Mpeo Books

20/03/2025

British clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Smith wrote her first book, the wildly successful Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, to help people “work on their future mental health by looking at past difficult moments.” Basically, to assist them in preparing for life’s inevitable storms and complications. As the chapter titles of Open When make clear— “When they don’t love you back,” “When you doubt yourself”, and “When everything feels pointless”–this book is for those right in the middle of the storm. For them, Smith offers compassion, common sense, and strategies to move toward calmer waters.

20/03/2025

Life coach, best-selling author, and longtime O Magazine columnist Martha Beck's newest book focuses on managing anxiety—a timely topic given the world we’re dog-paddling through right now. Beck explains what gets us stuck in an “anxiety spiral” and offers techniques to step out of it. She also explains how to trade it for a “creativity spiral”—which happily shuts down the nervous-making part of our nervous system.

20/03/2025

With a title that doubles as a mantra, Mel Robbins offers a surprisingly liberating two-part process toward a more fulfilling life. Robbins, a public speaker, podcaster, and author of two best-selling books says the first step is “Let Them” (aka, release control over others). Step two is "Let Me," by recognizing the power you have to choose what to think about difficulties—and what to do (or not do) about them. “This is by far one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read,” Oprah said. “It’s up there with all the greats.”

19/03/2025

If you want to know how the modern South African fiction compares with the vintage one, read WELCOME TO OUR HILBROW by Phaswane Mpe.

Phaswane Mpe’s first novel (shortlisted for the 2002 Sunday Times Fiction Prize) is a variation on what was known as the “Jim Comes to Joburg” theme in South African literature. A man leaves his rural home in the north and comes to the big city to find a new life. What he finds is a dangerous but vital inner city, epitomised by Hillbrow, the flat-land in the centre of Johannesburg where the well-heeled no longer set foot – the “city of gold, milk, honey and bile”. This is the land of drug deals, xenophobia, violence, sex and Aids, and this novel is an uncompromising look at the reality of the new South Africa as it affects the poorest of the urban population. It is also a story of love, survival and hope.

19/03/2025

If you are into short stories and want to enjoy some old Afrikaner humour, one of your vintage options is MAFEKING ROAD AND OTHER STORIES by Herman Charles Bosman

In an edition published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first publication, this collection is a South African classic. In the voice of the sly old bushveld storyteller Oom Schalk Laurens, Bosman tells tales of a rural Afrikaner South Africa that has long since vanished – yet the unique flavour and wry humour of the stories remain undiminished.

19/03/2025

You may have read THE HEART OF REDNESS by Zakes Mda as a school setwork. If not, you have to look for it and read it.

Zakes Mda came to prominence as a dramatist in the 1970s; now he has flourished as a novelist. This, his second novel, won the 2001 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and has become a school setwork. Weaving together two strands of storytelling, the novel moves between the past and the present. In the past is the narrative of Nongqawuse, the 19th century prophetess whose visions brought a message from the ancestors and took her people to the brink of extermination. In the present time, 150 years later, a feud that dates back to the days of Nongqawuse still simmers in the village of Qolorha as it faces the demands of modernity.

19/03/2025

Another vintage fiction book worthy of mention is CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY by Alon Paton.

Perhaps the most famous novel to come out of South Africa, Paton’s 1948 work brought to the notice of the world the dilemmas of ordinary South Africans living under an oppressive system, one which threatened to destroy their very humanity. Informed by Paton’s Christian and liberal beliefs, the novel tells of a rural Zulu parson’s heart-breaking search for his son, who has been drawn into the criminal underworld of the city. Cry, The Beloved Country has sold millions of copies around the world.

19/03/2025

Do you want to know the history of Cape Town? Read the book "CAPE TOWN - The Making of a City"

Subtitled “Blood and Bad Dreams: A South African Explores the Madness in His Country, His Tribe and Himself”, this book was a bestseller in South Africa and elsewhere when it came out in 1990. By a member of one of Afrikanerdom’s leading apartheid families, it goes into the heart of darkness of a country in turmoil. It’s not a pretty picture, but it makes for compelling, sobering reading.

18/03/2025