93 books like Danged Black Thing

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.

As a Zimbabwean sarungano, Ndlovu is an expert storyteller, and that skill truly shows in this collection of fourteen stories chronicling the strangeness and surrealism of the lives of African women at home and abroad.

Exploring everything from the legacy of colonization to cultural appropriation and from literalized metaphors to exploring the nature of time in African thought, this is a collection that is clever and funny and emotionally astute, rendered in poetic and clear prose.

As a collection, the stories reinforce each other making this an experience to read. I highly recommend it.

Again, here is a fantastic cast of characters: the bold Mrs. B, the swearing Fox terrier, Decius, and the unassuming protagonist, Janice. Quiet, kind, thorough, outwardly unremarkable, Janice is a cleaner. She is also a wonderful listener. What a joy it is when, with a little help from her friends, she finally unlocks her own story and transforms her life.

Here’s the moment when Janice grasps how much hope can be found in stories: "She looks around at the shelves of books, every one of which she has handled, and she begins to think there may be a way. A way of finding that hope. She is, after all, a collector of stories and a storyteller. Maybe she could tell her story as she has told other stories?"

Rembrandt is a fascinating journey through Rembrandt’s paintings and also his lesser-known (to the general public) prints. It’s also a chronological roadmap of his works from his early years until his final period.  Watching his progression and the mastery in his latest period was a true learning process of how ‘less’ can be ‘far more.’ In the works displayed in the book, Rembrandt shows his skill at wringing every last bit of functionality out of each color in a very limited palette and also the cornucopia of atmospheric density he played with so masterfully to push and pull the viewers’ eye.  

This book is colourful, joyful, and deliciously diverse. The simple rhyme is rollicking but not too sweet, the illustrations are bright and playful, with plenty of fun detail. I love the mixture of people (all ages and colours and abilities) at work in the community garden, and how there is room for different ways of doing things (some plots are neat and proper while others are messy and wild). Best of all is how the story ends with everyone sitting down together to enjoy a garden-grown feast. Community, humour, hospitality, gratitude, and care for the earth—this little story is a cornucopia of good things. 

I was struck by this book’s unusual topic and perspective, namely focusing on maps in fantasy, children’s and science fiction literature, movies, and television. I really appreciated that the book is a collection of essays in which writers and cartographers reflect on the maps of imaginary places that featured in their works and the maps, real or imagined, that inspired their creations.

That really gives the essays a personal feeling, and you get to know a little about the creation of maps like the Marauder’s Map from the Harry Potter franchise or the various maps of Middle Earth featured in The Hobbit series. I like that the essays are conversational, and with over 200 illustrations, I was anxious to turn to the next page.

This must be one of the strangest works I have read in a long while, and I admire it deeply. It surfs on the documentary graphic novel trend. It exists to teach people about the disastrous impact of intensive farming on the environment, and more particularly on dirt. Not a very attractive topic, despite how serious it is – but, and that’s where this comic is so innovative, it twists all this knowledge around a suspenseful battle royal orchestrated by Hades in the Underworld. Unlikely, isn’t it? I loved discovering the facts while cheering on my main characters, two lost 16 years old, who struggle to survive in the underground. While it is directed at teens, I would recommend it to the above 16 only, as there is gore (this book follows the Hunger Games pattern of only one survivor) and nudity. 

This is a cornucopia of the weird and wonderful in Australia: the origins of ‘mateship’, rural remedies, measuring the weather by the behaviour of birds, how ‘Waltzing Matilda’ had its origins in a shearers’ strike, and the bizarre life of the itinerant swagman, including hints on how to make a ‘swag’ and carry it according to the legendary writer Henry Lawson. There are wonderful tales of Australian ‘taciturnity’ and folks living so remotely they still thought Queen Victoria was on the throne in the mid-1900s. It may be light-hearted in tone but this book somehow gets to the heart of what makes Australians unlike anyone else in the world.