Books to die for

I am Ella A remarkable story of survival, from Auschwitz to Africa

Joan Jowell

Joanne Jowell’s portrait of Ella Blumenthal leaves one inspired and resonates long after we have read the final words. – Richard Freedman

Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving the Holocaust and building a new life in faraway South Africa is a lesson in resilience, attitude and – perhaps unexpectedly – joy. From the dying embers of the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps; from Poland to Paris, Palestine and eventually Cape Town; from stateless refugee to community pillar, Ella’s 100 years of life have been nothing short of herculean.

Under the shadows of shame and trauma with which so many survivors lived in the years immediately following the war, Ella made a happy home where few knew her suffering or shared her history. After decades, Ella is finally ready to tell her full story to bestselling author Joanne Jowell. I am Ella is the staggering tale of a real-life superheroine.

About the author

With an academic background in English and Psychology, Joanne Jowell began writing professionally at age 28. Her first book, Managing the Quarterlife Crisis: Facing life’s choices in your 20s and 30s, was published in 2003. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children. I am Ella is her seventh book.

A Stranger at Home

Nonio Jabavu

Noni Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books on her life. Her memoirs Drawn in Colour and The Ochre People have been compared to Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road. Her grandfather, John Tengo Jabavu, was a pioneer journalist and started the first black newspaper in SA in 1884. Her father, DDT Jabavu, was a journalist, academic, activist and first black professor at Fort Hare. Noni left for England at the age of 13 for her schooling and spent her life travelling, writing and becoming a cosmopolitan, free-spirited woman. In 1977, she came back to South Africa and wrote a weekly column in the Daily Dispatch. Noni Jabavu: A Stranger at Home is a compilation of these cheeky, insightful and hilarious columns for a younger audience of empowered women. Noni Jabavu scholars Makhosazana Xaba and Athambile Masola provide illuminating commentary.

About the authors
Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu was a South African writer and journalist, one of the first African women to pursue a successful literary career and the first black South African woman to publish books of autobiography.
Makhosazana Xaba is an anthologist, essayist, short story writer and poet. She is a researcher at WiSER where she continues her longterm project, writing a biography of Helen Nontando Jabavu (Noni), the author of Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (1960) and The Ochre People: Scenes from a South African Life (1963).
Athambile Masola is a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar, who graduated with a Masters in Education. She has taught English in Cape Town and Johannesburg high schools. She is currently working on a PhD on Noni Jabavu’s memoirs while working at the University of Pretoria’s Education Faculty.

Suid-Afrikaanse Lugbraaier Kookboek

Louisa Holst

Maklik, flatervry en Suid-Afrikaans … als uit jou lugbraaier. Welkom in die wonderwêreld van die lugbraaier! Die veelsydige lugbraaier – ’n klein konveksie-oond wat kos vinnig en doeltreffend gaarmaak – verdien sy eretitel as top-staatmaker in die moderne kombuis. Die verskeidenheid van japtrap-resepte in hierdie boek is ’n móét vir jou kook-repertoire. Die Suid-Afrikaanse lugbraaierkookboek fokus op ou bekende SuidAfrikaanse gunstelinge – van bobotie, appelkoos-snoek met soetpatats en boerewors met chakalaka tot paptert, melktert en malvapoeding.

Met die onontbeerlike versameling van smullekker resepte kan jy nou jou lugbraaier ten volle benut en jou lewe makliker maak, etenstye net ’n plesier en die kos op die tafel ’n ware weglêfees. Oor die skrywer Louisa Holst is al langer as 20 jaar bekend as voedselkonsultant, resepontwikkelaar en kosredakteur. Sy het ’n passie vir kos. Haar lewe is om te kook, nuwe geure en smake te ontdek en heerlike, maklike, gesinsvriendelike resepte te skep. Die boek is ook in Engels beskikbaar as The South African Air Fryer Cookbook.

The Scholarship Kids Dream big, Fly high

Robert Gentle

A rare true story of good fortune. When two starry-eyed twins growing up in apartheid South Africa see a Boeing 707 at Cape Town airport in the 1960s, it’s love at first sight. There’s just one problem: how on earth will they fulfil their crazy dream of working in aviation one day. Coloured boys are hardly allowed to dine in the same places as white people, let alone dream of flying aeroplanes. After a disastrous start to French at high school, they discover an unlikely aptitude for language. With a stroke of good fortune, a series of unexpected events unfold and their once ordinary lives are changed forever as they jet off to Paris.

A book that will make you laugh and cry and believe that dreams do indeed come true.

About the author

Robert Gentle spent his childhood years in Cape Town, his teens in Zambia and his early adult years in France.. He has a 30-year career in financial journalism, PR and corporate training, is fluent in French and is the author of two business books. These days he writes fulltime, and still hopes to sell a movie script to Hollywood one day.

How to Steal a Gold Minme – The Aurora Story

Dianne Hawker

HOPE AND DESPAIR IN SPRINGS
“Hope is a commodity that is in short supply among the former Pamodzi mineworkers. This thought occurred to me as I interviewed Sankatane Nqakulana, a tall man with a wiry strength, originally from Lesotho, who had worked at Grootvlei since 1976, when the mine was once the jewel of the East Rand. It was not easy work, but miners like Nqakulana, or Mnyamane as he was nicknamed, knew no other kind of life and they kept returning year after year, on short-term contracts, which left them with little job security.”