The Whale Caller

As Zakes Mda's fifth novel opens, the seaside village of Hermanus is overrun with whale-watchers--foreign tourists determined to see whales in their natural habitat. But when the tourists have gone home, the whale caller lingers at the shoreline, wooing a whale he has named Sharisha with cries from a kelp horn. When Sharisha fails to appear for weeks on end, the whale caller frets like a jealous lover--oblivious to the fact that the town drunk, Saluni, a woman who wears a silk dress and red stiletto heels, is infatuated with him. The two misfits eventually fall in love. But each of them is ill equipped for romance, and their relationship suggests, in the words of The Washington Post, that "the deeper, darker concern here is not so much the fragility of love, but the fragility of life itself when one surrenders wholly to the foolish heart."

The Whale Caller is living a quiet life in his bungalow on South Africa's Cape, spending his days calling to the whales out to sea, eating macaroni cheese each night. His life is peaceful if a little eccentric until a drunken woman in stilettos who has been following him about for weeks, finally manages to invade his life for good. Together they form a strange and intense love affair, brimming with alcohol and jealousy, which threatens to destroy them both. Beautifully written, witty and magical, Zakes Mda creates a world that is at once enchanting and very real.

Verbal imagery and visual images as well as the intricate relationships between verbal and visual representations have long shaped the imagination and the practice of intercultural relationships. The contributions to this volume take a fresh look at the ideology of form, especially the gendered and racial implications of the gaze and the voice in various media and intermedial transformations. Analyses of how culturally specific forms of visual and verbal expression are individually understood and manipulated complement reflections on the potential and limitations of representation. The juxtaposition of visual and verbal signifiers explores the gap between them as a space beyond cultural boundaries. Topics treated include: Caliban; English satirical iconotexts; Oriental travel writing and illustration; expatriate description and picturesque illustration of Edinburgh; ethnographic film; African studio photography; South African cartoons; imagery, ekphrasis, and race in South African art and fiction; face and visuality, representation and memory in Asian fiction; Bollywood; Asian historical film; Asian-British pop music; Australian landscape in painting and fiction; indigenous children's fiction from Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, and the USA; Canadian photography; Native Americans in film. Writers and artists discussed include: Philip Kwame Apagya; the Asian Dub Foundation; Breyten Breytenbach; Richard Burton; Peter Carey; Gurinder Chadha; Daniel Chodowiecki; J.M. Coetzee; Ashutosh Gowariker; Patricia Grace; W. Greatbatch; Hogarth; Francis K. Honny; Jim Jarmusch; Robyn Kahukiwa; Seydou Keita; Thomas King; Vladyana Krykorka; Alfred Kubin; Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak; Kathleen and Michael Lacapa; László Lakner; George Littlechild; Ken Lum; Franz Marc; Zakes Mda; Ketan Mehta; M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam); Timothy Mo; William Kent Monkman; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; John Hamilton Mortimer; Sidney Nolan; Jean Rouch; Salman Rushdie; William Shakespeare; Robert Louis Stevenson; Richard Van C& Zapiro.

Fiction. Avi Heyer's rollicking adventure begins when he returns to Elsbeth, North Carolina, to settle his mother's affairs. A student chef with the wrong girlfriend and a mud-loving dog, Avi soon finds himself dragged into a criminal conspiracy. His world is churned up, down and sideways by the diabolical Camel and her hired henchwomen; an unknown phone caller who somehow tracks his every move; an enticing hippie who may be trying to steal something from Avi; a plainspoken building contractor with a suspicious hearing aid; and a news reporter desperate for love. And then there's Avi's whale, with its graceful bulk and keening song, a whale that becomes more than an obsession.

Simple but elegant seafood recipes from acclaimed James Beard nominated chef and beloved Seattle restaurateur Renee Erickson One of the country's most acclaimed chefs, Renee Erickson is a James Beard nominated chef and the owner of several Seattle restaurants: The Whale Wins, Boat Street Café, The Walrus and the Carpenter, and Barnacle. This luscious cookbook is perfect for anyone who loves the fresh seasonal food of the Pacific Northwest. Defined by the bounty of the Puget Sound region, as well as by French cuisine, this cookbook is filled with seasonal, personal menus like Renee’s Fourth of July Crab Feast, Wild Foods Dinner, and a fall pickling party. Home cooks will cherish Erickson’s simple yet elegant recipes such as Roasted Chicken with Fried Capers and Preserved Lemons, Harissa-Rubbed Roasted Lamb, and Molasses Spice Cake. Renee Erickson's food, casual style, and appreciation of simple beauty is an inspiration to readers and eaters in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. This eBook edition includes complete navigation of recipes and ingredients with hyperlinks throughout the book in the Table of Contents, the menus, and the index.

A new novel by a towering presence in contemporary South African literature In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as raw material for his alchemic imagination, Zakes Mda tells the story of a family at the heart of the scandal -and of a country in which apartheid concealed interracial liaisons of every kind. Niki, the fallen madonna, transgresses boundaries for the sake of love; her choices have repercussions in the lives of her black son and mixed-race daughter, who come of age in post-apartheid South Africa, where freedom prompts them to reexamine their country's troubled history at first hand. By turns earthy, witty, and tragic, The Madonna of Excelsior is a brilliant depiction of life in South Africa and of the dramatic changes between the 1970s and the present.

Inspector Sejer investigates the delivery of a threatening postcard that coincides with the discovery of a child who was found covered in blood but unharmed in her stroller.

WINNER OF THE EDWARD STANFORD CHILDREN'S TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 A SUNDAY TIMES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK Dive beneath the waves with this spell-binding adventure of friendship, forgiveness and bravery, set on the shores of Papua New Guinea, perfect for fans of Katherine Rundell and Eva Ibbotson. "I want to be able to call the sharks. Teach me the magic and show me the ways." Blue Wing is desperate to become a shark caller, but instead she must befriend infuriating newcomer Maple, who arrives unexpectedly on Blue Wing's island. At first, the girls are too angry to share their secrets and become friends. But when the tide breathes the promise of treasure, they must journey together to the bottom of the ocean to brave the deadliest shark of them all... "The most incredible story...tender and wise, with themes of friendship, love, grief, revenge and acceptance." Michelle Harrison "Magnificent and beautiful." Sophie Anderson