making rain for south african women writers and readers
New & Forthcoming
Bridges
Spanning continents and centuries, Bridges braids history and fiction to reveal how bridges are both feats of engineering and vessels of memory. From the Roman Pont du Gard to the Millau Viaduct, from the Drina to the Bloor Street Viaduct and Maputo–Katembe, the book follows workers, engineers, nuns, poets, truckers, and migrants whose lives converge on steel, stone, rope, and water. Lyrical and deeply researched, it explores connection and rupture as well as power, faith, grief, love, and labour and shows how motion is emotion and how every crossing changes us. A luminous meditation on the architectures that carry us between past and future.
The Fisherman’s Daughter
A decade of poems from the edge of the sea. The Fisherman's Daughter is a tribute to life in all its forms, carried by the watercolours that inspired them: wonderful and beautiful and terrifying. A life shaped by salt air and the rhythms of the ocean, an invitation to find beauty in every moment.
The Worldbreaker’s Name
The Worldbreaker’s Name is the first novel in an epic fantasy trilogy features a unique magic system and draws inspiration from broad-based African mythology to create a world rich in culture and myth; a world threatened by mysterious monsters and ancient secrets. A diverse cast of morally grey characters are pitted against world-ending stakes in an immersive, fast-paced narrative with clever plot twists.
Gathered Seams: 19 poems from southern African women
Gathered Seams brings together nineteen poems by poets from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa. Their voices move between languages and landscapes, from kraals to mine dumps, carrying grandmothers' hands and mothers' absences, wooden spoons and stillborn lullabies. They hold violence alongside survival, grief alongside magwinyas, refusing to reduce anyone to only their trauma. Halala to nineteen years of Modjaji Books making space for women's voices.
Simmer till Tender
In post-apartheid Durban, Asma has built a careful life—devoted mother, dutiful wife, her youthful rebellion long buried. Then she sees Ghaarith in the Botanical Gardens, and thirty years collapse.
In apartheid South Africa, their love was forbidden twice over: she was classified Indian, he Coloured, both Muslim but separated by the state's cruel taxonomy. When Ghaarith vanished in 1976, Asma thought he'd chosen the struggle over her. She married another man, had children, learned to live with the ache of not knowing.
The sequel to Home Scar, this is a novel about the intimate costs of political struggle and the truths we bury to survive.
In apartheid South Africa, their love was forbidden twice over: she was classified Indian, he Coloured, both Muslim but separated by the state's cruel taxonomy. When Ghaarith vanished in 1976, Asma thought he'd chosen the struggle over her. She married another man, had children, learned to live with the ache of not knowing.
The sequel to Home Scar, this is a novel about the intimate costs of political struggle and the truths we bury to survive.
The Seeker Effect
The Seeker Effect is a must-read speculative fiction foray into a dystopian future in which the drowning earth’s orbit has shifted, and times are out of joint. Five citizens have been temporarily let out of their isolation pods, and they are ready to do anything to avoid returning to the pointlessness of that incarceration.The book skillfully weaves determination, fear, humour, magic realism, mystery, psychology, science and climate, along with the pace of a thriller.
From Our Blog
What’s happening
Newsflash: Poets selected for Modjaji’s Woordeloos anthology
2026 marks the 19th birthday of Modjaji Books and the Woordeloos poetry anthology is a celebration...
More about Woordeloos
More about the process Firstly we want to thank all of you, who submitted for submitting! It was...
Modjaji Books launches a call for our Woordeloos anthology celebrating southern African women poets
Modjaji Books launches a call for our Woordeloos anthology celebrating southern African women...
People
Interview with Hannah Botsis about writing A Clergyman’s Daughter
Ntendeni Luvhengo who is currently working with us at Modjaji Books as a publishing intern, took...
Living in an “obsessively visual culture” interview with Joanne Bloch
Living in an “obsessively visual culture" - Takondwa...
2025 HSS Awards – two shortlisted titles
We were delighted to discover that two of our titles were recognised at this year's HSS Awards....
Newsletters
November: Dezemba is almost upon us
From Colleen’s desk Launching the movie tie-in edition of Snake by Tracey Farren, was a highlight...
October: Busy and buzzing
Yes, October is busy and buzzing: we have reprints coming up, your submissions questions answered...
August: Every month is women’s month
In this issue we say a big thank you, look at one of our books crossing borders, a new longlist...