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There is perhaps no other art form that makes time travel so vividly possible as literature. In Diane Oliver’s collection of short stories Neighbours and other stories, we are in the USA of the 1960s, a decade known for protest and political upheaval. The so-called racial segregation. which determines everyday life in the USA, especially in the southern […]
more...Whenever I read Zadie Smith, I think you can’t not like her. Her prose is elegant, funny and so damn clever.
more...Lifting the Veil is a title which carries implications spanning across western and eastern traditions. Consider the image of the veiled bride, a female figure condemned to lifelong possession. The veil is lifted to reveal the bride, for the pleasure of the male gaze. But in this collection of short stories, Ismat Chughtai turns that trope on its head.
more...Intruders ranges from stories about familiar monsters – werewolves and ghosts, say – to imagining technologies of the not-too-distant future – eye implant computers, for example. Even when the imagined taps into a familiar trope or figure, like the mermaid, Mashigo gives it a twist…
more...Recitatif is a writerly experiment that sees the acclaimed Toni Morrison toying with her reader as she frames an insightful commentary on racial categorizations. First published in 1983, it is famously the only short story the Nobel-laureate ever wrote.
more...Friday Black is the acclaimed first collection of short stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. He has a knack for locating the horror already existing in the everyday and drawing it to chilling yet strangely logical conclusions.
more...A listicle of five books set in Nigeria it’s worth checking out – from classics to less well-known newcomers, there’s some great reading here.
more...Last year, poco.lit. published some articles on Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and speculative fiction. This year, we’re pleased to publish some short pieces of creative writing that speculate on alternative futures on and of the African continent.
more...With a heavy sigh and an uncanny discomfort, her untrained fingers dug around the plant. Suddenly, her nostrils were filled with a pungent smell which was possibly coming from the dead leaves lying around. What she could not understand was the untimely death of the Tulsi plants in her courtyard every monsoon season.
more...Last Friday evening I tuned in to livestream the ilb’s reading with Nana Kwame Adjey-Brenyah of Friday Black, a collection of short stories that explores issues of race and social justice in dystopian near-future settings.
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