JOBURG ZEN
Sandro Martini
Joburg Zen is a hardboiled descent into memory and violence in a city that feels less like a place than a shared hallucination.
OCTOBER 2026
Alex Lago
Book 2
Guilt is Debt. Joburg Collects.
Based on true events, Joburg Zen is a dark literary neo-noir from bestselling author Sandro Martini that binds the enigmatic rise and fall of golf legend Bobby Locke with Johannesburg’s brutal unravelling in the decades after apartheid.
Journalist Alex Lago once knew how to survive Joburg’s secrets, spies, and violence. He got out decades ago. And stayed gone.
Now he’s drawn back by a new project: uncovering what really happened to Bobby Locke, the legendary golfer who clawed his way out of the city’s gutters to achieve global stardom, only to lose it all and vanish into obscurity in a cottage called Sandwich.
Half a century later, Locke resurfaces in international headlines for a final, unspeakable act.
As Lago traces Locke’s life and the legacy he left behind, the dangers of his own past close in: a savage murder erased by political chaos, an apartheid-era cop hunting closure, and a beautiful woman lost to a single night that shattered everything.
Moving from the sun-drenched fairways of the 1950s to the riot-lit streets of the 1990s, Joburg Zen is an unnerving, suffocating thriller about memory, complicity, and the stories men tell themselves to survive the past.
Sandro Martini has worked as a word monkey on three continents. He’s the author of Tracks: Racing the Sun, an award-winning historical novel, and 2025’s Amazon bestseller, CIAO, AMORE, CIAO. He grew up in Africa to immigrant parents, studied law in Italy, chased literary dreams in London, hustled American dollars in New York City, and is now hiding out in Switzerland, where he moonlights as a comms guy and tries hard not to speak German. You can find him uber-driving his daughter, chasing faster cars on the autobahn, or swimming in Lake Zurich with a cockapoo named Tintin.
TRACKS: RACING THE SUN
“ ‘Tracks’ is written in a romantic, nostalgic tone, almost with a film noir feel…tasty…an eye-opener.”
— The New York Times
“A sprawling, adrenaline-drenched story that will appeal even to readers who know next to nothing about auto racing.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“[…] a monumental achievement … It’s a remarkable story that is impeccably written and researched.”
— Readers’ Favorite
(Winner: Best Sports Book of the Year, 2017)
CIAO, AMORE, CIAO
“Martini’s storytelling is vivid and gripping, and his writing reads like lean, muscular poetry”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Martini’s taut prose provides a haunting glimpse into the psychological scars of conflict”
— Prairie Reviews
“The result is profoundly moving and thought-provoking.”
— IndieReader