Announcing the publication and tour of Swedish poet Athena Farrokzhad in South Africa

We're proud to announce, in association with Argos Books in the USA, the publication of Swedish poet Athena Farrokhzad's incredible debut White Blight, translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida, for the first time in South Africa.

The first foreign book on uHlanga's list, White Blight is being released in SA in conjunction with Farrokzhad's two-week tour of Gauteng and Cape Town this September, which she is making with the support of Open Book Festival, Hear My Voice Poetry Sessions and the Embassy of Sweden in Pretoria. Tour dates are at the bottom of this post.

Specially printed in Latvia, this mirror-faced book contains an evocative interweaving of voices exploring migration and assimilation by one of Sweden's foremost leftist and feminist intellectuals, delicately translated by Jennifer Hayashida. This once-off tour and run of 250 books is a must-see and must-own.

"This vital book exposes the dense tectonics churning beneath migrant dreams. Accusatory, loving, full of grief and sage truths, Athena Farrokhzad’s White Blight speaks eloquently to the troubled inheritance of diasporic survival. Through a litany of terse voices, Jennifer Hayashida’s sensitive translation describes the nexus of filial obligations and projections under which the narrator sinks from view. The intense beauty of devastation and the poignancy of betrayal emerge with startling frankness: “Your family will never be resurrected like roses after a fire.” “I have spent a fortune for your piano lessons / But at my funeral you will refuse to play.” These white lines make me ask, what has been bleached out in all of our stories? I read this book, and I remembered my humanity." — Sueyeun Juliette Lee

TOUR DATES

  • Thursday 30 August, 2 p.m. – Last Thursdays Poetry Session, Es’kia Mphahlele Library. Tshwane

  • Saturday 1 September, 11 a.m. – Jozi Book Fair Poetry Workshop with Athena Farrokhzad, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg

  • Saturday 1 September, 1:15 p.m. – Jozi Book Fair Swedish Poetry Performances with Emil Boss, Jenny Wrangborg and Magnus Gustafson, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg

  • Sunday 2 September, 11 a.m. – Jozi Book Fair Discussion: Writing, struggles and the working class with Magnus Gustaffson and Jolyn Phillips, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg

  • Sunday 2 September, 2 p.m. – Jozi Book Fair launch of White Blight, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg

  • Wednesday 5 September, 8 p.m. – Rioters in Session, Fugard Theatre, Cape Town

  • Thursday 6 September, 6:30 p.m. – Grounding Sessions, Zer021, 46 Canterbury St, Cape Town

  • Thursday 6 September, 8 p.m. – Open Book Discussion: Who are You? with Aminatta Forna, Sue Nyathi and Jen Malec, A4 Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

  • Saturday 8 September, 12 p.m. – Open Book Discussion: Poetry Matters with Vangile Gantsho and Toni Stuart, Fugard Theatre, Cape Town

Tickets available from Jozi Book Fair and Open Book Festival

Announcing Zikr by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

Cover photograph by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

uHlanga is proud to announce the upcoming publication of Zikr, the debut collection by Johannesburg writer and photographer Saaleha Idrees Bamjee.

To be resolute in faith – in God, in oneself – in times of grief and disappointment. To unapologetically assert one's woman- and personhood in a society that attempts to devalue both. To seek hidden parts of yourself, both new and forgotten, through the memories and words of other people.

In Zikr's beguilingly measured and covertly powerful poems, Saaleha Idrees Bamjee achieves these often difficult tasks. In doing so, Bamjee introduces new idioms and understandings of Muslim identity to South African poetry – yet not through manifesto, nor outright polemic. This is a collection of fine metaphors, concrete turns of phrase, and a refreshing specificity of image,  place, and self.

Photo by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, born in 1983, is a photographer and writer based in Johannesburg. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University and is the winner of the 2014 Writivism Short Story Prize. Zikr is her first collection of poems.

The book comes off presses on 1 September 2018. Launches are being organised, and will be announced on our Instagram, and on Bamjee's social media. 

Announcing Milk Fever by Megan Ross

uHlanga is happy to announce the imminent release and launch of Milk Fever, the debut collection by East London writer Megan Ross.

In an extraordinary debut, Megan Ross writes the uneasy truths about unexpected motherhood and all its emotional detritus. In deftly and experimentally navigating the angst, joy and self-reckoning that comes with the choices and misadventures of young womanhood, this is a collection that brings together the evocative with the provocative, and the feminist with the personal, in a bold and startling poetic style. Hallucinatory, image-wet, and navigating the eternal tides of spirit and body, Milk Fever is a chimeric dreamscape in which a woman reconfigures, remembers and rebirths herself.

Photo by Skye Cronje

Megan Ross, born in 1989, is a writer and poet from East London. She is the 2017 winner of the Brittle Paper Award for Fiction and an Iceland Writers Retreat alum. She was a runner-up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize and the 2017 National Arts Festival Short Sharp Stories Award. She lives near the Indian Ocean with her son and partner. Milk Fever is her first book.

The book, which releases May 2018, will be launched with a series of events in Cape Town, beginning with a launch at the Book Lounge on Monday 14 May, with Rachel Zadok. Megan will also be appearing at the Franschhoek Literary Festival that weekend. The book will then be launched in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng (dates and venues TBC).

With a beautiful cover collage by Taiwan-based artist, Leora Joy, this is a book striking both in form and content.