Here is a sample of the books that landed on my desk in May 2026, and for once they’re all South African. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler

The Boy in the Barrel – Based on the true story of a boy who lost his childhood and found himself, by Eric Lieberman (Batya Bricker)

In the late 1890s in Vilna, Lithuania, six-year-old Izzy Lieberman lives with his family – his mother Rachel who smells of flour and woodsmoke, his father Abraham and his five brothers and sisters.

One night the soldiers come on horseback to take Jewish boys for service to the Tsar’s military machine. The three Lieberman boys are hidden in the root cellar, and survive. But the next day, when the family emerges, their area of town is smoking and devastated. That is the night Abraham loses his faith.

Over the next two years things fall apart for the Lieberman family, and it is decided Abraham will take Izzy and scout out a home in Africa, in Cape Town. Later the rest of the family will join them.

But somehow, in the clatter and confusion of the port at Cape Town, Izzy and Abraham are separated. Abraham is taken for a Boer and locked up in the Breakwater Prison. Izzy, now eight, is all by himself in a strange land, where he does not know any of the languages.

He becomes a street boy, whose only home is a barrel. It is the beginning of a childhood of struggle.

Eleven years later, 19-year-old Izzy arrives in Johannesburg and discovers the truth about his family.

Under a Blood Red Sky – A memoir, by Annemarie van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns (Tafelberg)

This may be a memoir, but it opens like a crime thriller: it’s a Saturday afternoon in a tiny farming hamlet somewhere between Indwe and Elliot in the Eastern Cape.

Tannie Hermien Gouws, who is 88, has nodded off in her chair while watching TV. Her son Ruben, the retired principal of a little farm school, has watched TV with his mother and is now closing up his adjoining home on the farm Pinevale for the night.

Then two former pupils arrive, and ask him to open up Tannie Hermien’s shop so they can buy cigarettes. He reluctantly agrees – it’s late Saturday afternoon and this is his time – and they trail over the road towards the shop. They are joined by a third man, who produces a knife and demands access to the safe.

Within minutes, Ruben and his mother are dead. It’s just another rural black-on-white murder.

But Ruben has been friends with Annamarie van Niekerk, once a lecturer in Afrikaans literature at Wits and a former editor of Kwela Books. Now she lives in The Hague in the Netherlands, where she writes books and book reviews.

Just back from a holiday in Paris, Van Niekerk gets a message from a cousin of Ruben’s: “Ouma and Ruben were murdered tonight on Pinevale.”

Two days later Van Niekerk is on her way to the funerals.

The bulk of the memoir is made up of three journeys. The first is between Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) and Umtata (now Mtata). This section tells us about Van Niekerk’s youth, her politicisation and her exposure to the violence endemic to the land of her birth.

The second journey is between The Hague and the Eastern Cape, when Van Niekerk heads home for Ruben and Tannie Hermien’s funeral in 2015. The third is another journey from the Netherlands to the Eastern Cape about 18 months later.

The memoir was first published in Dutch under the title Om het hart terug te brengen in 2021, and then in Afrikaans under the title Onder ’n bloed rooi hemel in 2023.

The English version has just been published. From what I’ve seen, this looks like a gripping story about being a South African over the past 50 or so years. Reviewers of the Dutch and Afrikaans versions describe it as unforgettable and moving, and “a tender book illuminating some harsh realities”. Several reviews say every South African should read it.

Lifting the Lid, by Bonnie Espie (Kwela)

Winifred and Sylvie live in the rural village of Riviervalleij where they run The Novel Eatery – a combination book and coffee shop. They also have a couple of secrets, one of them being the body of Solomon, who is in Sylvie’s freezer. And they don’t know how he got there.

But someone in the village knows something about their side hustle, they think gloomily, and this hustle is not the sort of thing they want publicised. But what can they do – they have to keep the bank balance healthy and the Novel Eatery isn’t doing that by itself.

Now the excitement in the village is that a wine TV reality show is coming to town, and that has to be good for business. But reality shows mean cameras all over the place, and who knows what may be spotted through a lens?

The Which Word, by Catriona Ross (Mirari Press)

All by itself, on a page where an epigraph would usually be found in a book, appears this brief sentence: “This book contains a lot of sex.” And a shout on the cover from author and columnist Paige Nick describes the book as “sexy as f***”.

Everyone, we are told, has their own word, and it is one that will stay with you for all your life. Your word will find you, whether you can handle it or not.

Rafi Paterson has moved into a gated community in Cape Town called The Plex, where every front door is painted a different colour. But it’s not a bog-standard complex, as Rafi soon realises

There seem to be some interesting male neighbours, which Rafi finds promising. And a fabulous fortnight beckons when Rafi’s sister Elvi and the glamorous Bruna, who was once an Italian exchange student with the Paterson family for a year, come to The Plex for a reunion of the “godsisters”.

Then an art academic disappears after a party at The Plex, and the godsisters discover a sex diary under Rafi’s bed, which they believe has all the answers.