AMABOOKABOOKA

A quirky, fast-moving show with an author that contains a brief intro about South African and international authors, a book reading, snappy interview and ends with a "sound effects Rorschach test". It's available as a video and podcast.

Darrel Bristow-Bovey

Five-time author Darrel Bristow-Bovey is South Africa's best columnist. Not only will Darrel move you - he will also move your cheese. He wrote the bestselling I Moved Your Cheese in 2001 and followed that up the next year with The Naked Bachelor. He is a scuba diver and founding member of the invincible pub quiz team - The Hasselhoffs. But I Digress, which coincidentally is the name of his third book – a collection of his columns. He has also written a novel for young readers, SuperZero. Darrel's latest bookOne Midlife Crisis and a Speedo was published by Random House in 2014, and is a LOL-a-minute tale about his brush with middle age ...

Stanley Manong

Stanley Manong left South Africa in 1976 to join the ANC, receiving military training. He rose up the ranks in the ANC’s armed wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe, and was deployed in the frontline states. He became MK’s chief of operations in Botswana in the mid-1980s. Stanley has written his autobiography If We Must Die … about these years in exile.

In exile Stanley became a civil engineer and when he returned to South Africa founded a very successful engineering company, Mangong and Associates. If we Must Die is published by Nkululeko – and has been described as “the most important first-hand history in 25 years of the painful struggles for liberation and for democracy, accountability and human rights in MK in Angola.”

Jani Allan

In 1987 she was voted the most admired person in South Africa; a trendy Rosebank restaurant named a salad after her, fans expressed their admiration in graffiti - a wall in Clifton was spray-painted the words: Jani Allen has balls. In 1980s South Africa,Jani Allen was a powerful media presence, who could make or break people in her celebrated Sunday Times column. Love her or loathe her, everyone read Just Jani. Jani Allen – mistress of the metaphor – was the media world’s It girl. And then she wrote That Column…. After a media storm and an unsuccessful court case she disappeared. Now, at 62, and working as "Juliette" the waitress in the small town of Lambertville in New Jersey, she returned to South Africa on a tour to promote her memoir, Jani Confidential, published by Jacana.

Tim Noakes

Tim Noakes, who has recently retired, is an A-rated South African professor of exercise and sports science. He has run more than 70 marathons and ultra-marathons, and has written almost as many books. Tim entered the dietary sphere, challenging the science behind obesity, coronary heart disease and heart attacks – some haters called him the Malema of Medicine but his considerable army of carb-free fans believe he’s the best thing since sliced bacon.

His list of books include, The Lore of Running, Running Injuries: How to Prevent and Overcome Them, Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket, Waterlogged, Challenging Beliefs: Memoirs of a Career, Always Believe in Magic and The Real Meal Revolution, published by Quivertree Titles, and was on the South African national best sellers list for 20 weeks.

Gavin Evans

Gavin Evans was once on a death squad’s hitlist – he’s a former MK operative, an erstwhile boxer, has a PhD in Political Science and is journalist, lecturer and author. Gavin Evans is author of Dancing Shoes is Dead, a coffee table book on boxing history, Mama’s Boy, and Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin Deep?

Imraan Coovadia

Imraan Coovadia is the author of The Wedding, Green-Eyed Thieves, High Low In-between, and The Institute for Taxi Poetry and Tales of the Metric. He’s won all the literary awards that matter the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize, the M-Net Prize, and the South African Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

He is a graduate of Harvard College, where he took classes with JM Coetzee, and he directs the writing programme at the University of Cape Town and has 1821 friends on Facebook.