OUT NOW
The President
PRONK’s first title is a provocative political thriller by Xander Beattie.
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 a nail-biting exploration of bigoted backlash against provocative art. Set in South Africa in 2012, Xander Beattie’s novel is painfully relevant to our contemporary moment, where — in too many places around the world — powerful demagogues scapegoat the marginalised, imperil human rights and brutally suppress artistic expression.
The 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 and can be purchased from PULP Paperworks in South Africa2. Proceeds from the sale of both go to the Pride Shelter Trust
The Pocket Hardback
Made by hand by our friends at PULP, the new A6-sized Pocket Hardback has a red Wibalin cover with pink gloss deboss stamps on the front cover, spine and back cover. Copies are now available to purchase online in the United Kingdom 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 who 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. Born in Cape Town (South Africa) in 1988, he has also written widely for business and non-profits, though fiction is his first (and most enduring!) love.
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- The artwork was printed on Risograph at Dream Press in Cape Town. ↩︎
- Outside of South Africa, the Artist Edition is currently stocked by Et al. in San Francisco. ↩︎