Six Great African Sci-fi And Fantasy Books To Read These Holidays

Jedza, the protagonist, is convinced that his life is haunted. First, by the guilt of being accidentally responsible for the death of a childhood friend who was run over by a train. Second, by the disappearance of his sister in Harare. The novel operates at two levels as it traces Jedza's search for freedom and happiness.

On the surface it explores the realities of contemporary Zimbabwe - economic challenges, sex work, drug abuse. Another level deploys the metaphysical as it draws on Shona mythology and spiritualism evoking ngozi avenging spirits, shapeshifting njuzu water spirits and ancestral spirits. It refuses to be bogged down into categories. One section reads like magical realism, another like fantasy and another like non-fiction, littered with historical details in footnotes.

There's the environmental activist Luthando, his lover Viwe, and Malcolm, an unwitting accomplice of capitalist exploitation of the natural world. As ecocide intensifies, the divide between the haves, who can hole up behind the Wall in the air-conditioned Citadel, and the have-nots, who must endure fatally high temperatures and starvation rations, becomes more intense.

IDHTBTW warns readers of the disasters that will ensue if we continue on the path of using natural resources irresponsibly. The success of this form of dystopian writing depends on the elegance and pacing of its delivery. IDHTBTW delivers both elegance and pacing, and supplies a gay love story as well, which is not often found in the genre.

The Sauutiverse is a shared and open world, and only exists through the collaborative efforts of its authors, invited into workshops over the span of two years to create the Sauutiverse. This method of multi-perspective storytelling means that our sense of the Sauutiverse changes with each story.