Honey beer and penguin eggs, pinball and stick-fighting, sacred dancing and shebeens, swimming at night and kissing in the forest . Over the years, South Africans have pursued pleasure in a wild variety of ways. Nice Times! is a compendium of writing about local delights, by all kinds of writers, from every era of South African history. Here you will find innocent joys, wicked temptations, obscure enthusiasms -- and a great deal of humour, fun and sensual relish. Contributions from well-known contemporary writers like Ivan Vladislaviæ and Rayda Jacobs stand alongside classics by Can Themba, Herman Charles Bosman and others; upcoming writers and voices from history fill out the collection. Compiled by novelist Henrietta Rose-Innes, this eclectic, surprising mix of fact and fiction should awaken in readers a new appreciation of the delights of living in South Africa.

Henrietta Rose-Innes was born in 1971 and grew up in Cape Town, where she still lives. In 1999 she obtained an MA in Creative Writing from UCT, supervised by JM Coetzee. This resulted in her first novel, Shark's Egg, which was published in 2000 by Kwela Books. Shark’s Egg was nominated for the M-Net Book prize. A second novel, The Rock Alphabet (Kwela), appeared in 2004. She currently works as a literary editor. She has also worked as a scriptwriter for television and film productions, and currently acts as a supervisor and examiner for the University of Cape Town’s Creative Writing Masters Course.