The Johannesburg Review of Books. We are @ joburgreview on most platforms – see you there!
Johannesburg, South Africa
Joined February 2014
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For Joburg’s 140th, @tymonsmith offers some thermal equilibrium via Radio JRB. Tune into Joziferatu, his new playlist for the times.
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Open with found footage of Tunguska,
that thing we forgot, and then,
the slow dissolve, Primorye, into beach
another Great Dying, but calm [...]
The JRB presents poetry by Simon van Schalkwyk, from his collection Zero Summer (@DryadPress).
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Fresh from our latest issue: an excerpt from Rhetorics of Value (@DukePress), winner of the 2026 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award, by @EmoryUniversity’s Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and African Studies Emerita, Corinne A. Kratz.
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New in The JRB: an excerpt from Griefseed, @malikandlovu’s collection of poems, essays and reflections on grief. Griefseed is this year’s winner of the UJ Prize for South African Writing in English (Main Prize). Published by @KaravanPress.
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‘Thomas Moyo was too black. Or so they told him the night they came.’
The JRB presents ‘Elbow’, a short story by Khadija Magardie, from Let’s Tell This Story Properly: An Anthology of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (@cwfcreatives).
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The new issue of The JRB brings a fresh instalment of Makhosazana Xaba’s long-form conversations with Black women and non-binary poets—this time with Nondwe Mpuma. It’s a must-read.
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Shure kwehure kunotambatamba haaa!
Head over to the new JRB for Musaemura Zimunya’s notes on translating the songs and allusions of The House of Hunger.
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I guess we all get tempted to
take ourselves too seriously;
flirt with words until we are
spokespeople for some idea
that could lead to killing [...]
The JRB presents a previously unpublished poem by Kelwyn Sole, ‘The Honourable Skin’.
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New in The JRB: Ten years on, Makhosazana Xaba revisits @Percy_Mabandu’s Yakhal’inkomo: Portrait of a Jazz Classic, and the artists who have borne witness to Mankunku’s 1968 masterpiece.
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In the new issue of The JRB, Fifi Bat-hef reviews Nadia Davids’s Cape Fever (@ScribnerUK), a slow-burning gothic tale of a young Cape Malay woman in service in a colonial-era house.
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Dipping into The JRB’s new issue, don’t miss @percyzvomuya’s interview with Anthony Chennells (1937—2026), his former teacher, on Marechera, Mungoshi, Lessing and more.
Photo: Arrupe Jesuit University.
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Psst. Did you know? The latest issue of The JRB is here. Read @WamuwiM’s superb review of Dominique Botha’s The Crying Bride & Other Hallucinations, a keenly alive collection from the new @painteddogpress.
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Superb.
‘Many murky fixations bob to the surface’—Wamuwi Mbao reviews Dominique Botha’s The Crying Bride & Other Hallucinations johannesburgreviewofbooks.co…
The latest issue of The JRB. Feel it, it is here. Finally.
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Something is afoot.
Something is stirring, starting up. Dare we say—coughing back to life.
Billowing steam, squealing wheels.
That slow train.
You guessed it—The JRB.
Cover image: updated. New issue: coming shortly.
Get it first here (always free): eepurl.com/cRaIe5
We leap on the flat dry grass.
One hundred lesbians? More.
Queer women everywhere.
It’s as queer as the eye can see.
The JRB presents poetry by Deborah Seddon, from Magnitude:
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But the wind is not the weather.
Water flows, the bird has flown.
I am not a paltry griever
and my mother’s not a tomb.
The JRB presents poetry by Dawn Garisch, from The Consulting Room: johannesburgreviewofbooks.co…
Although jail thickens the skin,
birthing its chitin fold
The beetle will teach you how to turn mud into gold
To unfold your hind wings for a smooth take-off.
The JRB presents previously unpublished poetry by Sandile Ngidi:
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The JRB presents ‘The Nazi Insurgence Reaches Blairgowrie’, an excerpt from Werner Pretorius’s debut collection of short fiction, Lone Wolf Living.
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The JRB presents an excerpt from Robert Lowell’s Imitations and the Cold War: Containment, Leakage, Anarchy, the new book by our Academic Editor, Simon van Schalkwyk.
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