Marion Arnold   Women and Art in South Africa (David Philip, SA). Pioneering work that reinterprets South African art history.

 

Basil Beakey   Beyond the Blues: Township Jazz of the Sixties and Seventies (David Philip, SA) Portraits of the country's jazz greats such as Kippie Moeketsi, Basil Coetzee and Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand).

Ian Berry   Living Apart (Phaidon, SA). Superbly evocative and moving photographs spanning from the 1950s to 1990s, which chart a compelling vision of the politics of the nation, but at the level of the individual.

Clive Chipkin   Johannesburg Style (David Philip, SA). Perhaps a contradiction in terms, but a fascinating study of architecture and society in the South African city.

J. Christopher   The Atlas of Apartheid (Routledge, UK). Detailed but accessible study of the policy and implementation of urban and regional planning that gave South African towns and cities their current form.

S. Francis and H. Dugmore   Madam and Eve (Penguin, SA). One of South Africa's leading cultural exports conveys the daily struggle between an African domestic worker and her white madam in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg in various volumes of telling and witty cartoon strips that say more about post-apartheid society than countless academic tomes.

J.D. Lewis-Williams   Discovering Southern African Rock Art (David Philip, SA), and Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art (David Philip, SA). Short, concise books written by an expert in the field, full of drawings and photos. It concludes that most of the paintings depict images seen while in a state of shamanic trance, and reflect a San world-view in which the spiritual and material were both a part of everyday life.

Z.B. Molefe   A Common Hunger to Sing (Kwela, SA). Large format, well-illustrated tribute to the achievements of the country's black women singers and the obstacles they have overcome.

Jurgen Schadeberg   Sof'town: Images from the Black '50s (Jurgen Schadeberg, UK). Classic black-and-white photographic studies of the Drum era of swinging Johannesburg, where, if Schadeberg is to be believed, every black woman was a beauty and every black man a dude in a zoot suit.

Sue Williamson   Resistance Art in South Africa (David Philip, SA), and Art in South Africa: The Future Present (David Philip, SA). Taken together, these two volumes map the course of South African art from the early 1980s to the present day, with a thoughtful text that's minimal enough to let the artists' works speak for themselves.

Zapiro   End of Part One (David Philip, SA). Third collection of cartoons by the country's leading exponent, preceded by The Hole Truth and The Madiba Years .