'Jonathan is the peerless South African book publisher and ranks in the highest echelons of the global business.' – Doug Band
'He is a businessman, to be sure, hard, clever and fair. But her is also in an incessant state of imaginative flight, always here and elsewhere, always on the move.' – Jonny Steinberg
'Jonathan Ball filled my life with joy. Even the most godawful moments with him evoke pleasant memories. It comes as no surprise that so many of those memories are of lunches and long, languid afternoons in restaurants.' – Kerneels Breytenbach
'His favourite outing was to Chartwell, which was Winston Churchill's home for many years. Jonathan spent the whole day there, he seemed to have read everything on Churchill.' – Mark Streatfield
'His books were warriors in a war on ignorance.' – Hannes van Zyl
'Were it not for Jonathan Ball, many South African stories would remain unearthed and untold.' – Michele Magwood
'I was struck by his ferocious energy. I remember thinking that he was a pugilist on the side of angels.' – Stephen Page
Jonathan Ball, the founder of Jonathan Ball Publishers, died on 3 April 2021 after a short illness. This collection of essays, commissioned in tribute to him, is edited by Michele Magwood.
Jonathan Ball left a deep impression on many different people in different ways. The 40 or so essays reflect the many facets of Jonathan: businessman, friend, brother, colleague, husband, father. But it is in the reading that we begin to understand the shape of him: publisher extraordinaire, history expert, gourmand, liberal thinker, suitor, philosemite and so on.
It cannot be exaggerated how deep an imprint Jonathan has left on the political and cultural life of South Africa, too. The shelves of Jonathan Ball Publishers are weighted with serious history and biographies of eminent figures, with books that other publishers didn't have the boldness to take on. But there are many smaller, more finespun stories that tell us, too, who we are as a people and as a nation.