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The Quality of Mercy
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

On the eve of his country’s independence, Spokes Moloi investigates his first ‘white case’ and finds a very confusing crime scene. Having recently been promoted to Chief Inspector, it is up to Spokes – a man of impeccable rectitude and moral spotlessness who is supported in all things by his paragon spouse, Loveness – to solve long-standing mysteries. His task now is to unravel the alleged murder of a man, Emil Coetzee, but also the tangled web that his life created.

Following on her award-winning novels The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Quality of Mercy is a novel of comfort and, indeed, mercy. Ndlovu weaves together elements of social comedy and cosy crime while examining the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state. From the City of Kings and surrounding villages steps a cast of engaging characters who will criss-cross each other’s lives in delightful and poignant ways. Here, where everyone knows everyone else, the ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken.

Koos Bekker’s Billions
T.J. Strydom

With M-Net Koos Bekker convinced the business world he had the magic touch. But it was only the start of an entrepreneurial journey that would bring him immense wealth. Bekker swept in at Naspers, transforming an Afrikaans printer into a global technology giant, earning investors trillions and himself a good few billion. But how? What were the methods employed by this boerseun from Heidelberg?
Financial journalist TJ Strydom distils it down to 15 steps, each calculated and effective, sketching out the winning ways of the elusive media mogul. Bekker often gets the credit for the investment in China’s Tencent, a single punt that rivals South Africa’s entire mining sector in the wealth it created this century. But should he be the one lauded for this achievement?

TJ Strydom is a financial journalist who has worked for The Times, Reuters news agency and Beeld. He is the author of the bestselling Christo Wiese: Risk and Riches (Christo Wiese: Risiko en Rykdom).

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