Bafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family. But before he can confess, he is greeted as a hero by family and friends. His uncle calls him “Advo,” short for Advocate, and his mother wastes no time recruiting him to solve their legal problems. In a community that thrives on imagined realities, Bafana decides that it’s easiest to create a lie that allows him to put off the truth indefinitely. Soon he’s in business with Yomi, a Nigerian friend who promises to help him solve all his problems by purchasing a fake graduation document. One lie leads to another as Bafana navigates through a world that readers will find both funny and grim.

Dog Eat Dog is a remarkable record of being young in a nation undergoing tremendous turmoil, and provides a glimpse into South Africa’s pivotal kwaito (South African hip-hop) generation and life in Soweto. Set in 1994, just as South Africa is making its postapartheid transition, Dog Eat Dog captures the hopes—and crushing disappointments—that characterize such moments in a nation’s history. Raucous and darkly humorous, Dog Eat Dog is narrated by Dingamanzi Makhedama Njomane, a college student in South Africa who spends his days partying, skipping class, and picking up girls. But Dingz, as he is known to his friends, is living in charged times, and his discouraging college life plays out against the backdrop of South Africa’s first democratic elections, the spread of AIDS, and financial difficulties that threaten to force him out of school.

For You, I’d Steal a Goat is a vibrant collection of short stories filled with memorable characters, intriguing plots, and twist endings. It explores a wide range of themes, such as corruption, racial bias, family troubles, and lovers’ spats, to name a few. In his stories about queer relationships, Niq Mhlongo surfaces the complexities of a community whose narratives have been silenced. With his keen observations and insights into human nature, Mhlongo explores the things that people do for each other, but also to each other, including acts of injustice and exploitation as well as of love and desire. Mhlongo’s stories are critical, erudite, and masterfully crafted using satire and careful deliberation to connect to the quotidian lived experiences of readers. With a sense of humor, Mhlongo reflects on some of the greatest transformations South Africans have faced in recent times and engages with crucial matters in the present.