In our regular Book Digest segment, we spotlight new books from Nuzo Onoh, John van de Ruit, Vanda Machado, and Cheryl S. Ntumy
Spud: The Reunion by John van de Ruit
Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
Date: November 8, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Pan Macmillan South Africa
John van de Ruit
John Howard van de Ruit is a South African novelist, actor, playwright, and producer. He has been a professional actor, playwright, and producer since 1998. He was born in Durban and educated at Michaelhouse, where he stayed in Founders House and from where he matriculated in 1993.
Spud: The Reunion
It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of 93 matriculated and the boys went their separate ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the Crazy Eight – Rambo, Mad Dog, Vern, Fatty, Garth Garlic, Boggo, Simon and Spud – have not kept in touch. Or at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives an invitation from the school to attend the ten-year reunion weekend, Spud is determined to avoid the event at all costs, but he hasn’t reckoned with the bombardment of intrusive messages and threatening phone calls from his former dorm mates. No one is going to bend his arm, not this time; he is immune to peer pressure and wise to Rambo’s devious manipulation techniques. Spud has moved on. And, anyway, he has enough to worry about on the home front.
At twenty-eight Spud is stuck in a one-third life crisis. Reflecting on a decade of spectacular non-achievement, at a point where he’s coming to realise that his glittering stage career might have stalled before it’s even begun, casts him into deep gloom. For the former scholarship kid, the prospect of once again having to measure up to his blue-blooded school friends – and be found wanting – has him riddled with anxiety. Not only that. Spud still doesn’t have a serious girlfriend, which has seen him resort to a questionable international bath-sexting relationship with an old flame. Not to mention that circumstances have forced him to move back in with his parents and his senile grandmother, Wombat, whose walks never end where they began.
After a wildly unsuccessful fishing trip with his father, as well as a return to his old way of figuring things out – writing in his diary – to his own surprise, Spud finds his reunion resistance crumbling. Curiosity and courage win the day. It’s just a weekend, after all … what could possibly go wrong?
Contos Míticos Afrobrasileiros by Vanda Machado
Publisher: Malê Editora
Date: November 1, 2024
Genre: Fiction, short stories
Language: Portuguese (Brazil)
Where to find it: Malê Editora
Vanda Machado
Vanda Machado is a researcher who holds a doctorate and master’s degree from the Federal University of Bahia. She is a collaborating professor at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. She created the Irê Ayó Political Pedagogical Project at the Eugenia Anna dos Santos School at Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá, which led to the school being recognized as a National Reference by the Ministry of Education (MEC). With her academic career dedicated to Ethnic-Racial Education, curriculum, and culture, she has been providing consultancy, lectures, conferences, and presenting papers in several states in Brazil, as well as in Brussels, Nigeria, Cuba, Portugal, and Buenos Aires. Member of the National Network of Afro-Brazilian Religions and Health (RENAFRO), she participated as a scriptwriter in the documentary: Caring in Terreiros and Health. She coordinated the Irê Ayó Project in quilombola communities in partnership with SECULT/Fundação Palmares. She created and coordinated the Capoeira Education for Peace Project – Training for Capoeira Educators (Law 10.639/03) at the Santo Antônio Além do Carmo Fort IPAC/SECULT. She has books, texts, and articles published in specialized magazines.
Contos Míticos Afrobrasileiros (English: Afro-Brazilian mythical tales)
Contos Míticos Afrobrasileiros is a dive into ancestral African waters that echoes deep and plural wisdom for education and life. The author, a black woman, storyteller and initiated in Candomblé, invites us to enter an enchanted universe where Afro-Brazilian myths and tales reveal ways of thinking about the world and building inclusive realities. This book does not teach the “recipe” for anti-racist education; on the contrary, it enchants, inspiring educators and readers to value the plurality and power of ancestral narratives. Her stories, rooted in the terreiros and the author’s own experience, not only educate, but transform. The work aims to be a gift for the construction of a more respectful world, where the act of listening to and telling stories strengthens community bonds, creates worlds and teaches us to symbolize our existence in relation to others. Thus, the book is a tribute to ancestral voices and an invitation to celebrate Afro-Brazilian heritage.
Where the Dead Brides Gather By Nuzo Onoh
Publisher: Titan Books
Date: October 22, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Penguin Random House
Nuzo Onoh
Nuzo Onoh is an award-winning Nigerian-British writer of Igbo descent. She is a pioneer of the African horror literary genre. Hailed as the “Queen of African Horror”, Nuzo’s writing showcases both the beautiful and horrific in the African culture within fictitious narratives. Nuzo’s works have been featured in numerous magazines and anthologies. She has given talks and lectures about African Horror, including at the prestigious Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, in London. Her works have appeared in academic studies and been longlisted and shortlisted. She is a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Nuzo holds a Law degree and a Masters degree in Writing, both from Warwick University, England. She is a certified Civil Funeral Celebrant, licensed to conduct non-religious burial services. An avid musician with an addiction to Jungyup and K-indie, Nuzo plays both the guitar and piano and holds an NVQ in Digital Music Production. She resides in the West Midlands, UnitedKingdom.
Where the Dead Brides Gather
About Where the Dead Brides Gather
A powerful Nigeria-set horror tale of possession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets and murder from the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and ‘Queen of African Horror’. For readers of Octavia Butler, Ben Okri and Koji Suzuki.
Bata, a young girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.
A supernatural possession helps Bata battle and vanquish the vengeful ghost bride, and following a botched exorcism, she is transported to Ibaja-La, the realm of dead brides. There, she receives secret powers to fight malevolent ghost-brides before being sent back to the human realm, where she must learn to harness her new abilities as she strives to protect those whom she loves.
By turns touching and terrifying, this is a vivid supernatural horror story of family drama, long-held secrets, possession, death – and what lies beyond.
Songs for the Shadows by Cheryl S. Ntumy
Publisher: Atthis Arts
Date: November 12, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Atthis Arts
Cheryl S. Ntumy
Cheryl S. Ntumy is a Ghanaian writer of short fiction and novels of speculative fiction, young adult fiction, and romance. Her work has appeared in FIYAH Literary Magazine; Apex Magazine; World Literature Today; Best of World SF Vol. 3 and Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022, among others. Her work has also been shortlisted for the Nommo Award for African Speculative Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, and the Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship. She is part of the Sauúti Collective, which created a shared universe for Afrocentric speculative fiction, and a member of Petlo Literary Arts, an organization that develops and promotes creative writing in Botswana.
Songs for the Shadows
Your feelings are of no consequence.
Shad-Dari has escaped her past, her dreams now in reach. An excavator of the valuable old sounds of Órino-Rin, she steals tiny, unheard fragments of the sacred songs to erase the painful echo of her home planet, Ekwukwe. In one rebellion too far, she sets off a chain of events that severs her from time itself, forcing her, without another way forward, to face her past.
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