YOUR WINTER READING LIST

AFTERLAND

BY LAUREN BEUKES

The new novel by international-award-winning South African author Lauren Beukes is set in a future where most of the men are dead and Cole and her twelve-year-old son Miles are on the run from the most dangerous person she knows: her sister. Miles is one of the lucky survivors of a global pandemic. But, in a world of women, that also makes him a hot commodity. The Department of Men wants to lock him away in quarantine, forever maybe. A sinister cult of neon nuns wants to claim him for its own – the answer to their prayers. And boy traffickers are close on their heels, thanks to Billie, Cole’s ruthless sister, whom Cole thought she left for dead. In a desperate chase across a radically changed America, Cole will do whatever it takes to get Miles to safety. Because she’s all he’s got.

FIFTY INVENTIONS THAT SHAPED THE MODERN ECONOMY

BY TIM HARFORD

Who thought up paper money? How did the contraceptive pill change the face of the legal profession? Why was the horse collar as important for human progress as the steam engine? How did the humble spreadsheet turn the world of finance upside-down? The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously changing system of immense complexity, it offers over ten billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every fifteen years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people. It delivers astonishing luxury to hundreds of millions. It also leaves hundreds of millions behind, puts tremendous strains on the ecosystem, and has an alarming habit of stalling. How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend?

THE ASIAN ASPIRATION

BY GREG MILLS

In 1960, the GDP per capita in South East Asian countries was nearly half of that of Africa. By 1986, the gap had closed and today the trend is reversed, with more than half of the world’s poorest now living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Why has Asia developed while Africa lagged? The Asian Aspiration chronicles the untold stories of explosive growth and changing fortunes: the leaders, events and policy choices that lifted a billion people out of abject poverty within a single generation– the largest such shift in human history. The relevance of Asia’s example comes as Africa is facing a population boom, which can either lead to crisis or prosperity; and as Asia is again transforming, this timeout of low-cost manufacturing into high-tech, it leaves a void that is Africa's for the taking. But far from the determinism of ‘Africa Rising’, this book calls for unprecedented pragmatism in the pursuit of African success.