Fans pick 100 books like Life & Times of Michael K

This is a book that has sparked a thousand imitations. If a writer isn’t honest, he’s not doing his job, and Nick Hornby is painfully honest here about his self-destructive, blokey obsessions with football and music. It’s a trailblazer of a book and a theme that resonates with a lot of men, me included.

Why would anyone seriously want to attend a family wedding when your team is playing in a cup final? How inconsiderate can a couple be to get married on the final day of the cup? To hold those thoughts–without a hint of irony–is viewed as an affliction and an absurdity by many. But of course, they don’t understand! 

I studied this great work of literature in the 1960s in Secondary School in Mombasa and the injustice of humanity in this tragic story is still indelibly etched in my heart. The story is set in Ndotsheni, a poor, agricultural village in South Africa but with a strong sense of community and in the city of Johannesburg a corrupt, big city where it's every man for himself. It is about a Zulu pastor, Stephen Kumalo, who receives a letter that his sister in Johannesburg has fallen sick. Kumalo undertakes the difficult journey travelling from his village to the city in the hopes of aiding his sister and of finding his son, Absalom, who left to go to the city and never returned. What really moved me is the estranged relationship of two fathers and their sons that evoke anguish in the fathers. Upon reading this book the message that resonated… show more.

"The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Only the land is theirs."

Not a novel, but a biography of an illiterate sharecropper, invisible to history except in this book, who lived for almost 100 years farming land that was always owned by others. 

As a child, I passed many farm labourers without much thought about their lives, their history, their identities. This dense social history was a revelation and a corrective to my ignorance.

Kas Maine’s story is a potent reminder of the need for justice, kindness, and respect toward every human being.

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.

Untangling the roots of Apartheid is a thorny challenge, but Marq de Villiers’ approach—of telling the story of the Afrikaners, or South Africa’s “white tribe,” through one family’s complex and troubled history—does an excellent job of explaining the mentality that creates hateful systems of oppression. 

I highly recommend this powerful book.

This South African classic, written in the 19th century, is set on an isolated farm in the Eastern Cape. It masterfully portrays the hardy existence and rugged mountain landscape of the region, but is also a sophisticated (and surprisingly modern) take on issues such as conservation, ecology, racism, and gender equality. Schreiner has a deep love for the fauna and flora of the region, which shines through in her writing.

Bosman is one of South Africa’s finest short story writers and these funny, gentle, poignant tales are set in the wild northern reaches of the country where farmers struggle to make ends meet. I am particularly drawn to the way Bosman captures the landscape of bushveld and Kalahari, of wild animals and a hardy pioneering way of life. It’s also a corner of South Africa that I love to go on safari to enjoy the Big Game experience, encountering elephants, rhinos, lions, and the like…

The Heart of Redness is set in a rural Xhosa village on the Wild Coast of South Africa—a pristine environment threatened by a casino and hotel development. I used to visit this area on holidays as a child and was captivated by the rural way of life, tribal huts, unspoiled beaches, and dreamy lagoons. Mda is a master at capturing the beauty and romance of that coast through his evocative prose. The novel also presents a sober warning about the fragility of these environments and how easily they can be destroyed by unscrupulous development.

This novel is set in the beautiful, moody rainforests of South Africa’s Garden Route and captures the period of gold rush, ivory hunting, and logging at the end of the 19th century. The hero, Saul Barnard, is increasingly disturbed by the destruction of the ancient forest by miners, hunters, and woodcutters, and develops a relationship with one of the region’s reclusive elephants. It’s a novel that not only celebrates this wild corner of South Africa, but is an implicit cry for its conservation. I have spent time camping and hiking in those forests and have developed a love for their leafy embrace.

When a prospective agent asked me who I most aspired to be like as a writer, I said Percival Everett. Her response was, ‘But you’re not black?’

To me, labeling Percival Everett as a ‘black writer’ does him a huge disservice because, above all else, he’s unpredictable, quirky, and seriously funny. I love this book because it’s weird and subverted, with a hero who’s a mathematical expert in nothing–confronted by a villain who wants to steal and control nothing. It’s fun and frothy, with tangents and trapdoors all over the place. Like most, I came to Percival Everett via The Trees and backtracked. I'm glad I found him, though.