The best books about South Africa 📚

This book by South Africa’s most eminent historian, Charles van Onselen, tells the story of the night trains which brought poverty-stricken  Mozambican men from Rossania Garcia on the Mozambique border to work as migrant labourers on the gold mines in Johannesburg, between 1902 and 1955. The men travelled in appalling conditions, and were preyed on by petty criminals, con men and corrupt officials.  The night trains were a transport system run in partnership between the mining houses and the railways and designed to maximise profit at the expense of the health, well-being and even the lives of the men it… show more.

Okay, he was my dissertation advisor. Sorry! But Thompson’s is a concise, perceptive, and readable one-volume history of the great country, a splendid introduction. Born and raised in South Africa, the late Thompson was a Rhodes Scholar before seeing extensive service in World War II. Like so many talented South Africans from many fields, he went into exile around 1960 when the apartheid regime moved toward a no-holds-barred stranglehold on all opposition. This was his last book, and in it he distills a lifetime of research, teaching and experience. The fourth edition has an update and new preface by Lynn… show more.

I love the fact this book was the first in a series of spooky stories that takes you into the shopping mall when the shutters are down and lights are off. It’ll make sure you never see shopping in a mall the same again. The ‘author’ is actually a partnership between a crime novelist and a holder of a post-religious apocalyptic fiction doctorate. 

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.