Our regular Book Digest segment spotlights new books by Mustapha Enesi, Melanie Raabe, Bhouria Diallo, and Angela Flournoy.
I Cry at the Feet of My Other Body By Mustapha Enesi
Publisher: Witsprouts Books
Date: September 20, 2025
Genre: Fiction, Short Stories
Language: English
Where to find it: Witsprouts Books
Mustapha Enesi
Mustapha Enesi is Ebira, and his work has appeared in several literary magazines. His writing explores grief, longing, and acceptance. His short stories, ‘Kesandu’ and ‘Safety Pins Are Good Omens,’ won the 2021 K & L Prize for African Literature and the 2021 Awele Creative Trust Award, respectively. He was a finalist for the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize and the 2021 Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize. His flash fiction piece, ‘Shoes,’ was highly commended in Litro Magazine’s 2021 summer flash fiction contest. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
I Cry at the Feet of My Other Body
In this debut collection, the Mustapha Enesi masterfully weaves together a complex exploration of womanhood, delving into themes of motherhood, longing, grief, sexuality, and acceptance. Through a blend of realist and fabulist narratives, the stories unfold against the backdrop of women’s lives navigating patriarchal standards. With sensitivity, the Mustapha captures the essence of human experience, crafting a literary multiverse where every character is vital and interconnected lives are subtly explored.
Das Jahr der Wunder by Melanie Raabe
Publisher: btb Verlag
Date: September 10, 2025
Genre: Nonfiction
Language: German
Where to find it: Penguin
Melanie Raabe
Melanie Raabe is a German author and podcaster. She debuted with the psychological thriller The Trap in 2015, followed by The Stranger (2016), The Shadow (2018), The Woods (2019), and De Langste Schlaf (2014). Her first work of non-fiction is a book on creativity (2020). In 2022, Raabe published her first literary novel in Germany. Her work is published in more than 20 countries. She lives in the city of Cologne.
Das jahr der Wunder
About the touch of magic in life that each and every one of us needs – especially in difficult times! 365 small creative challenges and encouragements: one for every day of the year.
How can we lead a more inspired life? How do we manage not to let the days simply fly by, but instead to notice all the interesting things, people, and events around us? This book is about how we – especially in chaotic and even frightening times – can continually recharge our batteries with large and small creative actions, regain our capacity for joy, and sharpen our eye for the beauty around us.
“The Year of Miracles” contains 365 tips and is divided into twelve chapters. It is deliberately not organized by months or seasons, but aims to inspire a different perspective on the world with beautiful, strange, and wondrous stories. Not a guide in the usual sense, but an invitation to be creative in difficult times, with very special colorful illustrations by Rumi Benecke.
Les Murmures de la Sagesse by Bhouria Diallo
Publisher: Editions L’Harmattan
Date: September 11, 2025
Genre: Poetry
Language: French
Where to find it: Editions L’Harmattan, Amazon
Bhouria Diallo
Bhouria Diallo was born in Kissidougou, more precisely in Djêssafê Koura, and is originally from Mamou Pôrȇdaka in the village of Bhouria. After obtaining his CEP (Certificate of Primary Studies) in 2007, he joined Siguiri, where he continued his studies with his father at the French private school Kalil Cissé. He brilliantly obtained his BEPC (Brevet d’Études du Premier Cycle) in 2010 and was directed to the Nelson Mandela School Group in Siguiri, where he completed his secondary studies, culminating in the obtaining of the single BAC in 2013. He then joined Conakry, where he studied Sociology at the private Barack Obama University in Sonfonia.
Les Murmures de la Sagesse
This poetry collection is a mosaic of words and emotions that depict African realities. It evokes the following themes: love of homeland and family, but also, and above all, the challenges and trials to be overcome for a better future.
This collection questions the perception of young Africans in the face of these realities. Above all, it aims to embody or put into words the strength and resilience that inhabit the souls of young dreamers. It also explores the daily life of African women, marked by their dreams fading under the weight of tradition, their aspirations, the pain of early and forced marriage, as well as the means they use to overcome all these ills.
The poet also highlights, in a simple and clear style, the social, economic, and cultural challenges facing Africa.
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date: September 16, 2025
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Harper Collins
Angela Flournoy
Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York.
The Wilderness
An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
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