Books & Writing
Novels
FICTION
Penguin Random House SA
ANNA PETERS' YEAR OF COOKING DANGEROUSLY, 2015
A smutty, funny rom-com recipe book.
Anna Peters has been dumped by her long-term love, Garry, and needs to figure out what to do with her broken heart.
Tackling her misery by trying to cook her way back into her beau’s life, she learns a few things – like what mussels are supposed to smell like, how much she knows and doesn’t know about sirloin, and how to sidestep a consommé that’s never going to happen.
She also, ahem, taste-tests a few of the eligible men who have been under her nose all along. But is Anna Peters finally ready to taste reality? Or will she burn down the kitchen before then?
Full of great sex and bad recipes, Anna Peters’ Year of Cooking Dangerously is a mouth-watering feast.
EMILY GREEN & ME, 2007
What does this heart really want?
After years of illness, eleven-year-old Emily receives the heart of a seventeen-year-old boy who has died in a motorbike accident. But the organ comes with an attachment: the boy has unfinished business.
It's a story that explores how identity, gender and desire are formed. She hasn't just inherited his heart, she has fragments of memories and newfound urges.
She is growing, gaining in strength, figuring out who she wants to be; he would like to rest. There's just one more thing he needs to do.
'Emily Green and Me' follows a young person discovering her identity, examining how embodiment might feel - and how fate might shift - when two lives share one heart.
THINGS I THOUGHT I KNEW, 2011
Can you ever be sure about true love? What if someone else thinks you're the one?
From a young age Lily knew things from the future and saw people from the past. So when she finally meets Adam at university she is relieved: she knew she would meet him.
Garth sees it differently: in his easy-going way he thinks Lily is the one, for him.
Can two things be true at the same time? A meditation on certainty, doubt and how contradictory truths can be part of one story.
Set at Rhodes University and in London, the cast of characters each brings conviction to their own story, to the things they think they know.
Emily Green & Me
“Having read this stunning new novel in one sitting I am willing to wager a large amount on the fact that White’s novel – deeply poetic, acutely observed, overwhelmingly emotive in places – will go some distance in establishing her as a compelling new voice on the South African literary scene.”
"That hopefulness is what makes Ms. White’s book
stand out from some of the master writers her country has produced. I do not mean to suggest the works of such stars as Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee present a picture of hopelessness, but rather that this story, written by then 27-year-old Ms. White, reflects a regeneration of soul and a belief in eventual unification, however inexact, inconvenient and overdue,
from a writer who is of this younger generation."
Long-list Sunday Times Fiction Award (2007)
Things I Thought I Knew
"I’ve just finished Kathryn White’s Things I Thought I Knew and feel like I’m stumbling around in a stupor, still a bit lost in the magic of the world
White creates in her second novel. ..
It’s been a while since I have found myself so immersed in words on a page."
"A story that will keep you hooked and stay with you for a long time... Don't skim read. Every word counts."
"a slim and elegant novel, more beautifully written than anything else to come out of South Africa this year" Thought Leader, M&G Online
Long-list Sunday Times Fiction Award (2011)
Anna Peters' Year of Cooking Dangerously
"Food, romance, humour and a bit of mystery: you can’t go wrong, really. Or some can, but Kathryn White doesn’t. Her third novel is on point."
"Even though the recipes are great it’s not the cooking that grabs you. It’s the witty way Kathryn tells the story of Garry and Anna; and Anna and Jason.
I could not put this book down."
"Such a refreshing read that had me laughing out loud and snapping pics of pages to send off to my girlfriends."
4/5 starred review Sunday Times
Shortlist Jenny Crys-Williams’ Best Book of the Year
Wordsworth Staff Pick of the Year
Journalism & Longform
Writing what I like
2000-ongoing
The Times (opinion, cultural commentary column, TV commentary), Sunday
Times Lifestyle, Sunday Times Travel, Wanted Magazine, VISI, Samsung, The
Lake, Woolworths Taste, Design Indaba, Country Life (monthly), O Magazine,
Women & Home, and many, many more.
Contact for writing portfolio.