THE PRESIDENT

OUT NOW

The President by Xander Beattie

PRONK’s first title is a nail-biting political thriller about bigoted backlash to provocative art.

When a salacious fictional story about the nation’s president is published online, the ruling party and its supporters are enraged. As pressure grows for the story to be erased, its young author flees into hiding, carrying with him an explosive secret — and plans for revenge.

Deftly plotted and gorgeously told, The President is partly inspired by the vicious real-life backlash to Brett Murray’s painting, The Spear (which controversially depicted South Africa’s then-president, Jacob Zuma). Set in South Africa in 2012, Xander Beattie’s debut novel is painfully relevant to our contemporary moment globally, where – in too many places – powerful demagogues scapegoat the marginalised, imperil human rights and brutally suppress artistic expression.

Standard editions

Paperback

The President is now available in paperback (ISBN: 9781967449033) from indie bookstores in the United States, as well as the usual online suspects (Bookshop.org, Tertulia, Barnes & Noble and the Oligarchical Goliath That Shalt Not Be Named et al.).

Elsewhere around the world:

AUSTRALIA: You can purchase it online from retailers including The Nile, Abbey’s and Booktopia
CANADA: Available from Amazon.ca
INDIA: Available from Amazon.in
SOUTH AMERICA: From online retailer Busca Libre

A new paperback edition for the South African market will be launching in June 2026. Distributed by Bridge Books/Protea Boekehuis, it’ll be available for purchase from most South African bookstores.

Ebook

You can buy the ebook version (ISBN: 9781967449026) from your preferred e-reading platform from just about anywhere in the world (just search for “Xander Beattie, The President”).

If your public library uses Hoopla to lend out digital materials, you can borrow the ebook using that.

Collectable editions

Two collectable, limited editions of The President were published by PRONK in 2025. Both were printed and hand-bound by PULP Paperworks in Johannesburg, and based on a design by Catarina Pereira of Voodoo Voodoo studio in Berlin.

The Artist Edition

The Artist Edition has an exposed spine, a debossed foil cover, and was bound kettle-stitch by hand. Each copy comes with a fine art print by the infamous South African artist Brett Murray entitled All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go¹. The book and print were showcased at the 2025 Joburg Art Fair. Proceeds from the sale of both go to the Pride Shelter Trust. The Artist Edition can be purchased in-person from PULP Paperworks in Johannesburg².

The Pocket Hardback

Made by hand by our friends at PULP, the A6-sized Pocket Hardback has a red Wibalin cover with pink gloss deboss stamps on the front cover, spine and back cover. Copies are available to purchase in-person and online in the United Kingdom from London’s queer bookshop, The Common Press.

PURCHASE HARDBACK from The COMMON PRESS (🇬🇧)

MEET THE AUTHOR

Xander Beattie

Impactful, immersive and exquisite storytelling meets nuanced and razor-sharp insights about South Africa’s fraught political and cultural milieux.

Xander Beattie is the fiction writing alter ego of Alexander Matthews, a longtime journalist, arts critic and editor. He started out his media career in London as an assistant to MONOCLE’s editor-in-chief, Tyler Brûlé, and later served as the magazine’s Southern Africa correspondent for several years.

Running the gamut of politics, culture, the environment and travel, his journalism has been published the BBC, Mail & Guardian, Business Day and a host of other media. He has also written widely for business and non-profits, though fiction is his first (and most enduring!) love. Born in Cape Town (South Africa) in 1988, he lives with his husband, two cats and hundreds of books in a remote cabin in Northern California. He shares musings on books, swimming and more at a swimming pool library.

The artwork was printed on Risograph at Dream Press in Cape Town. ↩︎
Several copies will soon be available to purchase from the A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town, too. Pulp Paperworks will also resume selling the Artist Edition online once updates to its online shop are complete. ↩︎