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How do Muslims fit into South Africa?s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid? South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country?s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa. Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa?s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging. In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the post-apartheid period.

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Gabeba Baderoon’s debut poetry collection attempts to probe the realm of the unsaid and the ripples that move between words, between people, between bodies. Sometimes the verses trace and explore details that have brought the poet to, in her own words, «arrested instants of loss or witness that break open the surface of the world». It is a collection of poems that brings one to be silent, to be still. By writing the author attempts to «see again». Like «when we are about to fall asleep … and the mind suddenly finds itself encountering a memory – a connection … a small meditation.» Sean O’ Brien says of her work: Baderoon’s work involves the steady, scrupulous contemplation of questions of identity and meaning. It is lucid, surprising and graceful. It balances the melancholy of departure and solitude with the utopian suggestion that there will, in time, be grounds for general celebration.

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A Hundred Silencesis the third collection of poetry by Gabeba Baderoon – recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry in 2005. In this new selection of poems the poet explores how every room has its own silences, its own memories and secrets. She speaks of the quiet, gnawing loneliness of hotel rooms in ‘Sleeping in hotels’, of the ache of longing and how sometimes ‘love is in the going away’. She also does not steer away from what is not said, from the silences between words, and how anger can spark ‘the taste of blood never too far … eyes watchful/heavy as bruises’. It is an eloquent, tender collection of poetry, affirming Baderoon as one of the most exciting new voices in South African writing.

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