Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Sihle Ntuli, Damion Spencer, and Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo.
Owele by Sihle Ntuli
Publisher: Uhlanga Press
Date: July 1, 2025
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Where to find it: Uhlanga Press
Sihle Ntuli
Sihle Ntuli was born in KwaMashu in 1990. He holds an MA in Classics from Rhodes University, Makhanda, and has lectured at the Universities of Johannesburg and the Free State. He has also held fellowships at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies and the Centre for Stories, Western Australia. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry and two chapbooks, including Rumblin’, previously published by uHlanga. He is the winner of the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely Poetry Competition, a 2024 Best of the Net winner, and a former editor of New Contrast. He lives in Durban.
Owele
A family of rivers flows through the land. Their waters gather, merge and split. But even twins must create their own paths – where do their individual journeys begin, and how far must they travel to their shared destination, the vast and turbulent ocean?
In Owele, Sihle Ntuli meditates on the origins of his family, clan and language through the earthen-toned rivers of the Zulu world.
The history of the land becomes the history of the person – but do rivers flow to a beat as blood does? The answers are not always as clear as the surface suggests.
Shifting between English and isiZulu, Ntuli’s unique, jazz-inflected poetry here reaches a new level of innovation, vulnerability and delight.
O país sem sombra by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Publisher: Editora Tabla
Date: June 16, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: Portuguese (translated from French by Fátima Murad)
Where to find it: Editora Tabla
Abdourahman A. Waberi
Abdourahman A. Waberi is a novelist, poet, essayist and screenwriter born in 1965 in Djibouti. Internationally recognized, Waberi is one of the most important voices in contemporary African literature, exploring themes such as identity, memory, diaspora and colonialism in his works. His literary debut came with the collection of short stories The Country Without Shadow (1994), which already highlighted his criticism of colonialism and his sharp perspective on the social reality of Djibouti. In the following years, he published novels and essays that consolidated his name in the French-speaking literary scene. Among the awards he has received are: the Grand Prix of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium and the Grand Prix Literary of Black Africa for Francophone writers. Waberi is a professor of literature and writing at George Washington University (Washington DC) and contributes, among other journals, to the magazine Afrique XXI.
Fátima Murad
Fátima Murad was born in São Paulo in 1953. She graduated in journalism from PUC-SP and has translated more than thirty books from French to Portuguese for various publishers. She is the translator of The Country Without Shadow.
O país sem sombra (English: The Land Without Shadow)
Originally published in French in 1994, O país sem sombra, Abdourahman A. Waberi’s debut work, brings together seventeen short stories that explore the history and life in Djibouti, a small country located in the Horn of Africa, both in the pre-colonial and French colonial periods and in the post-independence period. With irony and humor, the stories portray the most diverse characters ― from madmen and poets to French colonists and refugees ― and address themes such as national identity, the struggle for survival and the relationship between history, culture and politics, evoking the local literary tradition and composing a complex and multifaceted image of Djibouti.
The Devil’s Horsewhip by Damion Spencer
Publisher: Barbican Press
Date: May 15, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Barbican Press
Damion Spencer
Damion O. Spencer is originally from St. Mary in Jamaica, and now lives in Tokyo, Japan. He holds a BEd (Hons) in Literacy Studies from the University of the West Indies, Mona, and an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Hull. His work explores the vestiges of colonialism and the effect of urban living on well-being and mental health via the immigrant experience. Versions of stories in his debut collection The Devil’s Horsewhip have been published by both Wasafiri (whose prose judges said his work was “vivid” with a “spectacular voice”) and The Caribbean Writer. He was longlisted in the 2022 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean and received an Honourable Mention for the award the following year. He was longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. His work has won a gold medal and was featured in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s Best of Festival Series.
The Devil’s Horsewhip
The Devil’s Horsewhip is a startlingly fine novel-in-stories about Caribbean folklore, superstitions and legends surrounding death by a writer whose prose judges at Wasafiri have described as vivid and with a spectacular voice.
At the pinnacle of the pandemic—a year already punctuated with daily funeral processions—a Jamaican expat gets an envelope covered in red writing from his doctor. It sends him into a mad tumble between bad omen days and fever dream nights until all that he thinks about is that bitter day in the Jamaican White River Valley, where he and other teenagers escaped a double-cutlass-wielding madman out for blood. But death is not one to give up easily. The years are not long enough, neither is fleeing across continents too far for death’s spite and all the worse duppies not to come knocking.
Who will cheat death a second time?
A Christian woman who decides to sleep with an obeah man’s monkey. The man with the answer to whether Haitian voodoo is stronger than obeah. A woman who knows how to mourn a dead baby. Or the ones who know how to trap a rolling calf, outrun a three-foot horse, and battle a Chinese duppy and win.
If you’re superstitious or wary of those who are, come read these sticky tales spun in barbwire.
The Tiny Things Are Heavier by Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Date: June 24, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Bloomsbury Publishing
Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo
Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a fourth-year PhD student in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Her works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Southeast Review, and Catapult. She’s a recipient of the 2021 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a 2024 Torch Literary Arts Fellowship. Home for her is Lagos, Nigeria. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
The Tiny Things Are Heavier
For readers of Americanah, a heart-rending debut novel about a Nigerian immigrant as she tries to find her place at home and in America-a powerful epic about love, grief, family, and belonging.
The Tiny Things are Heavier follows Sommy, a Nigerian woman who comes to the United States for graduate school two weeks after her brother, Mezie, attempts suicide. Plagued by the guilt of leaving Mezie behind, Sommy struggles to fit into her new life as a student and an immigrant. Lonely and homesick, Sommy soon enters a complicated relationship with her boisterous Nigerian roommate, Bayo, a relationship that plummets into deceit when Sommy falls for Bryan, a biracial American, whose estranged Nigerian father left the States immediately after his birth. Bonded by their feelings of unbelonging and a vague sense of kinship, Sommy and Bryan transcend the challenges of their new relationship.
After some time together, Sommy and Bryan visit the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria for the summer break, where Sommy hopes to reconcile with Mezie and Bryan hopes to connect with his father. But when a shocking and unexpected event throws their lives into disarray, it exposes the cracks in Sommy’s relationships and forces her to confront her notions of self and familial love.
A daring and ambitious novel rendered in stirring, tender prose, The Tiny Things Are Heavier is a captivating portrait that explores the hardships of migration, the subtleties of Nigeria’s class system, and how far we’ll go to protect those we love.
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