Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa

by Sola Njoku, Moso Sematlane, Aba Amissah Asibon

From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart. Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception—the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers of  Captive  investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans. Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones . . . flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us . . . visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive  is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul.

Genres: Fiction

458 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[Jacqueline Nyathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this new collection of short African fiction, people seek, find, and lose love; lovers cheat; fathers reconcile with their daughters; revolutions, both personal and national, happen; mothers alienate their sons. The stories are gathered into three sections: Claustrophobia and Inescapable Obsessions; Metamorphosis, Cycles and Identity Vanishing; and Self-Awareness, Illusion, Delusion and Deception.

Salma Yusuf’s *If The Honey Is Sweet, Why Does The Bee Sting?* presents a very strong start to the collection, and is one of its best stories. The protagonist’s husband—“the man for whom I constantly clipped my wings”—away in Dubai, has phoned to tell her he’s taking a second wife. She’s pondering this, struggling over it: “…fighting to hold together what my Habuba and Mama Saada had prepared me for since I was eight… My whole life I had studied men like chemistry and geometry; but you cannot keep what does not want to be kept.”

In Emily Pensulo’s *In Madam’s House*, a domestic worker inhabits her employer’s life (and clothes) for a day to impress her cruel family back home in the informal settlement; but what she finds back there is not the sweet taste of victory, nor is it the redemption she seeks. Doreen Anyango explores the slow death of a marriage without children, after a miscarriage, with the suspicion of cheating, and shows us a terrible breaking point—although she opens for readers a small window of possibility that the couple will survive.

Khumbo Mhone’s *The Third Commandment* is intriguing for its dystopian setting: there’s a quota for daughters born in any district, and Upile has just given birth to one, naming her Joy. In control, the Sons of the Nation “approve” Joy “for existence,” but when Upile bears a second daughter, she makes, in her terror, a decision with decades-long repercussions. What does female resistance look like with such constraints, in a society that hates their very existence? Mhone asks readers. What might a mother be forced to choose? Moso Sematlane also explores dystopia in *The Day The City Wept*, but on the theme of love and feelings. This society has been taken over by Sentients, “big machines that look like spiders.” There are Programs that train humans not to feel (or perhaps not to express their feelings), and the protagonist is living under the radar. But his partner, Napo, is in the resistance, which is planning a mass event on live TV to trigger emotion in those watching, and Napo wants him to participate. Will the protagonist choose revolution, or to continue living a limited life?

In N. A. Dawn’s *Girl’s Best Friend*, which had me in tears, a girl learns that she’s her own defender, and makes a brutal and searing justice. Josephine Sokan’s *Good Things Come* is a striking and achingly tender story about how one woman with a “developmental problem” makes the love she seeks and needs, if only in her head. The brilliant *Heaven’s Mouth* by Zanta Nkumane explores leaving home, and the changes that are wrought in us when we do—how when you leave, you can never really move back.

There’s much, much more, including Kabubu Mutua’s strangely fun story of the runaway bride who’s a serial killer; Sola Njoku’s reinterpretation of *The Picture of Dorian Grey* in *Grey*; Zanta Nkumane’s *Mvelicanti’s Gift*, about a two-legged son born into a superstitious one-legged world; Aba Asibon on an Akua’ba, and what happens when a new bride fails to do what she’s been instructed to do—a story about societal and family expectations; and Josephine Sokan’s *Elédè Kekere*’s intriguing and memorable story about a woman who is cruel and abusive to those below her, but who is in turn enslaved by her own passions and by an abuser.

These examples show you how much creativity is exhibited in these stories. It’s a very dense collection—it took me months to read— and is one that readers can linger over. Although uneven, it’s a great snapshot of the raw talent in the upcoming generation of African writers, and is well worth your time.

Thanks to Catalyst Press and Edelweiss for early access to a DRC.

[Khumbo Mhone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might be biased as I am a contributor to this anthology but there are stories here that will stay with me for a long time and talent that I believe we will be seeing in the literary landscape very soon. If you pick up a copy please read "In Madam's House " by Emily Pensulo about the trials and tribulations of a house maid or Good things cone by Josephine Sokan, a fresh retelling of a Greek myths. My other favourites include Prayer Times by Salma Yusuf, a short story written like a poem which explores some pretty heavy material and Akua'ba by Aba Asibon. N.A Dawn writes like nothing I've ever seen in With Open Palms and Section 47 by Sola Njoku had me in tears. Please support all these great writers. Of my own stories, Corpse Driver, is one I'm particularly proud of, and I would love to hear your thoughts.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some hits, some misses. The highlights for me:

Good things to come, by Josephone Sokan — just an extraordinary punch when it's revealed what's going on.

Pasture by Aba Asibon— a beautiful/ugly story about moving to the dream of America

Section 47 by Sola Njoku — which I can't describe without spoilers.