Here are 100 books that Breakthrough fans have personally recommended if you like
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While my childhood in a coastal community in South Africa contributed to my deep appreciation and love for nature, I was born and grew up as a person of colour in the apartheid era when barricades divided humans, the land, and the sea. I developed a profound understanding, rooted in my lived experience, of the interlinkages between justice, equity, and sustainability. I've remained actively involved and interested in developing and profiling transformative and inclusive approaches to sustainability from community to the international level. I've maintained this focus on the nexus between climate, nature, and inequality throughout my career, where I've led transformative and inclusive approaches to nature and climate policy and practice for 20+ years.
The book is a deep dive into the education and skills needs of green transitions.
It builds on the rich insights of green skills planning through an analysis of case studies and shows why skills are one of the drivers to achieving a just transition to a green economy. The context of the book is South Africa, but application is worldwide.
Stronger synergies between skills and green transition policies are essential and the book presents a model for thinking about skills for a sustainable, just future.
This book proposes transformative, realist methodology for skills research and planning through an analysis of case studies of the changing world of work, new learning pathways and educational system challenges.
Studies of the green economy and sustainability transitions are a growing field internationally, however there are few books that link this interest to the development of skills. This book draws on, and showcases, the experience and insights of researcher-practitioners who are at the cutting edge in this emerging field, internationally and in South Africa. The context for this book is South Africa, but application is worldwide. In many ways indicative…
While my childhood in a coastal community in South Africa contributed to my deep appreciation and love for nature, I was born and grew up as a person of colour in the apartheid era when barricades divided humans, the land, and the sea. I developed a profound understanding, rooted in my lived experience, of the interlinkages between justice, equity, and sustainability. I've remained actively involved and interested in developing and profiling transformative and inclusive approaches to sustainability from community to the international level. I've maintained this focus on the nexus between climate, nature, and inequality throughout my career, where I've led transformative and inclusive approaches to nature and climate policy and practice for 20+ years.
This book has been timely as policymakers in the carbon-intensive economy of South Africa is in the throes of a developing framework and plan for implementing a just transition to a low carbon economy.
It brings some of the best thinkers and doers in science, policy and academia to unpack the key shifts – social, economic, and technological and builds on thinking in earlier works on transitions.
Deliberations on the just transition in South Africa have intensified and will continue to do so for the next few years and decades. Climate change, widening socio-economic inequality, the precarious future of work and emergent approaches to financing arrangements have brought new urgency to the issues. It therefore remains critical to interrogate how South Africa can ensure a just transition to a low carbon economy.
This book underlines the fact that the low carbon transition in South Africa has to grapple with complex historical, social, economic, cultural and political factors. The main message is that the transition to a low-carbon…
While my childhood in a coastal community in South Africa contributed to my deep appreciation and love for nature, I was born and grew up as a person of colour in the apartheid era when barricades divided humans, the land, and the sea. I developed a profound understanding, rooted in my lived experience, of the interlinkages between justice, equity, and sustainability. I've remained actively involved and interested in developing and profiling transformative and inclusive approaches to sustainability from community to the international level. I've maintained this focus on the nexus between climate, nature, and inequality throughout my career, where I've led transformative and inclusive approaches to nature and climate policy and practice for 20+ years.
This is a foundational book if you’re interested in understanding the green economy discourse in South Africa.
It tackles the challenges facing the country in addressing poverty, inequality, and unemployment and how a green transition must deliver both social and environmental outcomes.
Contributors are drawn from leading thinkers on sustainability issues in South Africa.
The depletion of South Africa's (and in some cases the world's) natural resources and the degradation of environmental sinks (including the atmosphere, lakes and rivers, and land) are continuing at such a rate that natural resource prices are climbing and many critical ecosystem services that underpin human welfare are increasingly threatened.
The concept of the `green economy' has gained increasing traction in South African policy discourses over the past few years. However, in much of this discourse it is viewed in a piecemeal way as one part or sector of the economy (e.g. an industrial sector dealing with manufacture and…
While my childhood in a coastal community in South Africa contributed to my deep appreciation and love for nature, I was born and grew up as a person of colour in the apartheid era when barricades divided humans, the land, and the sea. I developed a profound understanding, rooted in my lived experience, of the interlinkages between justice, equity, and sustainability. I've remained actively involved and interested in developing and profiling transformative and inclusive approaches to sustainability from community to the international level. I've maintained this focus on the nexus between climate, nature, and inequality throughout my career, where I've led transformative and inclusive approaches to nature and climate policy and practice for 20+ years.
The book deals with the challenge of growth – how the South African economy needs to find a way to grow, and adopt policy choices and pathways that can help the country transition from a fossil fuel-intensive economy to a green economy, that is resource efficient, climate resilient, and equitable.
It grapples with the social complexity of post-apartheid South Africa and why a transition to a green economy in South Africa must be just transition.
This book examines issues ranging from global and domestic climate change and sustainable energy issues to the mineral-energy complex issues that have given rise to local and sector-specific problems. Each chapter seeks to convey policy choices and recommendations, at the centre of which is a clear articulation of the need for an integrated mix of policy instruments in South Africa to mitigate emissions and promote the development of a low-carbon economy through the low-carbon and sustainable energy technologies and low-carbon innovation across various sectors of the economy. The central theme of the book is that discourse and policy action on…
As an African author, I find that my books end up on the ‘African fiction’ shelf in the bookstore, which can be a disadvantage if my novel is, say, about Henry James or the Trojan War, both of which I've written novels about. As a lecturer in English literature, I've become acquainted with a vast and varied array of literature. So, whereas of course there are many wonderful African novels that deal with specifically African themes, I think the label African novel can be constricting and commercially disadvantageous. Many African novelists see themselves as part of a larger community, and their novels reflect that perspective, even though they are nominally set in Africa.
The ex-pat novel has become something of a South African genre, what with many young people searching for new opportunities overseas, in flight from the old repressive racist regime or, latterly, the corrupt, inefficient new regime. In his debut collection of short stories, The Alphabet of Birds, Naudé referred to "the diaspora of fearful, grim, white children from South Africa," and this novel is another variation on that theme. It’s easy to fall into stereotype and cliché, and part of Naudé’s achievement is to remake the familiar scenario into something wholly original, in an account of his main character’s search for the missing reel of a film made by a Jewish filmmaker in Hitler’s Germany.
The novel contains vivid accounts of life in a ‘squat’ in London, as well as the grim atmosphere of an East German film school under Russian occupation – contrasting with the hedonistic excess of…
Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Literary Awards (South Africa)
Twenty-two-year-old Etienne is studying film in London, having fled conscription in his native South Africa. It is 1986, the time of Thatcher, anti-apartheid campaigns and Aids, but also of postmodern art, post-punk rock, and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Adrift in a city cast in shadow, he falls in love with a German artist while living in derelict artists' communes.
When Etienne finds the first of three reels of a German film from the 1930s, he begins searching for the missing reels, a project that…
I grew up during the apartheid era of racial segregation and oppression. A Blade of Grass was written with a sense of exile and regret, but also with love. It is not overtly about South Africa and apartheid. It asks a fundamental question: Where is home, and how shall we live there?
I read this novel in university in a course taught brilliantly by the scholar WH New. It was the first time I understood the complexity of layers in great literature. Ostensibly about a businessman who buys a farm, it encompasses race relations, power in all its guises, sexuality, relationships to nature, and how character influences personal destiny. Written with outrage and compassion.
I kept The Conservationist in mind when I wrote my own book as an example of what a novel could be, but more than that, it taught me how to think about the world in a new way.
Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son, and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm.
I’m an engineer, writer, and editor. And I love short stories. I love writing them and reading them too. I’ve written for major science fiction and fantasy magazines, and my stories have even been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. But when short stories are put together in a single author collection, they can truly come alive, revealing running themes and ideas explored through the imagination of the author. My own collections Incomplete Solutions and Convergence Problems do just this – exploring potential futures for Africa. I previously shared five of the best single-author collections of African speculative fiction and now, here are five more.
The late Nick Wood, a science fiction writer, clinical psychologist, former journalist, humanitarian, and anti-apartheid activist born in Zambia and raised in South Africa, was always learning.
This is reflected in all his writing, including most of the stories in his collection. Largely science fiction stories in a variety of settings: from post-apocalyptic worlds, settled moons, and climate-changed earths, these stories are highly focused on the social and environmental aspects of humanity even in the most science fictional scenarios.
These stories, intersectional, emotionally resonant, exciting, thoughtful, and varied. Learning Monkey and Crocodile is a wonderful way to sample some of South Africa’s interesting science fiction corpus from a voice that has now left us, but which will not be forgotten.
“Nick Wood’s short stories are powerful, impassioned visions of worlds and worldviews remade by way of redemptive engagement with the spirits of the earth and the earth of the spirit. Joining ancestral wisdom and transformative technologies, combining searing self-scrutiny with joyous awareness of the Other, Learning Monkey and Crocodile is a book for Africa and for all of us.”
Nick Gevers
Nick’s stories have delighted readers across the world and have appeared in publications such as Interzone, Albedo One, Omenana, among others. His debut novel Azanian Bridges was shortlisted for the BSFA award. Embark on a journey where science meets…
As an African speculative fiction writer who had long hoped to see the development of African speculative fiction being embraced by the larger SFF community, it was a joy to see all these anthologies showcasing the works of Africans and platforming them for a larger audience to see. And it's been a joy as well to contribute to this growth both as an award-winning writer and editor of African speculative short fiction.
AfroSF is the first ever anthology of Science Fiction by African writers only open to submissions of original fiction works from Africa and abroad. It was one of the pioneering anthologies of African science fiction and published a number of household names in African speculative fiction in both this and its subsequent volumes.
AfroSF is the first ever anthology of Science Fiction by African writers only that was open to submissions from across Africa and abroad. It is comprised of original (previously unpublished) works only, from stellar established and upcoming African writers: Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Lotz, Tendai Huchu, Cristy Zinn, Ashley Jacobs, Nick Wood, Tade Thompson, S.A. Partridge, Chinelo Onwualu, Uko Bendi Udo, Dave de Burgh, Biram Mboob, Sally-Ann Murray, Mandisi Nkomo, Liam Kruger, Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu, Joan De La Haye, Mia Arderne, Rafeeat Aliyu, Martin Stokes, Clifton Gachagua, and Efe Okogu.
Since a tender age I’ve been fascinated by history and the people who dwelled in and shaped those times. My first two writing awards – at 8 and 12 years of age – were for stories with historical settings. I devoured novels dealing with the past, walked the pages with characters who showed me a life and time of romance and danger and enormous challenge. Every piece of history I research drives me to create characters in my mind, to see how they would fare in those circumstances. Once they become alive to me, they use that background to write their own story. It's especially the lesser-known or “smaller” parts of history that intrigue me.
Because it is about my own, complex country, South Africa, The Covenant is of special interest to me. Michener uses an array of characters from the various population groups to carry the story forward from prehistoric times to the turbulent 1970s, illustrating via storytelling the interaction and conflicts between these groups.
The novel received some criticism for inaccuracies, but I felt it did a sterling job of giving non-South Africans a greater understanding of South Africa and its problems, which remain prevalent to this day. An array of characters ranging from scoundrels to adventurers made this possible, taking us on this journey through history, exposing the reader to an understanding of the daunting ruggedness, beauty, and physical challenges which shaped the formation of this country.
James A. Michener’s masterly chronicle of South Africa is an epic tale of adventurers, scoundrels, and ministers, the best and worst of two continents who carve an empire out of a vast wilderness. From the Java-born Van Doorn family tree springs two great branches: one nurtures lush vineyards, the other settles the interior to become the first Trekboers and Afrikaners. The Nxumalos, inhabitants of a peaceful village unchanged for centuries, unite warrior tribes into the powerful Zulu nation. And the wealthy Saltwoods are missionaries and settlers who join the masses to influence the wars and politics that ravage a nation.…
Growing up in rural Wisconsin, I was crazy about both horses and books, so it’s not surprising that in grad school I became a horse historian. I found that writing about work horses linked my love of horses with my interests in technology and nature. The books I’ve chosen show how humans and horses shaped each other, society, the environment, and built the modern world. I hope readers browse (graze?) these books at their leisure and pleasure.
Swart makes a big argument: studying horses changes how we understand all history. This sweeping overview shows that “The history of horses is the history of the desire for power” whether economic, political, military, social, or cultural. The history of horses in South Africa offers an interesting comparison with both the American West and the American South in terms of frontiers, the military, race, class, and gender. Swart is a lively, funny, and entertaining writer. The fieldwork she did for this book gives the reader a visceral sense of what South Africa is like as a place. What is there not to love about a book with chapter titles like “The Reins of Power” and “The Empire Rides Back?”
0||The aim of this volume is to examine nascent movements, genre shifts, developing authors/playwrights and controversial themes as they emerged in both drama and theatre. The editors have focused on the essence of creative nexus of London from the end of the nineteenth century up to the beginning of the Great War (1914). The resultant study discusses Gordon Craig and production design, Wilde, Shaw, Synge, Pinero, Strindberg,Harley Granville Barker,Jones, Archer, Ford Madox Ford, D.H.Lawrence,Galsworthy, Sims, women playwrights, popular theatre among other topics. The work complements J.L.Styan s 3 volume Modern Drama in Theory and Practice and is more focused on…
