“One of the cleverest, creepiest and most memorable horror novels for ages … a masterful debut.” David Barnett,
The Independent (UK)
“Deliciously evil” Alison Flood, The Guardian (UK)
“Dark, disturbing, and wonderfully subversive.” Lauren Beukes
The Mall, an urban horror novel co-written by Sarah Lotz and me under the name S.L. Grey, was published by Corvus in the UK in June 2011.
Visit S.L. Grey’s BOOK SA page for the latest news and reviews.
Being South African isn’t as black and white as it used to be. People from all over the world make South Africa their home, while South Africans have more geographic freedom than ever before. This unique and captivating collection is a snapshot of South African writing today: emigrant and immigrant South Africans, living at home and away.
In Home Away, twenty-four chapters by twenty-four writers, set in cities all around the world, make up one global day, a mosaic reflecting on the nature of home. As the provocative stories in this collaboration suggest, often it’s when we are far away from home that we see it most clearly.
Read more and see a gallery of the contributors
Media coverage of Home Away:
– January 2011: Home Away reviewed by Lauri Kubuitsile on Thoughts from Botswana. “A very good read”.
– December 2010: Home Away is one of LitNet’s Top Ten Local Literary Reads of 2010.
– October 2010: Giveaway in O Magazine.
– September 2010: Home Away is Book of the Month in Woman and Home. “A wonderful mix of memoir, travelogue, humour and fiction.”
– September 2010: Home Away reviewed on Bid or Buy. “Beautiful and thought-provoking; the stories are remarkably different in tone and style, yet fit together as a cohesive whole to make a powerful statement.”
– 14 September 2010: Bruce Dennill reviews Home Away in the Herald. “A fabulous idea”
– 12 September 2010: Tim Hopwood reviews Home Away in the Herald. “I far preferred the non-fiction”
– 5 September 2010: Maureen Isaacson reviews Home Away in the Sunday Independent. “This is fascinating material.”
– 19 August 2010: Claire Reddie gives Home Away 5 out of 5 in You. “A delight to read … a wonderful break from the humdrum of normal life”
– 12 August 2010: Shafinaaz Hassim publishes the full English review of Home Away on Sopabox Shafinaaz. “Never have I been so vividly held captive by the intricate balance of metaphor and narrative as I have with this new work-of-art compilation”
– August 2010: mini-review in Classic Feel. “An original and inspired concept”
– July 2010: Home Away reviewed in 021 Magazine. “both an exciting book in its own right and a great sampler of the talent we have”
– 12 July: Tali Barnett reviews Home Away on Tali-vision. “A dizzying dance of voices, places and spaces that reflect the experience of the South African traveller”. Review also published in The South African.
– Home Away selected for Exclus1ves.co.za Missing Home promotion.
– 18 June 2010: Tiah Beautement reviews Home Away on Travelling Write Along…. “None of the stories were related, but they all fit together in this disjointed, but brilliant fashion.”
– 15 June 2010: Joanne Hichens reviews Home Away in the Cape Times. “I am a satisfied reader. I feel as if I have indeed been on an incredible journey.”
– 6 June: Shaz Hess resenseer Home Away in Rapport. “Ek is nog nooit so geboei deur die fyn balans tussen metafoor en vertelling as wat ek was met Home Away … Dit wys Suid-Afrika het sy plek in die wyer wêreld gevind. [I have never been as fascinated by the fine balance between metaphor and narrative as I was with Home Away ... It shows South Africa has found its place in the wider world.]”
– Home Away selected for Exclusive Books Homebru promotion.
– 12 May: Mandy J. Watson gives Home Away 9/10 in an in-depth review on Brainwavez.org. “It is a magnificent compilation”.
– 6 May: review and feature by Janet van Eeden on LitNet in which many of the writers talk about their pieces.
– 30 April: Charles Thompson resenseer Home Away op Nuus24: “Greenberg se versameling is ‘n kleurvolle mengelmoes van kontemporêre skrywers en stories.”
– 28 April 2010: Vivien Horler notes Home Away in her Across My Desk column in the Cape Argus.
– 19 April: review by Don Makatile in the Sowetan: “The writing, as befits writers of the calibre of the contributors, is top-drawer material.”
– 16 April: Cape Town launch covered in Chew The Magazine (See also the BOOK SA report on the launch here.)
Seventh Street, Melville. The pavement outside Sam’s café. The area no more than about four square metres, like most of the photographs. The concrete bricks are stained with years of gum and spilled drinks, dropped plates of Thai duck salad, cigarette butts, the discarded clippings from the wire-sculptors’ informal factory. And dust, grains of sand, particles of scraped-away paper, dog droppings, leaves, skin and hair, all rendered into a fine, breathable talc. The angle of a protruding column from the wall of the restaurant is scuffed and marked by the daily rubbing of the sculptors’ and vendors’ pants and shoes. The FeastBurger bag is crumpled in its lee. The lid of a Junior CheesyFeast box pokes from the neck of the brown paper parcel. It’s an arm’s length away. Renée’s arm, as it lies, groping in a mixture of surprise, humiliation and jolting pain away from her. In the corner of the picture, her face lies flattened against the concrete bricks, blood trailing from her nose, making satisfactory mud with the pavement’s organic dust. In the other corner, the toe of a man’s worn black leather shoe. A hand-sized tin and wire mantis presses into her head, cutting, its foreleg perilously close to her brain. Renée on the pavement, in Melville, with her first FeastBurger bag, narrowly escaping an unintended death.
From The Beggars’ Signwriters, now a collectors’ item. Get it now!
The Owl House, Nieu-Bethesda. Even here, even here in the stark isolation of this arid Karoo village, probably three hundred kilometres from the nearest outlet, somebody has imported FeastBurger detritus. It’s a #4-size bag at the knees of a cement-clay pilgrim in a private ecstasy of adoration. The manger must lie to the right, to the East, outside of the picture. This single, rounded, inscrutable sculpture is the focus of the picture. Behind the pilgrim is an obsessive clutter of parts of camels and kings, peacocks, lambs, cats, owls and houses, sheds and shards of coloured glass. Arms, staffs, eyes and hooves. From the crumpled, discoloured tissue near the neck of the Feast Burger bag, the cigarette-end burned through its bottom, one could assume the bag was used to clean out a journeyed car. And the pilgrim looks unaware, over it and away, with half-closed eyes turned toward an East she’ll never reach.
From The Beggars’ Signwriters, now a collectors’ item. Get it now!
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