We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest segment with books from Christopher Mlalazi, Zalika Reid-Benta, Ismail Einashe, and Kelechi Okafor.
Langabi: Season of Beasts by Christopher Mlalazi
Publisher: Jacana Media
Date: July 1, 2023
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
Language: English
Where to find it: Jacana Media.
Christopher Mlalazi
Christopher Mlalazi is a renowned novelist, playwright and poet from Zimbabwe. He is the author of the novels Many Rivers (2009), Running With Mother (2012) – translated into Italian and German – They are Coming (2014), and the story collection Dancing With Life: Tales From the Township (2008), for which he was awarded the Best First Book prize in the National Arts Merit Awards in Zimbabwe.
Langabi: Season of Beasts
“‘There is something I’ve never told you about our king,’ Father was saying as we walked around the palisade. We were three abreast, and I was in the middle. He looked at me. ‘Even Guduza doesn’t know about this too, Owethu, but I think this is the right time for both of you to know about it, as there is now something else happening in the kingdom which I can’t right now give you the full details of, and please don’t ask me what it is.’ Owethu, a young man from a family of respected ironworkers, and his father are attacked one morning by supernatural creatures, the Mihlolo. With the body of a human and the face of a hyena, they are an expert. In this mythical past, a missing queen and a brutal king form the stunning backstory of this first tale from the Blademakers of the Langabi series. Christopher Mlalazi has produced an African epic fantasy. Fast paced and vivid, the richly detailed people of Langabi, in love and in battle, must endure a punishing fight to survive and secure their freedom and their land. This quest is a searing tale of manipulation and monsters, which will leave you hungry for more.
River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta
Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
Date: August 22, 2023
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Click here.
Zalika Reid-Benta
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Toronto-based writer whose debut story collection, Frying Plantain, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. Frying Plantain was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and it was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the White Pine Award, and the Trillium Book Award. Zalika served as the 2021-2022 Writer in Residence at Western University and was the chair of the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She received an M.F.A. in fiction from Columbia University, was a John Gardner Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is an alumnus of the Banff Centre Writing Studio.
River Mumma
Issa Rae’s Insecure with a magical realist spin: River Mumma is an exhilarating contemporary fantasy novel about a young Black woman who navigates her quarter-life-crisis while embarking on a mythical quest through the streets of Toronto.
Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won’t stop texting her macabre news stories and reminders to pick up items from the grocery store.
Then, one evening, the Jamaican water deity, River Mumma, appears to Alicia, telling her that she has twenty-four hours to scour the city for her missing comb.
Alicia doesn’t understand why River Mumma would choose her. She can’t remember all the legends her relatives told her, unlike her retail co-worker Heaven, who can reel off Jamaican folklore by heart. She doesn’t know if her childhood visions have returned, or why she feels a strange connection to her other co-worker Mars. But when the trio are chased down by malevolent spirits called duppies, they realize their tenuous bonds to each other may be their only lifelines. With the clock ticking, Alicia’s quest through the city broadens into a journey through time—to find herself and what the river carries.
River Mumma is a powerful portrayal of diasporic identities and a vital examination into ancestral ties. It is a homage to Jamaican storytelling by one of the most invigorating voices in Canadian literature.
Look Again: Strangers by Ismail Einashe
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Date: May 4, 2023
Genre: Nonfiction, Art history
Language: English
Where to find it: Tate Publishing
Ismail Einashe
Ismail Einashe is a journalist and writer whose work on migration and refugee issues has won multiple awards. He has written for numerous publications including the Guardian, Frieze and ArtReview. He is a member of the editorial board of Tate Etc. and co-edited the book, Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere.
Look Again: Strangers
Art can uniquely tell the stories of migration in a way that politics cannot. In this poignant Look Again book, writer Ismail Einashe examines works from Britain’s national collection of art and offers an exploration of themes of migration and belonging – and the plight of finding shelter in a foreign land.
Embarking on dangerous journeys to flee violence and persecution, migrants and refugees arrive on the shores of Britain to seek help and hope. And yet, there they become scapegoats, vilified by anti-immigrant rhetoric. Examining the work of artists like Tania Bruguera, Arshile Gorky and Mona Hatoum, Look Again: Strangers challenges this narrative. It sidesteps the dehumanising language in political depictions of migrants, offering a deeper insight into the struggles and humanity of these strangers.
Look Again is a series of short books from Tate Publishing, opening up the conversation about British art over the last 500 years, and exploring what art has to tell us about our lives today. Written by leading voices from the worlds of literature, art and culture, each book sheds new light on some of the most well-known, best-loved and thought-provoking artworks in the national collection, and asks us to look again.
Edge of Here: Stories from Near to Now by Kelechi Okafor
Publisher: Trapeze
Date: September 14, 2023
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Waterstones, Amazon.
Kelechi Okafor
Kelechi Okafor is a writer, presenter, actor and tour de force in challenging how we think about race and femininity in tandem, and is a regular media contributor. Her podcast “Say Your Mind” is centered around the reclaiming of self through an unflinching observation of society. Kelechi is also published in the illustrious anthology, It’s Not OK To Feel Blue edited by Scarlett Curtis, and her short story is included in the Who’s Loving You anthology, published by Orion Books in 2021.
Edge of Here: Stories from Near to Now
Enter a world very close to our own… One in which technology can allow you to explore an alternate love-life with a stranger. A world where you can experience the emotions of another person through a chip implanted in your brain. And one where you can view snippets of a distant relative’s life with a little help from your DNA.
But remember: these experiences will not be without consequences . . . In this stunning debut collection, Kelechi Okafor combines the ancient and the ultramodern to explore tales of contemporary Black womanhood, asking questions about the way we live now and offering a glimpse into our near future. Uplifting, thought-provoking, sometimes chilling, these are tales rooted in the recognisable, but not limited by the boundaries of our current reality-where truth can meet imagination and spirituality in unexpected ways.
Allow yourself to be taken on a journey into worlds that are blazing with possibility, through stories that will lead you right up to the Edge of Here . . .
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