Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa
Description
Brittle Paper's "Anticipated African Books of 2024"
From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive 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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Catalyst Press |
| Publish Date | May 07, 2024 |
| Pages | 458 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781946395948 |
| Dimensions | 8.3 X 5.8 X 1.0 inches | 1.3 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"Literary fiction at its best, with over 400 pages stuffed with important themes, entertaining motifs, and heart-wrenching events. [...] Zadok and Moffett have gathered some seriously skilled, insightful authors. Those authors have poured unflinching and intense visions into these pages. The journeys awaiting you are profound." - Lightspeed Magazine
"Relationships-nurtured and betrayed, challenged and discarded--dominate the bulk of the narratives, presented in various genres, including contemporary, dystopic, speculative, even the story-in-verse." -- Booklist
"Fascinating from the onset... Captive is an unusual medley of phenomenal stories that are not all speculative but showcase darn good storytelling layered with texture, specificity, and the authenticity of a personal touch. This anthology offers Afrocentric fiction, stories beautifully canvassed and etched out with the finest strokes that sometimes coat stories within stories."-- Locus Magazine
"Short Story Day Africa once again showcases what is at the heart of African writing -- bold creativity and diversity, proudly unapologetic, and deserving of being read across the globe."-- Karen Jennings, 2021 Booker Prize longlisted author of An Island"With Captive, Short Story Day Africa upends our expectations of how a short fiction anthology should be put together. In here, all good things come in three. We linger--even luxuriate--in the writers' imaginations for longer than a single story, witnessing in real time the thrilling shapeshifting of craft, vision, and preoccupation. Televised suicide pacts unfold in unliveable presents. Lovers leave because they want to stay. Girls with three faces defy the limits of space and time. In coastal towns, mountaintop villages, and frazzled memories: stories within stories within stories unfurl in wondrous heres and hereafters. The stories in this anthology, like all good stories, defy cursory summary. And like all good stories: they require digging-into. What a wonderful addition to the literary landscape, what a delectable survey of the breadth, and indeed depth, of the African literary imaginary." -- Idza Luhumyo, 2022 Caine Prize winning author of "Five Years Next Sunday"Praise for Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa (2021)"50 Notable African Books of 2021"--Brittle Paper"60 Best Books of 2021"--Open Country Magazine"An electric collection of stories that seethes with horror and beauty."--Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls and Afterland"A must-read. This book features a number of brilliant speculative pieces by African authors. . . . Learn their names, spread the word."--Lightspeed Magazine"The beautiful and the ugly, grief and hope, warnings from our past and for our future--Disruption captures [it] all.--Shelf Unbound"This anthology runs ahead of us and we need, now more than ever, to catch up."--Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Associate Professor of Literatures in English, Cornell University"[A] brilliant and diverse collection of stories . . . [Disruption] carries so much soul."--Isele Magazine
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