72 books like Lagoon

For me, the worst thing about New York is getting stuck in traffic.

In the New York of 2140, that’s not a problem because rising sea levels have drowned much of Manhattan and motorboats zip through the flooded streets like it’s a high-rise Venice. Future New York is also a city whose residents are coping with the planet’s new reality.

In the midst of climate gloom, it is refreshing to imagine a scenario where New Yorkers can come together through cooperative action to take control of their own future.

New Crobuzon is a city as weird as its name sounds, inhabited by avian Garuda, cactus-skinned Cactacae, and the scarab beetle-headed Kephri, among many other fantastical creatures.

It’s a grimy city that if you squinted might just look a bit like Victorian-era London, albeit with more frog-people, airships, and statues crafted from harden spit. And at its center, the titular Perdido Street Station, a towering immense skyrail station, too large and labyrinthine to ever map out.

Miéville crafts a fantasy city unlike any other, plagued by government corruption, organized crime, and labor disputes, that makes New Crobuzon feel real and grounded, despite being one of the strangest cities ever put to ink.

My default stance in life is ‘Meh,’ which infuriates my children, but it's pretty hard to get a rise out of me because I've seen some shit.

Nigeria is such a dysfunctional country full of laughter, sunshine, secrets, and puppeteers; it made everything in this book seem feasible. Like, if you stretch my country out like taffy we'd get to a mad stage that everyone would still shrug off and accept.

It validated the heck out of me, let me tell you. 

Vanessa Nakate is a young Ugandan climate activist who was excised from a photo of gathered young climate warriors (which included Greta Thunberg) as they prepared a response to DAVOS, the World Economic Forum accused of peddling the destructive myth of ‘eternal economic growth.’ (The other four activists in the photograph were all white, suggesting racism operates structurally at many levels—and within multiple contexts.) Nakate provides a refreshing perspective of driving climate activism from the Global South—centering those not only most detrimentally impacted by climate depredations, but also the most disempowered to respond and be heard. Her concluding chapter on ten practical things one can do, provides a hopeful and concrete map for personal climate action, including creative imagining. I loved her emphasis on local action too—no change is too small.

I love, love, love this book, for so many reasons. My top two are: 1) It sits squarely in that odd ‘fantasy in a technological world’ niche (Imagine 1984’s world filled with fairies!) 2) It has an odd, dark humour feel to a book that I like (think Gaiman or Pratchett) And oh! The characters? Funny, clever, nuanced. Bum that was three wasn’t it? I’ll come in again.

This book is so squarely in my wheelhouse, it could have been written for me. It’s a world-jumping, rip-roaring adventure that is literally breathtaking in its scope and its tempo. The protagonists have a real feel to them (very human failings) but it never feels forced, you’re just scooped up and flown along at a breakneck pace. The action scenes are heart-stopping (Kristine used to be a stunt woman!) but that’s never at the expense of the characters. Stunning, action-packed, sci-fi book.

This book is straight-up Fantasy, so it’s notable in my list because I read so little trad fantasy these days. But don’t be fooled, this book is not what you expect. Every trope of fantasy gets turned on its head, kicked over, rearranged, and then the characters just straight up do something other than what you expected. There are no hunky but boring heroes. There are no damsels in distress. Even the Gods in this world are… well that would be spoilers. Super well told gripping fantasy trilogy that you won’t regret picking up. Except you won’t be able to put it down.

This is a wonderful and diverse cross-section of stories from a variety of African countries representing a thematic focus on a world facing Disruption, whether via climate change, global pandemics, or a plethora of crises, that challenges us all with the necessity to find ways to join with each other if we are to survive. Stand-out stories for me were Zambian author Mbozi Haimbe's "Shelter" (shortlisted for a NOMMO Award this year—best in African Speculative Fiction 2022) and Kenyan Idza Luhumyo’s "Five Years Next Sunday," winner of the 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing. I loved the vibrancy and range of these stories, all bristling with energy and providing novel ways of seeing and learning to confront our global challenges.  

The title says it all: It does not have to be this way—we can build a better, more just and kinder world together, if…we learn to act on our dreams/visions in order to make this happen. But this path—as Capetonian author Alistair Mackay outlines, in a passionate and riveting exploration of fraught existences in an increasingly divided and desertified Southern Africa—will always come at personal cost. What price are we willing to pay for a better and more inclusive human future? What artificial ways of seeing (and consuming) do we need to resist to see and value each other as we all truly are? I loved this book as it is both darkly funny and tragic, yet never loses hope for a new and better world.

This book provides a detailed and trenchant analysis of how African novels have sought ways of reflecting and resisting the destruction wrought by colonial occupations and neo-colonial extractive capitalism. This analysis thoughtfully includes ‘nonhuman life’ and the need to ‘redefine our notion of personhood to include other beings that we do not normally ascribe to this (yet with whom our ecological history remains deeply entangled).’ Iheka also points out how Africa has ostensibly been demarcated as a ‘sacrifice zone’ by other major global powers (many of who benefited from the colonial enterprise) and how African fiction attempts to decentre narrative perceptions from the Global (and anthropomorphic) North. I enjoyed the subtle and inclusive approach of the author, who emphasised the porous nature of borders and the ethical need to reengage with what it means to be human as a way of finding our way out of a ‘slow apocalypse.’