Najwa Bin Shatwan

Yefon Isabelle

Macsmart Ojiludu

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

Nadia Ahidjo-Iya

Innocent Ilo

Melusi Nkomo

Victor Forna

Nicholas Dawn

Genna Gardini

Philisiwe Twijnstra

Doreen Anyango

Masiyaleti Mbewe

Julia Smuts Louw

Liam Brickhill

Jacob M'Hango

Gomolemo Mogotsi

Mbozi Haimbe

Idza Luhumyo

Alithnayn Abdulkareem

Edwin Okolo

These stories by new and emerging writers from the continent of Africa all tackle the theme of 'Disruption' in ingenious ways and represent a range of genres, from Innocent Ilo's imaginative exploration of a post-apocalyptic African village, to Victor Forna's stylistic take on the destruction of humanity. Masiyaleti Mbewe's brutal tale of Apartheid and climate change through the eyes of a time-traveling cyborg sits alongside Genna Gardini's diverting allegory of companionship and an escaped exotic pet. The 2021 anthology features stories from across the continent, from Libya to Sierra Leone to Zambia to South Africa, and also includes a translated story, 'Armando's Virtuous Crime' by Najwa Bin Shatwan, translated from Arabic into English by Sawad Hussain.

Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa

Set in late nineteenth-century Benghazi, Najwa Bin Shatwan’s powerful novel tells the story of Atiqa, the daughter of a slave woman and her white master. We meet Atiqa as a grown woman, happily married with two children and working. When her cousin Ali unexpectedly enters her life, Atiqa learns the true identity of her parents, both long deceased, and slowly builds a friendship with Ali as they share stories of their past. We learn of Atiqa’s childhood, growing up in the “slave yards,” a makeshift encampment on the outskirts of Benghazi for Black Africans who were brought to Libya as slaves. Ali narrates the tragic life of Atiqa’s mother, Tawida, a black woman enslaved to a wealthy merchant family who finds herself the object of her master’s desires. Though such unions were common in slave-holding societies, their relationship intensifies as both come to care deeply for each other and share a bond that endures throughout their lives. Shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Ficiton, Bin Shatwan’s unforgettable novel offers a window into a dark chapter of Libyan history and illuminates the lives of women with great pathos and humanity.

A Novel

The Slave Yards

Gianfranco Bettin

Jacob Ross

Hassan Blasim

Kim Thúy

Payam Nasser

Lina Meruane

Gioconda Belli

Bina Shah

Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Paige Cooper

Talal Abu Shawish

Ahmel Echevarría Peré

Fariba Nawa

Carol Zardetto

Gabriel Ángel

Ahmet Haluk Ünal

Hüseyin Karabey

Wilfredo Mármol Amaya

Lidudumalingani

After four years of Trump, America seems set to return to political normality. But for much of the rest of the world, that normality is a horror story: 75 years of US-led invasions, CIA-sponsored coups, election interference, stay-behind networks, rendition, and weapons testing... all in the name of Pax America, the world’s police. If you are not an ally of the US, in this ‘normality’, your country can find its democratic processes undermined and its economic wellbeing conditioned upon returning to the fold. If you’re not strategically important to the US, you can find yourself its dumping ground. This new anthology re-examines this history with stories that explore the human cost of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil. From nuclear testing in the Pacific, to human testing of CIA torture tactics, from coups in Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East; the atrocities that follow are often dismissed in history books as inevitable in the ‘fog of war’. By presenting them from indigenous, grassroots perspectives, accompanied by afterwords by the historians that consulted on them, this book attempts to bring some clarity back to that history. Stories are accompanied by afterwords written by historians, providing historical context. Afterwords by: Olmo Golz, Emmanuel Gerard, Felix Julio Alfonso Lopez, David Harper, Ertugrul Kurkcu, Francisco Dominguez, Maurizio Dianese, Julio Barrios Zardetto, Brian Meeks, Victor Figueroa Clark, Raymond Bonner, Daniel Kovalik, Meral Cicek, Ian Shaw, Matteo Capasso, Neil Faulkner, Xuan Phuong, Iyad S. S. Abujaber & Chris Hedges. Translated by: Orsola Casagrande, Mustafa Gundogdu, Sawad Hussain, Jonathan Wright, Basma Ghalayini, Nicholas Glastonbury, Sara Khalili, J. Bret Maney, Adam Feinstein, and Megan McDowell. Part of our History-into-Fiction series.

Stories of Invasion

The American Way

Najwa Bin Shatwan

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