The 2027 Cape Town literary calendar is soon to be rolled out, but be first in line for one of its hottest events.
Now in its sixth edition, the biennial Jewish Literary Festival in Cape Town takes place on Sunday, 28 February next year, and has become a firm favourite with its line-up of both international and local authors. A veritable feast for the literary soul.
Prepare for the ultimate day of storytelling, when imagination takes flight. Where there’s a genre, there’s a book, and we will have it in this world of learning and living. While there is a Jewish thread running through the events, you don’t have to be Jewish – or even a reader – to attend. This is a welcoming day of indulgence, diversity, insight and camaraderie, of meeting friends and making new ones, discussion and debate as you move from session to session.
To whet your appetite, we’re revealing just some of the international and local authors you can expect to meet in-person.
From the UK, Louisa Treger joins us again with her latest historical novel A Fatal Love; from Australia, Joanne Fedler speaks to us about bereavement in Bring us home from Sorrow. Visiting from France, Peter Elliott tells us of the Nazi Art plunder of Jewish families in France in Looted, while Eric Lieberman, now based in Los Angeles, recounts a family history in The Boy in the Barrel.
An innovation in 2025 was the virtual session room. Such was its success that 2027 will see two rooms devoted to these real-time interviews with top international authors. You can look forward to immersive narrative non-fiction with Philippe Sands in 38 Londres Street, a history of the Nazi war criminals in Chile; Jonny Steinberg’s perspective on Winnie and Nelson; Natalie Livingstone recounts the Nuremberg trials as seen through the eyes of eight remarkable women in The Nuremberg Women; Catherine Ostler uncovers a history of art, war and betrayal in The Renoir Girls; while Alka Joshi gives us a new novel in Six Days in Bombay.
On the local front we love the real-life stories of our national retail chains as Steven ‘Boykey’ Sidley reveals in Checkmate: How Shoprite Checkers rewrote the Rule and Won; Gus Silber and Jonathan Ancer tell us how billionaires think, act and shape the world through The Three Comma Club; and Hazel Friedman uncovers Jeffrey Epstein’s predatory paradise in SA in The Devil Wears Sneakers. Many other popular local authors will be in discussion across the varied sessions.
Comedy, tragedy, resistance, economics, psychology, travel, politics, history, romance, memoir, AI, culture – and the spices that make up life – come under the JLF 2027 spotlight in a wide programme of topical, engaging, insightful sessions. More than 50 authors have committed to joining us, and with over 20 sessions over the one-day event plus a plenary session with an international headline author, the range should suit the most diverse of tastes.
The full programme will be revealed soon, so watch this space.
Your day ticket, on sale soon, entitles you to attend any five sessions as well as the plenary.
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Visit our website: http://www.jewishliterary festival.org.za
For further information please contact Beryl Eichenberger on 082 490 6652 and hipzone@mweb.co.za
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