In our final episode for the season, Lebohang Masango about the choices we make at the intersection of love and money, and Joy Watson tells me about her favourite anti-heroines.

The soft life can be a life of luxury, of champagne and overseas travel, or it could mean money being less of a perpetual worry. The book is about women who pursue this and see their dating lives as part of the pursuit. Lebohang is interested not just in the phenomenon of the pursuit of the soft life, but also in how it’s perceived - how black women are vilified for making choices that people make the world over. 

Joy’s own book is ‘The Other Me’, and she recommends ‘The Blessed Girl’ by Angela Makholwa, ‘The Vanishing Half’ by Brit Bennett. Vasti recommends ‘The Eye of the Beholder’ by Margie Orford and ‘An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso. Vasti interviewed Yewande in Season 3 - listen here. 

This season of A Readers’ Community was made possible by a grant from the National Arts Council.

In this bonus episode, we bring you a live recording of a book club hosted on 1 March 2023 with Alistair Mackay. It took place at the Book Lounge, and we talked about Alistair’s novel, It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way, a brilliant queer speculative fiction set in Cape Town in the very near future.

This season of A Readers’ Community as well as this live event was made possible by a grant from the National Arts Council.

Host and executive producer: Vasti Calitz. Senior producer and editor: Andri Burnett. Assistant producer and researcher: Kelly-Eve Koopman. Assistant editor: Simone Rademeyer.

Ritual can be a powerful narrative device. On the one hand, it’s likely to bring together a bunch of characters and to bring a simmering plot to the point of boiling over. On the other hand, they are often associated with a significant life event, with a moment of transition, or with magic and divine intervention.

One of the sites where rites and rituals have special significance is death. 

Jarred Thompson’s debut novel, The Institute of Creative Dying, is kind of obsessed with rituals and their relationship to death. It asks, are there different approaches to dying? What do we want out of our own deaths? And that question brings together a diverse group of characters ranging from a nun, to a model, to an ex-con, all willing to experiment with different answers to that question. This is a beautifully written, atmospheric and very intriguing novel.

Our recommendations are books about rites and rituals. Vasti recommends I Did Not Die by Tebello Mzamo and Things My Mother Left Me by Pulane Mlilo Mpondo with an honorary mention to Nondwe Mpuma’s Peach Country, which featured earlier in the season. Kelly-Eve recommends Ausi Told Me: Why Cape Herstoriographies Matter by June Bam, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilakaand Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. Also mentioned are The Great Derangement, also by Amitav Gosh, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robyn Wall Kimmerer, and It Doesn’t Have to be this Way (look out for an episode featuring Alistair next week!).

This season of A Readers’ Community was made possible by a grant from the National Arts Council.

Host and executive producer: Vasti Calitz. Senior producer and editor: Andri Burnett. Assistant producer and researcher (and book recommender): Kelly-Eve Koopman. Assistant editor: Simone Rademeyer.