We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest segment with books from Irenosen Okojie, Nevin Holness, Umar Abubakar Sidi, Rachel Zadok and Helen Moffett.
Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa edited by Rachel Zadok and Helen Moffett
Publisher: Catalyst Press
Date: May 7, 2024
Genre: Fiction, anthology
Language: English
Where to find it: Catalyst Press, Amazon
Contributors
Sola Njoku, Moso Sematlane, Aba Amissah Asibon, Kabubu Mutua, Doreen Anyango, Salma Abdulatif Yusuf, Zanta Nkumane, Emily Pensulo, N. A. Dawn, Khumbo Mhone, Josephine Sokan.
Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa
Introducing Captive, the newest collaboration between Catalyst Press and Short Story Day Africa, the publishing team behind Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa. In Captive, eleven new and emerging writers from Africa and the African Diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that tear us apart. Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception–the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans. Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones . . . flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us . . . visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul.
The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus by Umar Abubakar Sidi
Publisher: Masobe Books
Date: June 15, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Spine and Label, Roving Heights
Umar Abubakar Sidi
Umar Abubakar Sidi attended the Nigerian Military School, Zaria and the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna. A member of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Kaduna Chapter, has written several poems and short stories, and was a nominee for poet of the year 2002 by the International Library of Poetry.
The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus
The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus is a philosophical quest through time in search of a book with obscure origins which might contain the secrets of the alphabet and offer the reader a divine glimpse behind the veil that shrouds our plane of existence. It is the story of a narrator, whose journey is delicately interwoven with innumerable characters and stories from across time and place, on an existential search for the meaning of life, the universe, and the essence of what it means to be a living being. Umar Abubakar Sidi’s debut novel is wildly ambitious, big-hearted, and unapologetically strange. It is a true banquet for the mind and intellect.
King of Dead Things by Nevin Holness
Publisher: Penguin
Date: March 7, 2024
Genre: Fiction,
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Books
Nevin Holness
Nevin Holness writes stories that explore magic within the Jamaican diaspora and she is passionate about creating complex and fantastical narratives that young Black readers can see themselves reflected in. She is a graduate of the Penguin Random House WriteNow Programme. The North London native has a degree in fashion journalism from London College of Fashion and currently works in womenswear.
King of Dead Things
The first time Eli had tried taking magic that wasn’t his, it had wrapped around his palms like razor wire, tight enough that he’d needed stitches. Since then, Eli had bled magic from a soul enough times that he knew the rhythm of it. He knew what kinds of magic to stay away from and which he could upsell, which would get stuck beneath his fingernails and which would crumble and turn to ash if he held on too tightly.
Eli doesn’t know who he is or where he came from. What he does know is that he can pluck the magic from a soul like a petal from a flower. And he knows there is nothing he wouldn’t borrow, steal or destroy in order to discover his past.
Malcolm knows he can raise the dead with a wave of his hand but all he really wants is to be able to save his mother.
When Eli is sent to track down the legendary fang of the leopard god Osebo, he finds himself entangled with an old and ancient power. Forced to team up, Malcolm and Eli must weave through the cracks of London, unearthing magic that should have stayed buried.
Until finally, they face a power greater than either of them could have imagined: the daughter of Death herself . . .
Curandera by Irenosen Okojie
Publisher: Dialogue Books
Date: June 27, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Dialogue Books
Irenosen Okojie
Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language, and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian and the Huffington Post. She was a Contributing Editor for The White Review. She co-presented the BBC’s Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has also judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future festival.
Curandera
In the mountainous town of Gethsemane, 17th-century Cape Verde, a mysterious woman’s arrival sparks a series of strange events that will leave the town’s inhabitants changed: men sporadically blind in the afternoons, children disappearing and reappearing without warning and infertile women pregnant with the memories of past births. In present-day London, a quartet are brought together by their fascination with ritual, miracles and a life beyond the mundane. Botanist Therese lives with Azacca, a soulful Haitian musician, Peruvian drifter Emilien, who is haunted by the past, and adventurous Finn, who is increasingly drawn to living life on the edge. With the past and present beginning to blur into one, Curandera is a story of rebirth and redemption, a mythic tale of recalibrations across time.
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