In our regular Book Digest segment, we spotlight new books from Sefi Atta, Fabio Kabral, Tigest Girma, and Nadia Maddy.
Corpo Seco by Nadia Maddy
Publisher: Nehanda Books
Date: September 29, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Barnes and Noble
Nadia Maddy
Nadia Maddy is a London-based writer with roots in Sierra Leone, exploring themes of identity, resilience, and the human spirit. A passionate advocate for emerging voices, she founded a creative writing competition in partnership with PEN Sierra Leone, fostering the talents of young writers whose works have been published in various magazines. Nadia holds an MA in Sociology and has over 15 years of teaching experience in further and higher education, she currently serves as Program Lead and Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University. She was also on the editorial advisory board of the Sierra Leone Writers Series (SLWS) for five years. From her early days with the BBC’s Video Nation to her acclaimed novel The Palm Oil Stain, Nadia’s writing fearlessly tackles the realities of the Sierra Leonean Civil War. It has been critically examined in scholarly circles, including a feature in the anthology War, Women, and Post-conflict Empowerment: Lessons from Sierra Leone edited by Josephine Beoku-Betts and Fredline A. M’Cormack-Hale (Bloomsbury).
Corpo Seco
A fatal mistake. A tormented soul. Can he break free of the chains of his destruction?
Bahia, Brazil. Faron’s destiny changed in a moment of heartbreaking betrayal. Accidentally killing his mother in an explosion of justified rage, the distraught son of a plantation owner and slave falls swiftly to the retribution of the other servants. But even though he’s brutally punished and buried after an execution, he’s shocked when he wakes transformed into a cursed being of myth.
Fleeing to the Amazon jungle for a spiritual cure, Faron discovers he can temporarily transform into his old self in exchange for another person’s life. But in his search for redemption as a murderous monster with an insatiable appetite for flesh, he arrives on the Gold Coast, West Africa where he stumbles upon an albino orphan, a beautiful woman, and creatures far more deadly than himself.
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Date: September 3, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
Language: English
Where to find it: Hachette Books
Tigest Girma
Tigest Girma is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Dark. After graduating with a Bachelor of Education, she splits her time between writing and teaching. Passionate about exploring East African characters and myths, her work weaves Black stories with the dark and fantastical. In her free time, she can be found rewatching her comfort shows where the villain gets the girl. Originally from Ethiopia, she is now based in Melbourne, Australia.
Immortal Dark
It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.
Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.
To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.
When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.
Sopros Dos Deuses by Fabio Kabral
Publisher: Intrínseca
Date: June 3, 2024
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy
Language: Portuguese
Where to find it: Intrínseca
Fábio Kabral
Fábio Kabral was initiated into Candomblé and is a funny son of Oxóssi, like most of his family. He has published several books of Afrocentric speculative fiction, including Ritos de passagem, O caçador cibernético da rua 13, A cientista guerreira do facão furioso and O blogueiro bruxo das redes sobrenaturais. As an adult, Kabral discovered he was autistic and since then he has thrown himself into hyperfocus, mainly researching the orishas, RPG books, X-Men comics and collecting dolls from a certain gacha game.
Sopros Dos Deuses (English: Breath of the Gods)
Kayin and Ainá don’t know each other yet, but they have a lot in common.
Isolated among the Odessi, a hunting people descended from Oxóssi, the solitary Kayin mourns the premature death of his mother while dealing with constant abuse from his superiors in the Hierarchy. Ainá, on the other hand, suffers similar pressures among the witches of Ijexá, daughters of Oxum. The questioning princess refuses to pretend to embody her orisha just to keep up appearances in the royal family’s rituals.
Subjugated by tradition, the young warriors have difficulty in unleashing their powers. Furthermore, they share strangely similar childhood memories, involving the dangerous floating kingdom of Ketu, a mysterious bird and a failed ebó, the only offering capable of protecting the world from darkness.
If it depended on the ancestral feud between their peoples, Kayin and Ainá would never meet, but powers like theirs do not remain dormant for long…
When attacks by evil spirits claim the lives of loved ones, they are forced to awaken, and the destinies of these young warriors will cross in an epic journey to save the Enchanted Lands of Aiê before it is too late.
In Sopro dos Deuses, Fábio Kabral builds a complex universe based on the Afro-Brazilian mythology of the orixás. A striking fantasy about the power of encounters ― with one’s own essence and with the collective ―, which dances between life and death, creation and destruction, love and war, wrapped in the multiple magics of axé.
Good-for-Nothing Girl by Sefi Atta
Publisher: Interlink Books
Date: November 26, 2024
Genre: Fiction
Language: English
Where to find it: Simon and Schuster
Sefi Atta
Sefi Atta, born in Lagos in 1964, is an award-winning writer and former accountant who resides in the United States, England, and Nigeria. Her early career saw her qualify as a Chartered Accountant in England and a Certified Public Accountant in the US, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Atta’s works have garnered international acclaim, with accolades such as the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa for Everything Good Will Come (2005) and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa for Lawless, now News from Home. Her renowned novels include A Bit of Difference (2013), The Bead Collector (2018), and The Bad Immigrant (2022). Her short stories and plays, performed and published internationally, are notable contributions to her esteemed position in African literature.
Good-for-Nothing Girl
In Good-for-Nothing Girl, Gift, an eighteen-year-old Nigerian, gives an account of how her quest for a better education in the United States resulted in a controversial case of domestic servitude.
Born and raised in a small city in Nigeria where parents customarily name their children after virtues, Gift begins her story as a book-smart and confident high schooler in 2017. She is about to graduate, but has no faith in the education she will receive at the local state polytechnic she has applied to. Seizing an opportunity to attend college in the United States while working as a nanny, she becomes the object of envy in her community, which makes her more determined to leave Nigeria. Gift travels to a provincial city in Mississippi, where her confidence is diminished by her employer’s manipulation and condescension. She faces isolation in her role as a nanny until she manages to escape, her case becoming an international cause célèbre against her wishes. Regaining her confidence, Gift turns down a lucrative but exploitative offer to publish her story, preferring to tell it her own way.
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