project (domestic dogs’ Latin name is canis familiaris).

I have been reading it on and off for several weeks now, and keep breaking off not because I’m not enjoying it, but because it is very long – nearly 1000 pages – and that’s just too much for me to read in a week. So I keep having to find something shorter to review each Sunday.

The young couple, John and Mary Sawtelle, buy the farm with the somewhat unwilling help of Mary’s stepfather – well she blackailed him, and quite right too.

They go off to the farm with a former ice seller and his enormous horse (he stole the horse when its owners were going to sell it and break up their partnership),  John’s taciturn handyman buddy and a guy John persuaded to enlist in the war, and was grievously wounded. He bears a bitter grudge against John because he was rejected by the army and saw no action.

And then there’s the local shopkeeper whose fey daughter can predict the future, which is not necessarily a blessing.

This is a prequel to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which I’d never heard of, but which was published in 2008, becoming a New York Times bestseller and being selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. It is reportedly a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and focuses on John and Mary’s grandson.

Life Lessons – How to fail and win, by Alan Knott-Craig (Tafelberg)

This Alan Knott-Craig is the son, not the former CEO of Vodacom. He’s had his ups and downs in business, having founded, funded or run 21 companies including Cellfind, iBurst, Mxit and HeroTel. The blurb on the cover says he shares what he has learnt, “mostly by losing”.

Self-improvement books or books on how to succeed are generally not my thing, but having dipped into this one on behalf of you, dear readers, I am charmed.

His father was a huge force in his life, and he says until the age of 25 he had no freedom of choice. After school Knott-Craig senior told him if he wanted to study, he would pay, otherwise Knott-Craig junior was on his own. If he wanted to go to the University of Port Elizabeth, now Nelson Mandela University, his dad would pay, otherwise not. If he wanted to do accounting, his dad would pay, otherwise not. If he passed, his dad would pay, otherwise not.

So he went to UPE, studied accounting, and achieved 50% (“any grade over 50% is wasted effort”, a sentiment shared by my son when he was doing maths at UCT).

At the end of the book are scores of useful life lessons which mostly make a lot of sense. Make friends with the alpha male; have someone big in your life, preferably someoin with tattoos, who has your back; if you have to eat shit, don’t  nibble; government money is bad for you; excellence trumps loyalty; how do you avoid becoming addicted to a corporate salary?; go in through the front door (“when you find yourself in bed with crooks and politicians, it’s easy to start copying their tactics… don’t give in to their ways. There’s only one honest way to live and do business. Out in the open. Through the front door”.)

Lucas Mangope – A life, by Oupa Segalwe (Tafelberg)

Lucas Mangope, leader of the apartheid homeland of Bophuthatswana, who died in January 2018, was a controversial figure, seen as both a leader of his people and a “tinpot dictator”.

He was both a traditional leader and an elected politician, who despite having attended the same college – St Peter’s Secondary School in Rosettenville, a British missionary school like Lovedale College in Alice (now Dikweni) – along with the likes of Joe Matthews, Andrew Mlangeni, Oliver Tambo and Fikile Bam – chose another path.

He was the eldest of nine children, born to minor royalty in the village of Motswedi in December 1923, the same village in which author Oupa Segalwe grew up.

This biography has attracted media attention, and I heard a radio interview with Segalwe in which he said Mangope was a revered figure – something like Nelson Mandela – in his community.

In a shout on the cover of this biography, Andrew Manson writes: “People either hate him for being a vicious tyrant or venerate him and the good old days of ‘Bop’. Here we have an assessment of Mangope that is well researched, balanced and fair.”

Segalwe spent his early career as a news reporter in community and state media organisations, and this shows in his writing which is crisp, clear and interesting.

The Corporate Revolutionary – Mervyn King’s life in law, business and governance, by David Williams (Tafelberg)

A quick google of Mervyn King’s life is so dizzying that one doesn’t know where to begin. Suffice it to say he is one of SA’s Great and Good, a guru of corporate governance and sustainability, an advocate, a judge, and a businessman who rewrote the way businesses should operate.

He has been chair and director of many organisations including the Kirsh Trading Group, Frame, FNB Merchant Bank, Operation Hunger, SA Chamber of Business, the Automobile Association of SA, the Global Reporting Initiative in Amsterdam, the International Integrated Reporting Council in London and more.

He believes “accountancy can save the planet”, and advocates that companies should report on society and the environment, not just profit.

In 1992 the Institute of Directors in SA asked him to set up a committee to produce a code of governance for directors and managers in the new SA. At first King demurred, feeling he was too busy, but Nelson Mandela worked his charm, and the result was the King Codes of Corporate Governance, which have been updated several times over the past 30 years, “influencing organisations globally”, according to author David Williams in his prologue. King chaired the committee for 27 years.

Williams writes: “The impact of Mervyn King’s governance work was local and then global – changing the way boards think and the way companies operate, establishing the need for engagement with society beyond work and profits, all with the ultimate aim of saving the planet itself.”