Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Sabata-Mpho Mokae, Euphrase Kezilahabi, André Alexis, and Rochelle Dowden-Lord.
Letastshe Ke La Badimo by Sabata-Mpho Mokae
Publisher: Xarra Books
Date: June 20, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: Setswana
Where to find it: Xarra Books
Sabata-Mpho Mokae
Sabata-Mpho Mokae is an academic, award-winning novelist and translator from South Africa who writes in Setswana and English.
Letastshe Ke La Badimo
Lefatshe ke la Badimo ke padi e e ikaegileng ka ditiragalo tsa Seetebosigo wa 1913 fa go ne go tsenngwa tirisong Molao wa Mafatshe wa Bantsho. Ka nako eo, bantsho ba Aforikaborwa ba Iphitihetse e le baleleri mo lefatsheng le ba tsaletsweng mo go lona. Mo pading eno, re sala morago Rramothibi Kgobadi le ba lelapa la gagwe fa ba kobiwa mo polaseng e ba tsaletsweng mo go yona.
Fa ba le mo tseleng, ba fudugela kwa motseng wa Dikhudung, morwadiabona wa dingwaga tse pedi, o ne a tlhokafala. Ba ne ba se na kwa ba tiaa fitihang setopo sa gagwe teng. Ba ne ba letela gore letsatsi le phirime, ba tle ba kgone go mo fitlha ka bogodu mo polaseng nngwe e ba neng ba feta gaufi le yona.
Mo tseleng ba kopane le Solomon Plaatje, yo neng a kwala buka ka matlhotihapelo a nnileng teng mo matshelong a Bantsho morago ga molao wa mafatshe, o ka ona basweu ba Aforikaborwa ba neetsweng lefatshe le le seng kana ka sepe, fa bantsho ba tihoka kwa ba ha nang teng. Boora Kgobadi ba feletse kae? Padi eno e ka go latlhegelwa ke lefatshe ga bantsho le tshotlego le lehuma tse di nnileng teng morago molao oo.
Lefatshe ke la Badimo e ka ga go sa lekalekaneng ga merafe e e farologaneng ya Aforikaborwa ka nako ya puso e e neng e tlhaola batho go ya ka merafe.
Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi
Publisher: Yale University Press
Date: June 17, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English (translated from Kiswahili by Jay Boss Rubin)
Where to find it: Yale University Press
Euphrase Kezilahabi
Euphrase Kezilahabi, Tanzanian poet, novelist, and scholar, is perhaps the most widely known and acknowledged contemporary Swahili author. He was one of the first African writers to publish a collection of free verse poetry in Swahili, and he has had a great impact on the development of the genre of the novel in Swahili. He passed away in 2020.
Jay Boss Rubin
Jay Boss Rubin is an award-winning translator from Kiswahili.
Rosa Mistika
A controversial Swahili classic by one of Tanzania’s most revered writers, banned on publication and finally translated into English Teenage Rosa lives with her parents and four younger sisters in a village on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria, where she attends the local school and helps out on the family farm. Life would be relatively peaceful if it weren’t for Rosa’s father, who drinks to oblivion and abuses his wife and daughters. Initially relieved to be admitted into a residential school on the mainland, Rosa soon discovers that she’s ill prepared for life outside her village. As she becomes accustomed to the attention—and manipulations—of men, she begins to understand her sexuality as a weapon. But this understanding, born of the need to survive in a world of double standards, comes with a price. Rosa Mistika is a radical narrative exploration of womanhood, maternal love, agency, and authority—and the first-ever Swahili novel to address issues of domestic violence, sexual coercion, and abortion. Through the story of a young woman and her community it poses the enduring question: To what degree are we responsible for the choices we make, and to what degree are we acted upon by forces outside our control?
Other Worlds by André Alexis
Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
Date: May 6, 2025
Genre: Fiction, short stories
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House
André Alexis
André Alexis is the author of Fifteen Dogs, which won the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and Canada Reads. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. He is the author of Days by Moonlight, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize; The Hidden Keys, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award; Pastoral, which was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; A (a novella); Beauty and Sadness, which was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; Asylum; and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and the Caribbean). He is also the author of Ingrid and the Wolf, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Fiction and the play Lambton Kent. He wrote librettos for James Rolfe’s operas Orpheus and Eurydice and Aeneas and Dido. He has been a regular book reviewer for the Globe and Mail, and was the host and writer of CBC Radio One’s “Radio Nomad” and CBC Radio 2’s “Skylarking.” In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. Alexis lives in Toronto.
Other Worlds
The award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs conjures up worlds – real, invented, uncanny – in this ingenious, electrifying collection.
A Trinidadian Obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child. A writer takes up a seasonal job as the caretaker of a set of mysterious large sacks hanging from the rafters of the houses in a small town. A woman starts a relationship with the famous artist who painted portraits of her mother. The contents of a sealed envelope upend a woman’s understanding about a tragic crime she committed at the age of six.
In this dazzling collection of stories, André Alexis draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto.
These captivating stories reveal flashes of reckoning, defeat, despair, alienation, and understanding, all the while playfully using a multitude of literary genres, including gothic horror and isekai, and referencing works from greats like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Yasunari Kawabata, Witold Gombrowicz, and Tomasso Landolfi.
Masterfully crafted, blending poignant philosophical inquiry and wry humour tinged with the absurd, here are worlds refracted and reflected back to us with pristine clarity and stunning emotional resonance as only André Alexis can.
Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Date: May 27, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Bloomsbury
Rochelle Dowden-Lord
Rochelle Dowden-Lord is a publishing professional from South London. She has worked at Pan Macmillan, Hachette, and Harper Collins. She was a co-host of the popular publishing podcast Main Characters.
Lush
Four wine experts, each at a crucial point in their lives, arrive at a French vineyard estate for an unforgettable experience-but not the kind they expected. Avery gave up her hard-won but exploitative sommelier job to come, while wine prodigy Cosmo is trying to disguise that his life is in freefall. The chemistry between the pair is unmistakable, but so are the signs of danger. Millionaire Sonny owns a tacky wine brand and can’t help aggravating Cosmo, while caustic magazine writer Maëlys hovers with her pen poised.
It seems at first that these four have little in common except for their love of wine and their belief in its transformative power. But, as the quartet awaits the penultimate night of the trip, when they will taste the only bottle of one of the rarest wines in the world, it becomes clear that each of them grapples with a private crisis. Each projects their ultimate hopes and fears onto the contents of this bottle, a bottle rendered divine by age and scarcity.
Unfolding over several days of indulgence in delicious food and drink, raucous debauchery, and transformative truths that will leave each character changed forever, Lush is a sensuous tour of the wine industry’s extreme pleasures and pains, a captivating summer read that, like a fine vintage, will linger long after you’ve finished turning the pages.
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