Deon Meyer’s SKORPIO – his latest Afrikaans-language thriller following Detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido – extended its reign at the top of the South African bestseller lists, scooping the coveted Christmas #1 slot as part of a 9-week run that stretched back to its November debut. The book has now achieved the feat of exceeding 24,000 copies in its Afrikaans first-edition, and continues to reign at the top of the each of the Fiction, Afrikaans-language and South African-writers bestseller lists in South Africa.

SKORPIO was published by Human & Rousseau, an imprint of Jonathan Ball, on 31 October 2025; English-language editions (translated by K.L. Seegers) are forthcoming from Pan Macmillan in the UK, Grove Atlantic in the US and Canada, as well as translations in Germany (Aufbau), and the Netherlands (A.W. Bruna).

In SKORPIO, as an international security forum convenes in the picturesque town of Stellenbosch, detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido race against time to uncover a plot that could shake international foundations. With the threat looming over the prestigious gathering of global leaders, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Congratulations, Deon!

About Deon Meyer

Deon Meyer lives in Stellenbosch. His books are sold in more than 40 countries worldwide, and have been awarded many prizes around the world: the Deutsche Krimi Prize in Germany, the ATKV Prize in South Africa, the Martin Beck Award in Sweden and Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Le Prix Mystère de la Critique in France. COBRA was shortlisted for the 2015 CWA International Dagger, THIRTEEN HOURS was shortlisted for the 2010 CWA International Dagger, and HEART OF THE HUNTER, was longlisted for the 2005 IMPAC Prize and selected as one of Chicago Tribune’s ‘10 best mysteries and thrillers of 2004’. THE DARK FLOOD was longlisted for the 2023 CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation, and LEO enjoyed ten weeks at the top of the South African bestseller lists, Number One in all categories, before going on to win Best Adult Fiction and Book of the Year at the 2024 SA Book Awards, and the ATKV-Woordveertjies Prize for best Afrikaans Thriller.

Adaptations of Deon’s novels have recently had great success on screen: in April 2024, HEART OF THE HUNTER topped the global Netflix film charts, becoming the first African film to do so, with over 11 million views in its first two days alone. DEVIL’S PEAK was also adapted for a miniseries by Lookout Point and Expanded Media Productions, premiering on M-Net in South Africa in 2023 before reaching international audiences. In 2020, TRACKERS, produced by Three River Fiction and Scene 23, aired on Sky Atlantic in the UK and HBO in the USA, as well as Australia and New Zealand, and across the Nordic countries and Europe. His latest adaptation, THE INVISIBLE (from the novel BLOOD SAFARI), starring Abbie Cornish and Dougray Scott is currently in production through M-Net, Scene23, Berkeley Media Group (BMG), and ITV Studios.

Praise for SKORPIO

‘It’s the characters, the humanity and the humour that keeps me devouring Deon Meyer’s novels.’ – Deborah Steinmair, Netwerk24

Praise for Deon Meyer

‘He’s up there with the best in the world.’ – Marcel Berlins, The Times

‘I love Deon Meyer novels. It’s global storytelling at its best, with the undeniable hallmarks of gritty realism and deep character building.’ – Michael Connelly

‘Deon Meyer's name on the cover is a guarantee of crime writing at its best.’ – Tess Gerritsen

‘Deon Meyer is one of the giants of crime fiction.’ – El Mundo

‘One of the best crime writers on the planet.’ – Mail on Sunday

Visit Deon’s website

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Today sees the launch at Cape Town’s Book Lounge of Sisonke Msimang’s frank, fierce and insightful ALWAYS ANOTHER COUNTRY: A Memoir of Exile and Home, a book born from the author’s extraordinary global upbringing. Insightful, angry, hopeful, ALWAYS ANOTHER COUNTRY introduces a bold new voice on feminism, race, politics and Africa. Jonathan Ball Publishers won a fierce bidding war for Southern African rights and Sisonke’s debut has already won high-level pre-publication praise:

‘Brutally and uncompromisingly honest, Sisonke’s beautifully crafted storytelling enriches the already extraordinary pool of young African women writers of our time. Sisonke, a child of the Struggle, revisits the metamorphosis of the value system embraced by the liberation movements and emerges as a powerful free spirit, nurtured by its resilient core values.’ – Graça Machel

‘Sisonke Msimang kindles a new fire in our store of memoir, a fire that will warm and singe and sear for a long, long while.’ – Njabulo S. Ndebele, author The Cry of Winnie Mandela

‘A brave and intimate journey. Msimang delivers a deep call for fierce courage in the face of hypocrisy and compassion when faced with our shared humanity.’ – Yewande Omotoso, author of The Woman Next Door

As Jonathan Ball Publisher Ester Levinrad said on winning the hotly contested multi-publisher auction for Southern African rights to Sisonke’s story: ‘Once in a while you are fortunate enough to work with a writer who crystallises what makes publishing in South Africa so exciting, telling a personal story that could only have a local genesis, yet with a potential which defies borders. That is Sisonke’s story, to me – her writing helps me to make sense not only of the country but the world in which we live.’

From her peripatetic childhood in a family of political exiles – from Zambia to Kenya to Canada and beyond – Sisonke tracks formative moments in her personal and political life, including the euphoria at return to the new South Africa, the disillusionment at new political elites, and the ugly face of racism and xenophobia. But while well-known political figures appear in these pages, ALWAYS ANOTHER COUNTRY is also an intimate story, a testament to family bonds and sisterhood.

Sisonke Msimang’s international childhood prepared her to be a global citizen and an eloquent warrior for social justice, while her experience as a journalist and incisive political analyst makes her vision wider than the personal – but she also has a fiction writer’s gift for vivid characterisation and dialogue, and a voice that is warm, honest and wise. ALWAYS ANOTHER COUNTRY is moving and relevant, sometimes as much generous manifesto as memoir, following the journey of a girl becoming a woman, a feminist, a campaigner, a mother and a writer.

Sisonke Msimang lives in Perth, Australia, where she is Programme Director for the Centre for Stories, a social enterprise organisation, but she travels regularly to the US, South Africa and internationally. The child of prominent political exiles during South Africa’s apartheid era, she was born in Swaziland and raised in Zambia, Kenya and Canada, before going to the US as an undergraduate. Her family returned to South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of liberation movements in the early 1990s.

She has a BA from Macalester College, Minnesota, a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Cape Town, is a Yale World Fellow, an Aspen New Voices Fellow, and was Ruth First Fellow at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She regularly contributes to publications like The Guardian, The Daily Maverick, The Conversation, the Huffington Post and The New York Times. Sisonke contributed a chapter to THE TIES THAT BIND: FRIENDSHIP AND RACE IN SOUTH AFRICA (University of Toronto Press). She recently gave an extremely popular TED Talk and narrated a story at The Moth event in New York.

Read and see more by Sisonke Msimang: