New Releases
Mr Bitcoin – How I became a millionaire at 21
It is 2018 and we find ourselves in a world where it is possible and seemingly not uncommon to become a self-made millionaire at a very early age.
Most of the time, the road to riches is a closely guarded secret, until now. Jacana Media presents Mpho Dagada, one such young, self-made millionaire who in his memoir, Mr Bitcoin: How I became a millionaire at 21, shares his story of triumph and failure. He tells his story from the beginning: being brought up by business-minded and accomplished grandparents who planted in him the seeds of what it means to be successful in business.
This book is both motivational and practical, examining the errors and pitfalls that Dagada had to go through in his business pursuits. These included falling for Ponzi schemes like Kipi and losing his money on more than one occasion. Through these many lows were lessons of great value which ultimately led to the endless possibilities that Bitcoin presents for those interested in creating wealth through trading cryptocurrencies and running a successful business.
Dagada is confident in the viability of Bitcoin and ascertains that ‘we will never understand the money of the future without learning how money came about in the first place. Blockchain and Bitcoin are now pioneering a new online financial world. Cryptocurrencies will replace fiat money in the end, as they are faster, better and more convenient than all the earlier forms of currency.’
Rusty Bell and Small Things by Nthikeng Mohlele
Rusty Bell
“I wrestled with life and lost.” So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering way – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and anger, humility and ambition, trust and distrust, selfishness and selflessness. A flawed individual with an acute understanding of the roads that must be navigated to achieve even the slightest insight into the human condition. In this study in introspection, embroidered with lyrical prose and astonishing intuition, the hero, meditative and melancholic, is at once both tragic and comic.
Small Things
In this haunting tale of love and learning, the existential chaos of a life ravaged by circumstance takes on a rhythm of its own, one bound by loss and loneliness, but also an intelligent awareness of self. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes brutal, occasionally funny and infuriating, a journalist-comrade-lover caught up in the shade and shadow of politics and social injustice faces treachery and betrayal on every level. Set against the backdrop of a cityscape that taunts and tantalises, this is where love fails and passion wanes, “where suffering has no meaning”, where an individual escapes death only to find himself confronted with choices wrought by remorse and retribution, by conscience and character. And yet, with all trauma, there is a distinct musicality to the lyrical unpacking that follows a string of small things …
The Broken River Tent
The Broken River Tent is a novel that marries imagination with history. It is about the life and times of Maqoma, the Xhosa chief who was at the forefront of fighting British colonialism in the Eastern Cape during the nineteenth century.
The story is told through the eyes of a young South African, Phila, who suffers from what he calls triple ‘N’ condition – neurasthenia, narcolepsy and cultural ne plus ultra. This makes him feel far removed from events happening around him but gives him access to the analeptic memory of his people.
After being under immense mental pressure, he crosses the mental divide between the living and the dead and is visited by Maqoma. They engage in different conversations about cultural history, literature, religion, the past and contemporary South African life.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a writer who resides in Cape Town. He contributes to different national and international publications, and maintains a column in the Southern Cross, South Africa’s national weekly Catholic newspaper. He has worked with the Rhodes University drama department in staging two plays he wrote that were featured at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in 2006. Some of his short stories feature occasionally in magazines and historical journals and on radio. In 2008, he was one of six writers from the African continent whose collection of short stories were published in the United States in an anthology titled Africa Fresh! New Writings from the First Continent. He is also a founder of a Facebook book club called Qhamisa Book Club, which boasts more than 2 000 active members.
ISBN 978-1-928337-45-4 | GENRE Fiction | PRICE R250 | Available
An Image in a Mirror
“Nyakale.
This has always been my name. It lost vowels and consonants and got rearranged into “Kay” by my Grade Three teacher. “Easier to pronounce,” she said.
Aunty Mercy’s response was to accept. “After all, muwala wange, we are in this country, and ours is not to stand out but to survive.”
“Survive” sounds lifeless, inanimate, not like the survive of Aunty Mercy’s stories of growing up in Uganda. There, survival was active, done daily. In South Africa, the word had taken on a new meaning. No longer doing, but hiding to make existence easier. Gradually becoming chameleons. I learnt to lurk in the shadows. Drawing just enough attention, not too much. No sudden movements, everything calculated and measured.”
Upon giving birth to twin girls in rural Uganda, Nyakale’s mother decides to send one away to her sister in South Africa for a shot at a better life.
In the heart of this beautifully woven coming of age story, is the story of twins growing up in two different worlds one in rural Uganda and the other in South Africa. The novel follows theirs lives and journeys of navigating the politics of their respective worlds.
Nyakale and Achen grew up despising each other for what they imagine the other to have because of their mother’s drastic decision. When they finally meet , how mirrored will they feel by the other?