Winnie & Nelson

A beautiful and sad portrait of the Mandelas’ marriage of opposites is an insightful study of two huge characters, while a gripping and important book reveals how the ANC leader rescued his riven country from civil war. Winnie & Nelson is a beautiful and immensely sad book. The sheer amount of pain they each suffered – and inflicted on each other – is unimaginable.

The Country of Others

The bestselling author of Lullaby works her dangerous magic on her own family history in the first of a planned trilogy. The French-Moroccan author Leïla Slimani’s second novel, published in France in 2016 and translated into English as Lullaby, is about a nanny who works for a bourgeois professional Parisian couple, and murders the two children in her care. The novel is uncannily good at searching out the uncomfortable pressure points where class hurts and privilege excludes and crucifies.

The Promise

The Booker-shortlisted novelist examines South Africa’s broken promises over the last three decades through the story of one white family. The Promise is one of Galgut’s most directly political novels. It is also one of his most formally inventive, borrowing many of the narrative techniques he developed so effectively in In a Strange Room.