Fighting on the legal front line between truth and power

Activists and social justice lawyers are at the forefront of positive change, but it is an arduous and dangerous process

Zut alors! The French, not the English, invented rugby

In this extract from his new novel ‘Drie’, Hans Pienaar argues that rugby didn’t originate at a  school in England but from mob football in France

Five horrors for Halloween

‘House of Cotton’ is a haunting commentary about race, class and the pressures of being black in Tennessee

Musk’s rise to the top has been like a tornado

Walter Isaacson’s biography chronicles the rise of Musk from an unhappy childhood in SA to astounding achievements

Wanted Online: A salute to the girls who glitter

A treasure trove of letters shines a light on the lives of drag queens

Wake up and smell the lemons

An extract from Costa Ayiotis’s new book: Greek Taverna – From Diplomacy to Ouzo

Spoiler alert — no happy endings in cli-fi’s foreboding futures

The emerging genre dwells on the catastrophic effects of climate crises

Five books to read in October

Novels examining relationships, identity, trauma and experience of place

How populism has come to see the constitution as an obstacle to freedom

An extract from Dan Mafora’s new book ‘Capture in the Court’

BIG READ: The man who saw the abyss ... only to fall into the gutter of race

Former UCT head Max Price’s certainty in the correctness of his position turned him from a progressive saviour into an agent of the black elite

Female genital cutting is practised in 28 African countries. Why can’t the law stop it?

Laws exist in most of the countries that practice genital mutiliation, but this doesn’t correlate to any trends of a reduction in the practice

A little town that sleeps with the fishes

In William Kent Krueger’s latest novel a Midwest town descends into turmoil after a murder

BIG READ: Why breaking Pagad was a defining moment for SA’s young democracy

In this extract from ‘Breaking the Bombers’, Mark Shaw explains why he wrote the book

Five novels to put a spring in your step

List features JM Coetzee collection of stories written over 18 years

Sihlobo ranges over the realities of SA agriculture

A Country of Two Agricultures is a thorough examination of the state of the sector

Something dark has come into the house

Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is one of four Irish novels on the 2023 Booker Prize longlist

Published by Arena Holdings and distributed with the Financial Mail on the last Thursday of every month except December and January.