Spinifex Press: African Titles

Spinifex Press: African Titles

Long Life: Positive HIV Stories
Jonathan Morgan and the Bambanani Women's Group

This is a book about hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. 13 remarkable women from Khayelitsha, infected with HIV, tell through words, body maps, photos and artwork, how their lives have been transformed by anti-retroviral treatment. We hear what it is like for them to dare talk about their dreams, to locate their suffering in the past, and to think about a long life for themselves and HIV-negative children.

Here within one cover, is a beautiful art book, a striking advocacy document, a rich ethnographic text, a graphical novel, a series of photo essays, and a history of the Treatment action Campaign, and of the work Medecins sans Frontières in South Africa. What could have been depressing narratives have been transformed into journeys of regained courage and dreams being lived.

This book is a rich, creative journey combining graphic, novel- style story-telling with powerful art-works exploring the body, inside and outside, and self-taken photographs using simple cameras to delve deeply into the world of Cape Town’s township life and the brave, pioneering women taking charge of their lives.

Aust. $34.95 NZ $49.95
ISBN 1-876756-42-X pb full colour 184pp 280x205mm 745g
Territories: ANZ
Rights: Double Storey Press
Health, Art, Politics

A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi, translated by Sherif Hetata

Nawal El Saadawi has been pilloried, censored, imprisoned and exiled for her refusal to accept the oppressions imposed on women both by gender and class. In her life and in her writings, this struggle against sexual discrimination has always been linked to a struggle against all forms of oppression: religious, racial, colonial and neo-colonial. For her, writing and action have been inseparable and this is reflected in some of the most evocative and disturbing novels ever written about Arab women.

Aust. $38.50 NZ $49.95
ISBN 1-875559-92-9 pb 294 pp 234 x 156 mm 485g
Territories: ANZ
All Rights: Zed Books X Egypt, X South Africa
Autobiography, FGM, Women’s Studies, Arabic Studies.

Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi
Edited and translated by Sherif Hetata

This powerful autobiography of an amazing woman will shock and inspire you. Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi has been imprisoned, exiled and threatened with death for her writings on Arab women. Nawal El Saadawi is internationally famous for her novels, short stories and writings on women. She is known as the first Arab woman to have written about sex and its relation to economics and politics.

Aust. $34.95 NZ $49.95
ISBN 1-876756-31-4 pb 250 pp 234 x 156 mm 405g
Territories: ANZ
All rights: Zed Books X Egypt, X South Africa
Autobiography, FGM, Human Rights, Politics, Islamic Studies.

Far and Beyon'
Unity Dow

Far and Beyon' tells the story of a Botswanan family struggling to cope with the devastation of HIV and poverty. Reeling from the loss of a second son from AIDS, Mara turns to traditional magic to fight the curse she believes is destroying her family. Her children, Mosa and Stan, increasingly reject such beliefs, choosing instead to fight the powerlessness and oppression that have made the family so vulnerable to HIV. In the process, they must challenge adult authorities and scrutinise the ways in which they unwittingly consent to the forces that constrict them.

A contemporary novel, Far and Beyon’ relates the ongoing struggles of Mara’s family, giving a fascinating insight into modern African life, and the cultural cataclysm that enables families to live in poverty, wear NIKE, and die of AIDS. Unity Dow writes evocatively of village life, with a compelling and perceptually sensuous style.

Unity Dow is Botswana ’s first woman High Court judge, has a long record as a human rights attorney and is known for launching the Dow case which challenged nationality and other laws in Botswana. She co-founded the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project.

Aust. $24.95 NZ $34.95 UK £11.95
ISBN 1-876756-07-1 pb 199 pp 215 x 137 mm 195g
Territories: World x Africa Canada & USA: Aunt Lute
All Rights: Spinifex
African Studies, HIV/AIDS

The Screaming of the Innocent
Unity Dow

One afternoon a twelve-year-old girl goes missing near her village. The local police tell her mother and the villagers she has been taken by a wild animal. Five years later, young government employee Amantle Bokaa finds a box bearing the label ‘Neo Kakang; CRB 45/94’. It contains evidence of human involvement in the affair. So begins an illegal and undercover struggle for justice and retribution.

Botswanan High Court Judge Unity Dow’s second novel is a gripping story of how groups of ‘little people’ come together to identify the prime suspects, the ‘big men’ who are beneath contempt, but above the law.

Aust. $24.95 NZ $34.95 USA $17.95 Can $27.95 UK £11.95 ISBN 1-876756-20-9 pb 215 pp 215 x 137 mm 205g
Territories: World
All Rights: Spinifex
Fiction, African Studies, Politics, Corruption

Juggling Truths
Unity Dow

Unity Dow's third novel, Juggling Truths portrays the childhood of Monei Ntuka in the Botswanan village of Mochudi in Africa. 'Go to the past with me, so you can take the past to the future', asks her Nkoko. Nei takes us on an extraordinary journey through the many truths that shape her life: the truths of the colonisers and their churches and of her own people. We travel with her through dreams and share the wisdom of her grandmother as she lets the never-ending stories weave their own reality in face of a universe of conflicting truths.

Unity Dow recreates with telling insight and gentle humour a world where the truths of the missionaries and the witchdoctors jostle with those of the generations of women.

Aust. $24.95 NZ $34.95 USA $17.95 Can $27.95 UK £11.95 ISBN 1-876756-38-1 pb 173 pp 215 x 137 mm 205g Territories: World
All Rights: Spinifex
Fiction, African Studies, Politics, Corruption

Another Year in Africa
Rose Zwi

They came from the shtetl to a new land, to a new life. Another year in Africa, they said, another year in exile. Old bonds break as they adjust from the old world of pogroms to their new life in Africa. Ruth, a child of six when the story begins, is caught up in their dreams and fears, haunted by memories and tragedy of persecution that are not even hers.

Award-winning author Rose Zwi evokes with tenderness the 1930s and 40s, a loss of innocence and the stirrings of Apartheid.

Aust. $19.95 NZ $26.95 USA $12.95 Can $22.95 UK £7.95 ISBN 1-875559-42-6 pb 172 pp 198 x 128 mm 155g Territories: World X Italy Italy: Edizione Lavoro
All Rights: Spinifex
Literature, African Studies

Safe Houses
Rose Zwi

WINNER 1994 Human Rights Award for Fiction
1993 Top Twenty Title Listener Women's Book Festival

The story of a unique friendship that develops against all the odds and reveals the complexities of apartheid and racial discrimination. Against the background of the escalating violence of the 1980s, Safe Houses tells a story of three families - black and Jewish - who are inextricably bound by love and hate, hope and betrayal. Linked by a common past, separated by betrayal, Ruth and Lola are drawn into the struggle against apartheid, but feel inadequate and marginal: it is difficult to find solutions when one is part of the problem. Can the love and hope of their children, who meet and fall in love, survive an evil political system that indiscriminately devours both the guilty and the innocent?

In speaking of her work, Rose Zwi says "If you grow up under the shadow of the Holocaust you are automatically concerned with things like human rights and if you are a writer, you feel the need to bear witness and to remind."

Aust. $20.95 NZ $26.95 USA $12.95 Can $22.95 UK £7.95 ISBN 1-875559-21-3 pb 200 pp 198 x 128 mm 255g x
Territories: World
All Rights: Spinifex Talking Book: Louis Braille; Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind
Fiction, Literature, Jewish Studies, African Studies

Speak the Truth, Laughing
Rose Zwi

Speak the Truth, Laughing is a wonderful collection of short stories. The characters in these eleven stories range from a political activist in the apartheid years, released from a South African jail into a seemingly uncaring world, to a child of immigrant parents living between two cultures; from the daughter of a tribal chief who returns from the city to her arid homeland in the heart of Africa, to the tragic love of a Rabbi and his wife in an East European shtetl; from a dingo pursued to its inevitable end by the people of a small Australian town, to a South African farmer who allows his land to revert to its natural state. International award-winning author Rose Zwi has penned a joyous collection of stories bringing together Australian and South African lives.

Aust. $21.95 NZ $29.95 USA $13.95 Can $22.95 UK £8.95 ISBN 1-876756-21-7 pb 197 pp 198 x 128 mm 200g Territories: World All Rights: Spinifex
Apartheid, Immigration, South Africa, Australia, Jewish Studies.

The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life
Kim Manresa and Isabel Ramos Rioja

The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life is the moving photostory of a 4 year old African girl named Kadi, who is subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) in accordance with the traditions of her community. Black and white photographs document the activities of the day in which she undergoes this operation and an explanatory text details exactly what FGM entails.

This is a unique book, being the first photodocumentation of the practice. The story is personal and emotive, and the photographs, although confronting, depict the events with delicacy and are of very high quality. Significantly, the book focuses on the immediate experience of a child undergoing FGM, separating it from other accounts which have been written from the perspective of adult females looking back on their childhood.

Aust. $21.95 NZ $29.95 USA $14.95 Can $22.95 UK £9.95 ISBN 1-875559-74-4 pb b+w photos 50 pp 260 x 260 mm 345g
Territories: English Language World
All Rights: Anna Soler-Pont
Women’s Health, Human Rights, FGM, Violence, Development

Contact [email protected] for more information.