Mike Nicol

'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse' - such was the creed of the young blacks of honky-tonk Sophiatown and District Six during the 1950s. Drum, an illustrated magazine written by a group of legendary black writers, was the microcosm of this world. Surveying the townships - the gangsters, jazzmen, beauty queens, folk heroes and illegal dagga dens - in highly charged prose, these writers also exposed the bloody realities of apartheid while charting the growing resistance movement. In Drum and in the lives of these men, Nicol records the reality and dichotomy of living in township South Africa - the hopes, the fears, the dreams and defiance of a vibrant, laughing, deadly world.

This lyrical, haunting memoir recalls the drama and emotion of an exceptional moment in contemporary history: the months surrounding the first democratic elections in South Africa. Beginning with the days of voting, glancing back to the violence at the end of 1993 and forward to the inauguration of President Mandela and beyond, the book addresses the moral issues raised by these events: is it desirable, or possible, to forgive and forget? In searching for an answer, Nicol delves into his family's settler past, into certain of the events that have marked the country's history, and records how lives are touched by major social and political change. Published to commemorate the first anniversary of the elections, The Waiting Country will contribute to the ongoing debate about South Africa's future, and at the same time provide a powerful and unique insight into the lives of ordinary people overtaken by extraordinary events.

In stark dramatic images that have burnt themselves on to the public record, Ken Oosterbroek documented the violence, the heartache and the hope of South Africa's transitional years to the election in 1994. That he was killed - shot by friendly fire when members of the National Peace-Keeping Force panicked - just nine days before polling day is one of the bitter ironies of Oosterbroek's life. In so many ways the life he led, let alone the award winning pictures he took, can be read as a cautionary tale within the larger story of apartheid's demise. Whether Oosterbroek consciously realised this remains a tantalising question, but the pictures and the details of his life suggest he had an uncanny awareness of his own destiny. For not only did Oosterbroek leave a series of powerful images, he also left moving testimonies of the Namibian border war in the early eighties, and of his daily life, both personal and professional, in a number of journals. This book is simultaneously a tribute to that life and an exploration into the darker reaches of a nation's soul.

Local folklore had it that only people with troubled pasts ended up in his forlorn harbour but Captain Sylvester Nunes also brought a terrible future. Arriving at an unnamed South African port, Nunes, a customs official, is determined to uncover the dark, criminal secret he is certain lies at its heart. This consuming obsession drives him to enforce a repressive regime - and his untiring interrogations uncover a miscellany of bizarre and bewildering stories.

Also available in French from Editions du Seuil

With tremendous imaginative and political daring, South African novelist Mike Nicol offers a luminous parable of his country's past. Bawdy and terrifying, fantastical yet eerily familiar This Day And Age recounts the realisation of a prophecy told to a newly elected president on the eve of his inauguration. After years of harmony and plenty will come a time of plague and famine, and a strange man-child with a Bible chained to his wrist and an army of the disenfranchised in his thrall will gather strength in the most remote reaches of the land. As these events unfold, they offer a searing portrait of what happens when the preachings of a bloodthirsty messiah are legitimised by centuries of imperialist oppression - a struggle brought urgently to life in this extraordinary work of passion and power.

Also available in French from Editions du Seuil

This ferocious new novel by one of South Africa's visionary writers is a post-colonial reimagining of the Book of Revelation--an unholy epic that re-envisions the catastrophic violence of European "civilization" as a hooded rider who spreads slaughter across the African continent--a work that is as unnerving as it is intellectually provocative.

Also available in French from Editions du Seuil

An audacious departure for the internationally acclaimed South African novelist--a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today's headlines. Who was Christo Mercer, and why was he brutally stabbed to death in a remote Saharan town? For Robert Poley, an unhappy writer of political thrillers, the welcome distraction posed by this question has become an obsession. With the mysterious delivery of a laptop computer and a cryptic E-mail message, he finds himself slowly entwined in the vagaries that constituted Mercer's life and death. An illegal-arms trader haunted by his nightmares, his past, and his clandestine involvement with a ruthless rebel-- and with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great --Mercer lived on the grand stage of history, yet remained obscured by shadows until his seemingly fated demise. Now, piece by piece, in a complex web of social, political, personal, and fictional disclosures, the intricacies of Mercer's troubled psyche begin to reveal a pattern as corrupt as South Africa's in the aftermath of apartheid--years of judicial inquiry, the Truth Commission, and continued social unrest. With alchemical bravura, Mike Nicol turns history into fiction and fiction into history, bringing to allegorical life the haunting story of a murder emblematic of South Africa's recent past.

Also available in French from Editions du Seuil

A collection of poems written between 1973 and 1978

A collection of poems written between 1981 and 1986

Across the city bombs are blowing out nightclubs where drugs go down faster than drinks. Working the scene are slick American dealers trading crack for arms. And arms for blood diamonds. The thin shield between Cape Town's streets and the easy luxury of the famous and the rich is a protection company called Complete Security. But Mace Bishop and his partner Pylon Buso are taking strain. For the one-time gunrunners, now in the muscle business keeping the beautiful people safe, the past has a long and dangerous reach. So does the present. It's payback time.

Also available in the UK from Old Street Publishing, in German from btb Verlag, in French from J'aiLu and Dutch from De Geus.

The murder of Anni Dewani: the facts, the fiction, the spin. She was a bride for just twelve days. She was 28 years old. On a honeymoon to Cape Town she was murdered in a township hijacking. But was it a hijacking? Or was it a hit? Soon her husband was in the frame with two gunmen and the fixer. Monkey Business records the murder of Anni Dewani and the incredible aftermath as told by a chorus of family, friends, lawyers, spin doctors, reporters, bloggers, politicians, cops, psychologists, even a kinky sex worker, a story that played out in the international media and on social network sites. Seldom does a murder crack open such a devious world.

It's the end of a toxic summer in Cape Town. Obed Chocho, businessman, property developer, arrivista, is about to get out of prison on parole. The man who put him away is Judge Telman Visser. The judge thinks he needs the security services of Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso but he's playing a dangerous double bluff and they're his marks. Enter Sheemina February with an agenda all her own. Top of her tick-list is Mace Bishop. The second part of the Revenge Trilogy cracks open a world of conspiracies and paranoia, corruption and greed as the new elites get their hands on the spoils.

Available in the UK from Old Street Publishing, in German from btb Verlag, in French from J'aiLu and Dutch from De Geus

A memoir of a year spent in Berlin in 1997, and returning to see Cape Town through the lens of that city.

It's showdown for Sheemina February in her vendetta against security operative Mace Bishop. And a frazzled Mace Bishop is walking straight into the face-off. Problem is his partner Pylon Buso's taken a bullet and a foreigner under their protection's been kidnapped. Bad to worse, the secret service want Mace to steal the weapons system of his only other client. Mace is in the kill zone. In the final part of the Revenge Trilogy the hidden hand of Sheemina February is everwhere. Her finger tight on the trigger.

Available in the UK from Old Street Publishing, in German from btb Verlag, French from J'aiLu, and Dutch from De Geus

Mandela: The Authorized Portrait celebrates the courage, determination, and remarkable humanity of a great man and chronicles his extraordinary contribution to humankind. Much of the story in Mandela: The Authorized Portrait is told by those whose very lives he has touched. Drawing on 60 original and extensive interviews with family members, close friends, colleagues, and many of the world's leading figures in politics and entertainment, Mandela: The Authorized Portrait tells the inspirational story of an incredible man-from his birth and early childhood in rural South Africa and his involvement with and eventual leadership of the African National Congress through his 27-year imprisonment and eventual emergence as one of the world's notable leaders and most active agents for change. This richly designed portrait features a foreword by former U.S. president Bill Clinton and an introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It is illustrated with 250 images and features material taken from private collections as well as the Nelson Mandela Foundation archive-some of it published here for the first time. Mandela: The Authorized Portrait features artifacts and facsimiles of Mandela's voluminous writings and correspondence-written records of his negotiations with the prison authorities, intimate letters to his family and friends during his imprisonment, and material from Mandela's personal diaries and calendars. Mandela: The Authorized Portrait is one of the most lavishly illustrated and comprehensive tributes to Nelson Mandela's life and work ever produced.

Krista Bishop runs a security agency, for women only. Until she gets a call she can't refuse from the government spooks: guard two high-profile Chinese businessmen. What Krista isn't told is that the Chinese are mopping up the richly rewarding abalone poaching business. They want it all, from shore to plate. A takeover that will kick three Cape Town ganglords - known as the Untouchables - out of business and destroy their luxury lifestyles. Abalone means power, money, drugs, guns. No longer untouchable, gang boss Titus Anders fears for the life of his daughter and calls in Krista Bishop to protect her from the madness as a gang war ignites. Krista is the best. She's young, tough and a long way from the violence of the streets. Or is she? The war is everywhere. Right in her own backyard. And there is a secret agent waiting for her, with a gun in his hand...

Also available in the UK from Old Street Publishing, from Umuzi in Afrikaans under the title Woes; in German from btb Verlag, French from Editions du Seuil and Dutch from De Geus

With the passing of this extraordinary man the only joy can be to celebrate what he has left behind, his extraordinary patience and compassion, his passion for justice and reconciliation. This book explores the story he shared with all his fellow South Africans. It looks at themes which have dominated Nelson Mandela's life - his leadership, his attitude to the law and justice; democracy and human rights, and the value he placed on education. With extraordinary insight, author Mike Nicol, makes us acutely aware of Mandela the man - his courage, principles and generosity of spirit. There are many books written about Mandela but his story is too great to be told by one voice or from one viewpoint. The sensitive and accessible text is accompanied by over 80 photographs and regalia and contains a timeline of South African events mapped against key world events. A unique feature of the book is the 40 minute CD, of this icon's most famous speeches- Nelson Mandela in his own words.

First there is the killing of the minister of energy. Then the cop investigating the murder commits suicide. Fearing a conspiracy, the minister's lover hires PI Fish Pescado to find the killer. Then she goes missing. And Fish is being stonewalled by the cops because ... in the dark shadows of Cape Town there's another game being played out. A complex one involving Iranian agents, the theft of highly enriched uranium, and the kidnapping of a top scientist. Ex-spy Vicki Kahn is bribed by her former handler to track the terrorists. The hunt is deadly and nothing is what it seems. A sleeper has been awoken. ISIS is involved. So is the CIA. There is chatter of a dirty bomb headed for Europe. And Vicki is so lost in those constantly changing shadows that even her surfer-boy Fish can't find her.

Also available in German from btb Verlag and coming next year in French from Gallimard.

A novella of the life and times of journalist Henry Nxumalo - Mr Drum - commissioned by Heinemann and written for high school pupils. Originally published in 1997. Now out of print

Bring in the child trafficker. That's Agent Vicki Kahn's assignment, her first foreign mission for the State Security Agency. That the child trafficker is a top fashion model with connections to the president's son is an added complication. Especially when Vicki watches as the model's limp body is wheeled away at Schiphol airport. Then, in Berlin, she finds her contact dead on the kitchen floor, shot in the head. Get out, Vicki's instincts tell her. Get out now. Vicki's lover, PI Fish Pescado, is working another case. Find out who shot my husband, is his brief. The husband: a rebel colonel from the Central African Republic taken down in a spray of bullets on the steps of St George's Cathedral. As Fish digs he comes up against a local connection: none other than the South African president. Drop the case, he's warned. Go surfing. And take your girlfriend Vicki Kahn with you before it's too late. Secrets, conspiracies, vested interests, commie plots. Vicki and Fish are caught int he mix, with only one way out.

Also available from in the UK from Old Street Publishing, from Umuzi in Afrikaans as Staatsrotte; in German from btb Verlag and French from Gallimard

Published in South Africa by Umuzi in February 2021, and then later in the year by btb Verlag in Germany, and in 2022 by Gallimard in France

Dawn light on the mountains, a two metre swell coming off False Bay. PI Fish Pescado - lithe, blond-haired, six-pack - is surfing. To Fish this is paradise. Except, he has no work, and a diminishing bank balance. Until a young surfer paddles up: 'Hey, Fish, there's a pretty chick looking for you.' The pretty chick is Vicki Kahn, poker addict by night, lawyer by day. She's bright, sharp, lovely. The best. And she's got a job for him: find the murderous bastard who wiped out a bystander at an illegal drag race. If only it were that easy. Thing is that the drag racer has connections high up. Really high up, right to the police commissioner. Thing is the police commissioner has his eye on Vicki Kahn. Thing is the police commissioner has a pasty, a nasty past. A past that has something to do with hit squads, assassinations, rhino horns and the kind of information that no one wants uncovered. The kind of information that involves lots of money, gold bullion in fact. The commissioner's also got a taste for the lush life. A taste that is ruthless, savage. Before long, Fish and Vicki can't tell who's a cop and who's a robber. Or who's gunning for them.

Also available in English from Old Street Publishing in the UK, in Afrikaans from Umuzi as Dieners en Donners; in German from btb Verlag, in French from Editions du Seuil and Dutch from De Geus

Children find a body in the Strandfontein sand dunes. A populist politician is gunned down outside parliament. His number two executed in bed with a high-class escort. A cabinet minister shot leaving a security estate. A cop assassinated in his car. Another in his beach house. And it all ties back to the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986 - as private investigator Fish Pescado is about to discover. He's on the case, hunting a rogue agent through industrial estates, retirement homes, a farm in the Moordenaars Karoo. He's also convinced someone's out to kill his lover Vicki Kahn, lying in a coma in a hospital. But he can't watch over her all the time. Fish and Vicki are about to get hit by history. And history can be brutal, bloody and deadly.