Kamanee Govender, Stern GodsStern Gods is an intimate coming-of-age novel set in 1980s South Africa, during the state of emergency. Eleven-year-old Kaathi Reddy lives in Bombayville, an Indian township, in a cramped council house where poverty, family tension, strict religious expectations and social pressure are part of daily life. Added to this is an abusive uncle in the household and the wider violence and restrictions of apartheid.The novel turns on the rape of Kaathi’s friend Losh and her family’s decision to keep it quiet. Kaathi’s attempt to seek justice has serious consequences, including the loss of her father. Through her story, Stern Gods looks at girlhood, silence, family complicity and the danger faced by children who understand what is happening around them but have little power to change it.Govender is a writer, filmmaker and creative director. Stern Gods is her debut novel.Samantha Keller, The Light RemainsThe Light Remains is a small-press literary novel set in the South African lowveld in the 1960s. A family saga, it centres on Eve Hunter, a young woman growing up on her family’s farm, where her attachment to the land is tied to grief and family secrets. When her father is electrocuted while building a barn, his death exposes a long-held secret and forces Eve to confront the silence that has marked her family for years.The story follows Eve, her older sister Kate and Jack, the neighbouring boy both families expect Kate to marry. After her father’s death, Eve turns to Jack, and their relationship becomes harder to ignore. That bond pushes Eve towards a choice between family expectation and private desire. The novel explores loyalty, duty, independence and the cost of wanting a life of one’s own, with apartheid-era South Africa adding pressure to the family drama.Keller grew up and was educated in South Africa. She now lives in Connecticut, where she works as a writing teacher and developmental editor.Philisiwe Twijnstra, Flying Cows and Other TraumasFlying Cows and Other Traumas is a short story collection that moves between literary fiction, magical realism, speculative fiction and fantasy. Through a feminist lens, the collection follows black women facing brutality in strange, violent and unsettling worlds, moving across past, present and future, from South African townships to imagined African kingdoms.The collection uses the unreal to write about real forms of violence: family dysfunction, bodily danger, inherited trauma and social cruelty. Its refusal of straight realism is part of the point. These are stories about women under threat, but also about their power, survival and different ways of resisting harm.The mood is reminiscent of works such as Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties (2017), Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018) and Mohale Mashigo’s Intruders (2018), placing the collection in dark, strange and politically alert territory, where the female body is often the site of danger and resistance.Twijnstra is a South African interdisciplinary artist with an MA in creative writing from Rhodes University. Her broader work focuses on black queer women.Jean-Paul Willemse, Ashes of EuphoriaAshes of Euphoria is a gritty urban Cape Town novel set in Kraaifontein. Jameel is a media studies graduate working at Shoprite; his cousin Zaid is a Bolt driver trying to build a porn website; and Stacey is an unemployed geology graduate who performs in Zaid’s videos for money. The setup gives the book a sharp contemporary edge. These are educated young people with few options, turning to precarious work, sex and technology to find a way out.The story takes a darker turn when Zaid’s website attracts a supposed investor and the three attend what they think will be a business meeting. Instead, Zaid is murdered, Stacey is kidnapped, and Jameel is forcibly recruited into a gang. The novel is action-packed, but it is also concerned with questions of loyalty and moral compromise.Willemse works as a freelance writer. Ashes of Euphoria is his debut novel.Thandi Moagi, Wisani and the Bafokeng BrothersSet in Soweto and Lesotho, Wisani and the Bafokeng Brothers introduces Wisani Maluleke, a sociology student at Wits who is working three jobs while caring for her bedridden mother and younger, allergy-prone brother. Her life is already stretched thin when her university research draws her into the world of the Bafokeng brothers.They are heirs to the feared Marashea underworld, a cross-border network of criminal organisations made up largely of Basotho migrants in South Africa. The brotherhood is led by Mohapi Mofokeng, sullen, commanding and dangerous. As Wisani is pulled deeper into its secrecy and blood loyalty, she finds herself drawn to the danger.The story moves between family pressure, academic ambition, attraction and threat, as Wisani tries to work out how far she is willing to go and what the brotherhood may cost her.Moagi worked in retail and built a loyal Facebook readership with stories that blend love, suspense and South African culture. Wisani and the Bafokeng Brothers is her first published novel.