The Cheeky Natives

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What does a family owe the son it loved but never quite managed to reach? I

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane sits down with Glasgow-born doctor and debut novelist Selali Fiamanya to talk about Before We Hit the Ground, his novel longlisted for Scotland's Fiction Book of the Year. 

On his first trip to South Africa, Fiamanya talks about characters caught in free fall, what medicine has taught him about mortality and listening to everyone's side of a story, and four Ghanaian-Scottish lives that each have a different, maybe incompatible, idea of home. 

He doesn't flinch from the hard questions: Elom's family loved him and still couldn't tell him it was safe to be gay; Ben is neither villain nor hero; and Fiamanya respectfully parts ways with bell hooks, arguing that love and cruelty can live in the same house. 

He remembers recording the audiobook in a London booth days before his final medical exams, and explains why a novel that opens with a death should feel surprising but inevitable. 

He closes with a reading from Abena's first rainy April in 1989 Glasgow. When asked what he hopes readers take with them? A little grace for the people around us, even when they get it wrong. 

A conversation about home, silence, and learning how to love and be loved.

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What do we inherit from our parents when the past they hid turns out to be the country's past too? 

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sits down with researcher in mental health and human rights, Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner and debut novelist Faraaz Mahomed to talk about Motherland. 

The conversation moves through the two lives he leads on the page, the decade since "The Pigeon" changed what he allowed himself to write, and the discovery at the heart of the novel: a mother's affair with the apartheid architect of the Group Areas Act. 

Mahomed speaks about telling the story across three voices and three generations, drawing a line from Rhodes Must Fall in Cape Town to Black Lives Matter in New York, and the difference between the family you are born into and the brother you find. 

He closes with a reading from Harlem streets thick with zouk, Afrobeat and Coltrane. 

When asked what one thing he hopes the book brings home to South African readers? The eyes of an eight-year-old who looks at the world she is inheriting and sees that it makes no sense. 

A conversation about inheritance, injustice, and being reintroduced to the people we thought we knew.

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What does a body do when the world was never built to hold it? 

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Advocate Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane sits down with poet, disability awareness activist and lead editor of English Alive Kirsten Deane to talk about Disabled, But, her debut poetry collection from uHlanga Press. 

The conversation moves through the unfinished "but" of the title, a word that refuses to let anyone settle into a comfortable sentence about disability. Deane reads the opening poem of the collection, a piece that treats seizures as the body dancing and scars as big girl teeth coming out. 

We talk about the difference between visible and invisible disability, about pain as a companion rather than an enemy, about the cruelty of childhood and the arithmetic of desirability when the culture has never once put a disabled body on its mood board.

 Deane is unflinching about sexual violence against disabled women, about a world that swings between pity and erasure, and about poetry as the only form that can make a reader feel the discomfort of navigating the world in a body that "switches its mind." 

When asked what a poem can do that a campaign cannot? Force people to listen. A conversation about bones, honesty, and the refusal to be left behind.

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What happens when a woman who built her name behind a camera picks up a pen to tell the story a photograph cannot hold? 

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sits down with Nigerian-American author, photographer and international bestseller Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström to talk about Bitter Honey, her first historical novel spanning four decades and three continents. 

The conversation moves through the discipline of chasing light, the politics of who gets to frame African women and how, and why the stories we most urgently need to tell sit in the middle, between the poverty narrative and the affluence counter-narrative. 

Ákínmádé Åkerström reads from the backstage scene that cracks open Tina's world, speaks about going back to 1970s Stockholm to find the source beneath the symptoms of contemporary displacement, and why writing a character like Leif meant refusing every label in favour of tenderness. 

Toni Morrison said write the story you want to read. Alice Walker said go where the silence is. When asked what grace allows two very different women to do? See a bit of themselves in each other. A conversation about light, language, and the stubborn insistence that we are already enough.

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What does it take to remember what a continent keeps trying to forget?

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Dr Alma-Nalisha Cele sits down with East African feminist practitioner, writer and award-winning poet Jessica Horn to talk about Feminist Practice: Cartographies of Liberatory Worldmaking, her landmark book chronicling decades of African feminist mobilization. The conversation moves through the politics of archival memory, the radical promise and failure of Ubuntu for gender non-conforming people, and why reclaiming Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was an act of feminist mercy practice, not soft revisionism.

Horn speaks about Sonia Sanchez and the haiku mind, about needing to watch YouTube videos and listen to movement songs again and again to channel what had been sacrificed and forgotten. We talk about coloniality's hold on African women's sexuality, pleasure as a site of political agency, and her feature documentary The Temple of Her Skin, which treats tattooing and scarification as the body's own archive across 14 African women's lives.

When asked the reward for being a bad, ungovernable woman? One word: freedom.

A conversation about memory, mercy, and the ceremony of writing it all down before it disappears.

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What happens when a god no one believes in anymore still has something to say?

In this live Pagecast recording from Open Book Festival 2026, Letlhogonolo sits down with Nigerian writer I.O. Echeruo to talk about his debut novel Comfort of Distant Stars, a 2026 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction finalist. The conversation moves through the novel's opening: a three-year-old led through rain and red clay to be made a high chief, and from there into the collision between Igbo cosmology and modern physics, the quiet comedy of family, and what it means to question reality at every level, from religious belief to the very notion of personhood.

Echeruo speaks about Anyanwy, the Igbo sun god almost no one remembers, and how that forgetting became the engine of the novel. We talk about whether madness is a disagreement about reality or a numbers game, why Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God remains his reference point for everything he writes, and what it means to bring a deeply Nigerian story to a South African readership. He also picks Ghanaian jollof, on the record, under what he insists is duress.

A conversation about myth, mathematics, and the fever dream where they meet.

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A freedom fighter can be a legend to the world and still feel unreachable to her own child. Kagiso Lesego Molope, acclaimed author and playwright, unpacks the raw emotional core of We Inherit the Fire, where mother-daughter love lives beside anger, disappointment, and the kind of silence that grows when survival takes up all the oxygen.

You'll discover how the novel's alternating perspectives build empathy without forcing easy forgiveness, why tenderness seems to skip a generation, and what happens when a nation and a husband both want a "hero" but refuse her full humanity. We explore the prison chapters as spaces where women are given names and full lives, not reduced to symbols, and break down the brutal power of white women's tears to flip guilt into punishment.

We delve into desegregated schools as quiet violence, the daily armour Black girls are forced to wear, and the dangerous ways institutions claim progress while practising harm. We unpack naming as a form of claim and hope, and why keeping Setswana on the page without translation matters for cultural memory and decolonial storytelling. Perfect for readers invested in South African literature, intergenerational trauma, Black feminist fiction, and language politics, this conversation confronts the private cost of liberation and demands we sit with what freedom leaves behind.

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Most women endure silence and sacrifice because of societal expectations — but what if that silence is a form of violence? 

Dr. Kopano Matlwa, acclaimed author and public health physician, unpacks the hidden costs of womanhood, the trauma of Gender Based Violence, and the myth of the perfect family in her powerful novel Bosadi. This conversation challenges us to confront uncomfortable truths and rethink the narratives we’ve inherited about gender, resilience, and survival.

You’ll discover how Bosadi explores the architecture of sacrifice and the emotional toll of living in a society that normalises misogyny and violence. Dr. Matlwa shares her insights on the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, the silent wounds of migrant domestic workers, and the dangerous ways community complicity enables abuse. 

We break down the importance of naming, the symbolism behind her titles, and her deliberate choice to speak uncomfortable truths through storytelling.

We delve into the themes of faith and endurance that often silence women, revealing how religious and cultural pressures can act as tools of gaslighting and control. 

Perfect for readers, activists, and anyone committed to ending Gender Based Violence, Bosadi is a mirror held up to society—demanding reflection and action. If you're ready to challenge the status quo and empower women’s voices, this episode will inspire you to start conversations that matter.

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We sat down with Nadia Davis, author of Cape Fever, to honour the quiet strength and resilience that hidden stories bring to our lives. 

In a beautifully tender conversation, we explored themes of silent resistance, personal empowerment, and the power of internal archives. 
We explored narratives that challenge conventional tales of survival and authentic connection. 

Nadia reflected on her journey—from a storyteller navigating silencing systems to an author embracing her agency and unique voice. 

Much of the conversation was an excavation of hidden knowledge, unspoken histories, and the ongoing process of reclaiming agency. 
We discussed why personal narratives remain incomplete without meaningful introspection and genuine growth. 

This powerful episode, is an invitation to you, our listener, to reconsider what personal empowerment means in a world marked by silence, erasure, and resilience. 

Join us as we invoke the journey into stories of hidden strength and the ways we reclaim our narratives in 2026. Because sometimes, the most powerful stories are those where people choose their agency—and each other—on their own terms.

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We sat down with Siphokazi Jonas, author of  "Weeping Becomes a River," to honour the wisdom and relatability that poetry brings to our lives.

Together, we explored themes of cultural reclamation, personal transformation, and linguistic identity. Our conversation journeyed through narratives that challenge traditional tales of resilience and genuine connection. Siphokazi reflected on her evolution—from a poet navigating discordant worlds to a storyteller embracing her heritage and authentic voice.

We delved deeper into themes of grief, unspoken histories, and the ongoing process of redefining belonging. We discussed why cultural narratives remain incomplete without meaningful dialogue and real growth. In this episode, we invite you, our listener, to reconsider what cultural healing means in a world marked by chaos, disillusionment, and disenchantment.

Join us as we explore stories of identity and the ways we make meaning in 2026. Because sometimes, the most powerful stories are those where people choose their heritage—and each other—on their own terms.

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