PAGECAST

What happens when a former CIA analyst turns his hand to fiction? Lester Kiewit chats to David McCloskey about The Persian, a sophisticated, atmospheric thriller that pulls readers deep into the shadow war between Iran and Israel, and the human cost of living a double life.

David McCloskey's new book is The Persian. Layered with intrigue, shifting loyalties and geopolitical danger, the novel follows Kamran Esfahani, an Iranian dentist recruited by the Mossad, whose life unravels after a single operation goes terribly wrong. Smart, fast-paced and atmospheric, it's a compelling read for fans of intelligent spy fiction.

David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst and best-selling author of intelligent spy fiction. Lester Kiewit is the host of the CapeTalk Breakfast show.

In this episode of Pagecast, food enthusiast, recipe creator, and social media sensation Onezwa Mbola joins storyteller and marketing professional Star Senamile Shongwe for a warm conversation about her debut book, A Food Love Story.

Onezwa traces her culinary journey from her mother's kitchen in a rural Eastern Cape seaside village, through destinations around the world, and back home again - a story about how food connects us to the people and places we love most. As a mother, she shares that love with her son and with the million-plus followers who have made her one of South Africa's most beloved voices in home cooking.

A Food Love Story is filled with wholesome recipes and the kind of warmth that makes you want to head straight to the kitchen.

A Food Love Story is out now and available at all good bookstores.

In this episode of Pagecast, South African writer Julia Martin joins Professor David Attwell, Professor of English at the University of York, for a reflective conversation about her latest book, On the Sponge Islands: Loss and Restoration in the Aegean.

The book follows Julia's journey through the Greek islands of the Dodecanese - Rhodes, Symi, Halki, Kalymnos, and Patmos - tracing the cultural and ecological legacy of sponge diving. For centuries, men from these islands had dived for sea sponges and traded them across the world. In the late nineteenth century, new deep-sea diving suits made it possible to harvest the seabed at an unprecedented scale, bringing home extraordinary wealth - and at extraordinary cost, in lives lost and ecosystems stripped bare.

On the Sponge Islands is a meditation on beauty and suffering, abundance and collapse, and what it means to restore what has been lost - both in the natural world and in ourselves.

Julia Martin is a South African writer and academic known for her work at the intersection of ecology, place, and contemplative practice. On the Sponge Islands is out now and available at all good bookstores.

In this episode of Pagecast, political analyst Tara Roos joins Twanji Kalula for a sharp, no-nonsense conversation about her new book, Where to From Here?, and what it reveals about the state of South African politics.

Roos argues that South Africa has entered an age of uncertainty, as populism rises and a new, unstable coalition era takes hold. She unpacks the structural weaknesses, strategic miscalculations, and identity crises within political parties, sorting them into three categories: Winners, Losers, and Survivors, and explains what each is getting right, where they are failing, and why some have grown while others have collapsed.

Thirty years into South Africa's democracy, Where to From Here? is a clear-eyed account of how politicians have failed the people, and a challenge to the electorate to demand better.

Tara Roos is one of the leading political thinkers of her generation. Twanji Kalula is a Cape Town-based communications professional, media practitioner, and joint chairperson of the Cape Town Press Club, widely known for hosting and moderating South African literary, cultural, and current affairs events.

Where to From Here? is out now and available at all good bookstores.

In this episode of Pagecast, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author Tan Twan Eng joins Cape Town-based political commentator and writer Mphuthumi Ntabeni for a conversation about his latest novel, The House of Doors.

Set in 1921 at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, the novel follows Robert Hamlyn, a well-to-do lawyer, and his steely wife Lesley, whose lives are upended by the arrival of an old friend, Willie Somerset Maugham. One of the great writers of his day, Willie is privately beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, failing health, and a struggle to write. As Lesley's friendship with him deepens, she sees him more clearly for who he truly is -- and finds herself sharing secrets of her own, including her connection to the revolutionary Dr Sun Yat Sen and a scandalous murder case in the Kuala Lumpur courts.

Drawn from real events, The House of Doors is a masterful exploration of public morality and private truth, set against the shadow of empire -- a story of love, betrayal, and the masks we wear to survive.

Tan Twan Eng is the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists. The House of Doors is out now and available at all good bookstores.