100 books like Drinking from Graveyard Wells

I really enjoyed this playful, ethereal, experimental collection of seventeen stories from prolific Tanzania-Australian author Eugen Bacon.

Her work often defies genre, spanning science fiction, horror, fantasy with a strong literary sensibility. These are poetic, evocative stories, about migration and displacement, about climate change and technology, about blackness and womanhood, about politics and community.

Adding up to more than just the sum of its parts, I could not help but be impressed. As a whole, with each story allowed to resonate with the other, it’s an excellent, inventive collection.

The late Nick Wood, a science fiction writer, clinical psychologist, former journalist, humanitarian, and anti-apartheid activist born in Zambia and raised in South Africa, was always learning.

This is reflected in all his writing, including most of the stories in his collection. Largely science fiction stories in a variety of settings: from post-apocalyptic worlds, settled moons, and climate-changed earths, these stories are highly focused on the social and environmental aspects of humanity even in the most science fictional scenarios.

These stories, intersectional, emotionally resonant, exciting, thoughtful, and varied. Learning Monkey and Crocodile is a wonderful way to sample some of South Africa’s interesting science fiction corpus from a voice that has now left us, but which will not be forgotten.

Jackal Jackal is an entertaining collection of eighteen stories that includes two originals and sixteen reprints of relatively new stories, most of which are riffs on some classic fairytales or have the quality of such tales, by Nigerian author Tobi Ogundiran.

It’s a great showcase of Ogundiran’s consistency and strengths as a storyteller and dark fabulist. Every story is crafted to elicit a strong, visceral reaction. These are stories that you’re meant to feel. In my review for Locus Magazine, I said that you should think of this as The Brothers Grimm by way of Amos Tutuola. Or Stephen King meets Cyprian Ekwensi.

With its steady themes of repetition, transformation, and revelation, its consistently good, direct and effective prose and delightfully creepy delivery this is a strong collection that is worth reading.

This collection by the gifted Nigerian author who excels at evoking a haunting sense of beauty with words, is sure to delight anyone that enjoys throwing themselves off a literary cliff to see words and images fly by like many-splendored birds.

These are stories that will transport you to changed versions of our world with exquisite prose. Familiar and not. Dark and beautiful and occasionally terrifying they run the gamut from dark fantasy to science fiction to cosmic horror. Often set in Nigeria and using, Yoruba mythology, folklore, and legends as jumping-off points this is an immersive and strange book that defies categorical taxonomy.

Vivid, colorful, and just downright beautiful to read, I was moved by this collection, and you probably will be too.

Another remarkable first novel, and the first of a trilogy, now complete. Dangarembga is a multi-talented Zimbabwean woman—filmmaker, playwright, novelist, and not least, political activist. A coming-of-age tale set in the late colonial period [when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia], the focus is on two girls, cousins. Tambu, the narrator, begins the book this way: “I was not sorry when my brother died."  Now, that will get your attention [we gradually learn why]. But it is her cousin Nyasha who will grab you: brilliant, passionate, troubled, sickly. In 2018 the BBC named Nervous Conditions one of the 100 stories that have shaped the world.

I find H.Rider Haggard's famous tales of adventure (e.g. King Solomon's Mines) pretty disgusting: bunch of white guys in southern Africa, where they can slaughter and loot at will, far from the constraints of “civilised” society.

But “She” is one of a kind. A perilous wilderness, where the people who put pots on the heads of strangers have a very sinister outlook on life (these are cooking pots, and this is a stranded population, desperate for protein). Their immortal goddess (originally Ancient Greek?) lives in a tomb, doesn't seem to eat or drink; talks like a spoilt, entitled Victorian debutante, and fascinates our hero.

I imagine the author, a humble civil servant when not dreaming of glorious gory derring-do, met young ladies of her kind socially, and was snubbed a few times. She pays... and I won't spoil the horror of it for you, but it's pretty bad! A guilty… show more.

I’ve read this book at least twice. The specificity of Sefi Atta's language makes me feel like I can reach into the pages and sit next to the characters as their lives unfold.

Her writing is very immersive, drawing you in and making everything in that world real and imaginable, painful yet livable. In this book, she explores the complexities of womanhood, even with certain privileges and regardless of status. 

One of the best examples of “history from below” I’ve read.

It tells the well-known story of David Livingstone’s last journey–how after he died in tropical Africa, his servants marched his body across the continent to the port of Dar es Salaam, so that it could be shipped back to England and buried there with appropriate pomp and reverence. This forms the framework for an utterly original novel that presents this epic trek from the perspective of two of Livingstone’s slave servants: his feisty Muslim cook, Halima, who brings her gossipy sardonic perspective to the enterprise, and his devout and pompous body servant Joseph, a Christian determined to do right by his master.

This work sparkles with energy and humor, as well as presenting a fresh perspective on a well-trodden path.

Being a foreign correspondent in the so-called "developing world" is complicated in a myriad of ways, and journalists often become so deep into the story that their needs become strangely surgical, legal, and surreal.

Need some specific quotes to describe what is happening amid a bloodbath? Want to profile victims of torture and slaughter? Behr's book brings you into his experience as a foreign correspondent for Newsweek in Africa and other media work in a way few other reporters would like to admit -- except to each other.

Nhamo is the remarkable twelve-year-old heroine in this engrossing book who bravely sets out to escape an arranged marriage to a cruel man. Summoning uncommon courage, she builds a raft and launches it upon an enormous lake where she must war against enemies both seen and unseen as well as the threat of drowning and starvation. Mystical African beliefs come alive in this book written by a white woman who is deeply versed in the culture and customs of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Skillfully rendered, it is often cited as a classic adventure story for young people and was one of the catalysts that convinced me to write my adventure stories.