We wrap up book news for our readers in our regular Book Digest feature with books from Niq Mhlongo, I.S. Jones, Kofi Dzogbewu, and Virgilia Ferrão
Hauntings By Niq Mhlongo
Publisher: Jacana Media
Publication Date: October, 2021
Genre: Fiction, anthology
Language: English
Where to find it: Jacana Media
Niq Mhlongo (Editor)
Niq Mhlongo is an award-winning, bestselling, master storyteller. His collection of short stories, Soweto Under the Apricot Tree won the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Prize for English Fiction and the Nadine Gordimer Short-Story Award in 2019. His edited collections, Black Tax (2019) and award-winning Joburg Noir (2020), signalled the way for new South African writing.
Hauntings
A thrilling array of African writers, including Fred Khumalo, Sibongile Fisher, Lucas Ledwaba, Vonani Bila, Lynn Joffe and Christopher Mlalazi, tell surprising and unnerving tales in this collection of commissioned stories from the master of narrative writing, Niq Mhlongo. These stories give answers to the question: what does being haunted and hauntings mean in our southern African world, in the past, the present and the future?
Spells of my Name by I.S. Jones
Publisher: Newfound
Publication Date: November 30 , 2021
Genre: Poetry.
Language: English
Where to find it: Newfound
I.S. Jones
I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet, essayist, and former music journalist. Her honors include fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Brooklyn Poets, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. She is one-third of The Luminaries, an online space which provides free poetry programming and reading events. She is the founder and facilitator of The Singing Bullet: A month-long online poetry workshop.
Spells of my Name
Spells of my Name speaks to the power of naming as an act of reclamation, making peace with the past to find a window to the future. I.S. Jones is in awe of bodies and opening the body into a new language, probing the micro histories of the heart and asking urgent questions, like: ‘Why do any of us return / to that which has promised to slaughter us?’ Navigating sexuality, memory, and identity is a voice torn into multiple selves. This fracturing is full of diversions and sharp bends—a black fawn that the speaker transforms into as she bounds and leaps between poems while being chased by the faceless hunter. Jones searches for home, a place wherever “memory takes mercy on me.” Spells of My Name is unflinching, confessional, timely, and fluid with grace.
Adze by Kofi Dzogbewu
Publisher: Mensa Press
Publication Date: September 25, 2021
Genre: Fiction.
Language: English
Where to find it: Booknook, Amazon, The Ghana Association of Writers (GAW) bookstore
Kofi Dzogbewu
Kofi Dzogbewu is a writer, editor, composer and actor currently living in Accra, Ghana.
Adze
When Selase and other abnormals are freed from their imprisonment in The Facility, her life spirals out of control. She must navigate through an alien environment that brims with strange and powerful forces. These forces have one mission: to see Selase and her kind dead. With assistance from a traditional priest, she realizes that she has a mission to change the world. Together with her friends (Adobea, Elikem and Esinu), she begins a journey of self-discovery that is frightening and exhilarating at the same time.
Sina De Aruanda by Virgília Ferrão
Publisher: Fundacao Fernando Leite Couto
Publication Date: December 8, 2021
Genre: Fiction
Language: Portuguese
Where to find it: To be confirmed.
Virgília Ferrão
Virgília Leonilde Tembo Ferrão’s started her literary career with the launch of O Romeu é Xingondo e a Julieta Machangane published by UEM University Press in 2005. In September 2008, she graduated in Law at the Higher Institute of Science and Technology of Mozambique. In 2011, she left for Melbourne, Australia, to do her Masters in Environment. Her second work, O Inspector de Xindzimila was published by Brazilian publisher Selo Jovem in 2016. Currently, she works for Total E&P Mozambique Area 1, as a legal consultant and is the administrator of the blog “diário de uma qawwi”.
Sina De Aruanda
“The last thing Pedro Lucas wants is to see his beloved girl trafficked as a slave to the French Islands. Dona Luísa Noronha, meanwhile, owner of Prazo de Aruanda and mother of Pedro Lucas, is a woman who does not spare efforts to achieve her goals, thus bringing a tragedy to Aruanda. Many years later, Daniel de Barros, charismatic environmental consultant, nurtures an inexplicable passion for the Aruanda region, beginning a restoration project in the Mobora Mission. For that, count on the help of Maria Cristina, a student who lives tormented by her past, and Angelina Manhiça, a young woman disturbed by her bizarre gift. Both see themselves embracing environmental causes and Daniel de Barros’ project, unaware, however, of the strange cue that awaits them in unraveling the truth about Daniel de Barros. “
