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King Adz is a grown-up kid whose focus is youth culture. He's a Brit by birth whose heart beats Africa - more particularly Mzansi. In his latest book, a memoir or "non-fiction novel" (according to Adz) the reader is swept along two equally entertaining narrative strands, one set in the present day, the other in the past, which mashed together form the story of King Adz's life - the man also known as "Adam Stone" to the authorities. In the present-day we read of Adz's quest to make some sense of modern South Africa. Adz spends as much time as he can hanging out with a selection of interesting, unusual and creative locals, from Jack Parow to Roger Ballen. He also visits the most interesting places - Portuguese restaurants that are well past their sell-by dates, street culture festivals, and small dorps that are off the map (and "off the hook"!). And through all this is the palpable sense that when Adz is in South Africa, he always feels at home. The backbone of the book tells how Adz came to South Africa, with wife and children, and worked in the world of brands, advertising and digital media. We learn how he "accidentally" became a film director, and might also have fallen into bad company. This is a fascinating, funny chance for South Africans to consider ourselves anew through the eyes of an outsider who has forced himself inside.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• v. 1., bk.
• 1. Downpatrick is the butterfly capital of the universe; bk.
• 2. Kings of the wild frontiers?
• v. 2., bk.
• 3. Half the globe's our home; bk.
• 4. America's century.

'Some of these stories are accurate; all of them are true...' In his "An Irish History of Civilization", Don Akenson, the world's leading scholar of the Irish Dispora, fuses history and fiction into a remarkable narrative of the people and their influence around the globe. "An Irish History of Civilization" is about the Irish at home and abroad, the great and the small, the noble and the depraved, the saints and he sinners, adventures and idealists. As Akenson follows his chosen people on their odyssey around the globe, the lines between history and fiction become irretrievably, beguilingly lost in the mists of time. Volume Two begins with the Great Famine and goes on to show the Irish adapting, improvising and innovating in Ireland and overseas - in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia and South Africa. The book ends by demonstrating the centrality of both Catholic and Protestant Irish culture to the United States.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
St Patrick catching sight of Ireland for the first time as he is taken there as a prisoner...Joyce and Yeats eating sticky buns in a Dublin cafe...There has never before been an Irish history book remotely like this one, composed as a vast mosaic of incidents, encounters and vignettes. It is not so much a 'history of Irish civilization' as an 'Irish history of civilization'. In telling a wide range of stories about the Irish everywhere this historical-fictional account of the Irish peoples around the globe from the time of Christ to 1969 opens up the really big issues - the relationship between the minute particulars and the larger patterns which gradually become apparent. The stories themselves are by turns funny, acerbic, ironic, score-settling - never quite what they seem at face value. They are also deeply informed by the author's vast knowledge of Ireland, its history and its diaspora. For once the hyperbole is true - after this book, Irish history will never be the same again.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A collection of anecdotes and accounts of remarkable people and events in history.

Journalist and author Luke Alfred, spent one year traveling around South Africa by foot, with an aim to discover the 'real' South Africa. It is a book of stories, not a historical account.

• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (interlude)
• Délire de style à Libreville
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (2)
• Causerie à Nicosie
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (3)
• Rumba pour baccarat à Rabat
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (4)
• Pas d'agape à Prague
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (5)
• Conflit de ladies à New Delhi
• Silence du soir à Dakar
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (6)
• Les pieds dans le plat à Essaouira
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (7)
• Intrigant événement à Téhéran
• On materne à Berne
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (8)
• Faute de comedor à San Salvador
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (9)
• Périls à Brazzaville
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (10)
• Coup de mou à Moscou
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (11)
• Pas de requin à Pékin
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (12)
• En cabane à Copacabana
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (13)
• Alarme à Amman
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (14)
• Avoir les foies à Garoua
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (15)
• Ça bloque à Auckland
• Pendant ce temps-là, à Paris... (16)
• Grand bide à Abidjan.

"Il s'en passe de belles sous les dorures des ambassades de France ! Les plafonds s'écroulent, les invités volent l'argenterie, et tandis qu'à Pékin les Chinois essaient de nous rouler sur la propriété de nos propres murs, Monsieur l'ambassadeur demande au colonel, en plein dîner officiel, s'il aime les sculptures d'éphèbes nus... 40 histoires vraies vécues par un jeune diplomate au service de la France. Gabriel Alphand a sillonné les continents pendant quinze ans pour régler les problèmes les plus invraisemblables de nos ambassades. Nommé au Quai d'Orsay, il a nagé dans le milieu feutré de la diplomatie française avec l'agilité de l'anguille, tout en gardant un oeil rieur et distancié sur ce monde parfois étrange..."--P. [4] of cover.