Page 25 - Stoeptalk 2023 Issue 1

BOOKS
MOTORING
BOOKS
Unstoppable

Us Volume 1

HOW HUMANS TOOK OVER THE WORLD

By Uval Noah Harari
From the author of the multi-million
bestselling Sapiens comes an
incredible new story of the human
race, for younger readers.

We humans aren’t strong like lions,
we don’t swim as well as dolphins,
and we definitely don’t have wings! So
how did we end up ruling the world?
The answer to that is one of the
strangest tales you’ll ever hear. And
it’s a true story... So, get ready for the most amazing
story there ever was – the incredible
Have you ever wondered how we got true tale of the Unstoppables. Find
here? From hunting mammoths, to out how fire shrank our stomachs, All the Broken Places
flying to the moon? how our ancestors spoke to animals,
what football can tell us about being
It is because we are unstoppable. But human, how we used our superpower By John Boyne
what made us so? Well, we have the for good and bad... and how YOU have
most amazing superpower: the ability to the superpower to change the world. From the author of the globally
tell stories. Fairy tales have led us from bestselling, multi-million-copy classic,
imagining ghosts and spirits to being With full-colour illustrations showing the The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and
able to create money (yes, really!). And relentless rise and rise of the human The Heart’s Invisible Furies.
this has made us very powerful... but race, this is history like you’ve never
very deadly. Nothing stands in our way, experienced it before. Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby
and we always want more. has lived in the same mansion block
in London for decades. She leads
a comfortable, quiet life, despite
Koos Bekker's Billions her dark and disturbing past. She
doesn’t talk about her escape
By TJ Strydom from Germany over seventy years
before. She doesn’t talk about the
With M-Net, Koos Bekker con- post-war years in France with her
vinced the business world he mother. Most of all, she doesn’t talk
had the magic touch. But it was about her father, the commandant
only the start of an entrepreneur- of one of the most notorious Nazi
ial journey that would bring him concentration camps.
immense wealth. Bekker swept
in at Naspers, transforming an Then, a young family moves into
Afrikaans printer into a global the apartment below her. In spite of
technology giant, earning inves- herself, Gretel can’t help but begin a
tors trillions and himself a good friendship with the little boy, Henry,
few billion. But how? What were though his presence brings back
the methods employed by this memories she would rather forget.
boere seun from Heidelberg? One night, she witnesses a violent
argument between Henry’s mother
Financial journalist, TJ Strydom, and his domineering father, one that
distils it down to 15 steps, each threatens Gretel’s hard-won, self-
calculated and effective, sketch- contained existence.
ing out the winning ways of the
elusive media mogul. Bekker Gretel is faced with a chance to
often gets the credit for the expiate her guilt, grief and remorse
investment in China’s Tencent, and act to save a young boy – for the
a single punt that rivals South second time in her life. But to do so,
Africa’s entire mining sector in she will be forced to reveal her true
identity to the world. Will she make a
the wealth it created this century. Chestnut-fronted Helmetshrike
But should he be the one lauded different choice this time, whatever
for this achievement? the cost to herself?
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Issue 1 · 2023
Boardwalk Meander Estate
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