From 1652 to 1994, South Africa was ruled by a succession of white regimes notorious for exploiting the non-white population. Apartheid, imposed on the non-whites beginning in 1948, made life for blacks a living hell, and for Indians... Read More

Nobody is required to get a license in parenting before having a baby. There are no prerequisite classes, no forms to sign, no legally binding, notarized documents which state that you, as parents, will keep this child’s interests... Read More

One half of Cathi Unsworth’s latest novel, Bad Penny Blues, chronicles the ascent to success for young artists Stella and husband Toby. The other half of the story, alternating chapter by chapter with Stella’s voice, is the... Read More

While sailing in the Bahamas on what was to be his last drug run, Charley chains himself to the mast of his sinking ship and leaves behind an incomplete logbook, mysterious DNA embedded in a brick of cocaine, and pre-addressed envelopes... Read More

Olga Slavnikova’s novel 2017*, set one hundred years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, is an imagined amalgamation of Russia’s near future and its conflicted past. The fictional Riphean mountain region, where the book takes place,... Read More

“Attention: if one feels that one is not ready to have all of one’s theistic beliefs fully challenged and have his/her entire perception of reality overturned one must put this book down now and never pick it up again” the author... Read More

Music makes the world go ‘round. Readers of the “Oxford American,” a magazine of all things Southern, have felt for years that they have been the center of that world. It is the steamy South, after all, which has been the source of... Read More

In the past, when I’ve talked to audiences like this, I’ve often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who’s been nasty, greedy and unethical. But I’ve stopped that practice. I gradually realized that... Read More