"This is not just a collection of poems and short stories; it is a granary of artistic abundance! For here, will you find a rich variety of masterfully crafted pieces in a range of style, including those that draw from the African oral storytelling tradition. It is a montage of pieces of literary art, curated in a manner that allows for the ‘strict grammarian’ forms of expression to coalesce with those given to poetic licentiousness."
Whichever your favourite genre is, this anthology of East African literature has delivered something that has not been served to readers in many years. It is a fitting gift to the lovers of literary art in this first quarter of the 21st century.
This is not just a collection of poems and short stories; it is a granary of artistic abundance! For here, will you find a rich variety of masterfully crafted pieces in a range of style, including those that draw from the African oral storytelling tradition. It is a montage of pieces of literary art, curated in a manner that allows for the ‘strict grammarian’ forms of expression to coalesce with those given to poetic licentiousness. The anthology’s poetry is rich and sundry, mirroring the diverse spectrum of literary expression to be found across the East African region. Verb repetition – a familiar linguistic form often used to create a sense of frequency or emphasis in many Bantu languages – is at play as the persona in Aquagasm playfully draws us into her romantic entrancement with nature.
She dip dips in the Ocean with her toes, Smack smacks the waves with her breasts Lick licks the sand with her fingers Point points at the sky with her nose
Ngonjera, a Swahili word for a conversational poem with more than one persona’s voice, comes to the fore in Who Will Marry Her? This conversational form, a characteristic of many an African poetry recital rooted in the oral poetic tradition, is more overtly recognizable in the opening line of Poetic Justice:
First wait I tell you!
The anthology’s short stories section features some of the finest writing yet, both in terms of form and meaning. Thematically, the writings cover a range of issues, from the societal to the personal. This way, you have terrorism juxtaposed with romantic cravings; political disenchantment residing side by side with justice and gender equality issues; sexual exploitation and human/family relations finding acres of space in both the prose and the poetry, and an unmissable glimpse into racial and ethnic issues. In some cases, the themes have a bearing on the style employed.
Whichever your favourite genre is, this anthology of East African literature has delivered something that has not been served to readers in many years. It is a fitting gift to the lovers of literary art in this first quarter of the 21st century.
- Josh Mali
Featuring:
Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva • Lydia Kasese • Bigoa Chuol • Kagayi Ngobi • Raïs Neza Boneza • Sitawa Namwalie • Betty Kituyi • Josh Mali • Gervaz Lushaju • Laban Erapu • Julius Ocwinyo • Billy Kahora • Sam Okoth Opondo • Troy Onyango • Dennis Mugaa • Aress Mohamed • Dessale Berekhet • Alex Teyie • Lucky Grace Isingizwe • Barbara Oketta • Lilian Akampurira Aujo • Jameela Siddiqi • Derek Lubangakene • Rosey Ssembatya • Sophie Alal • Ayeta Anne Wangusa • Carey Baraka • Muthoni wa Gichuru • Neema Komba • Regina Asinde • Dilman Dila • Muthoni Garland • Davina Philomena Kawuma • Abraham T. Zere • Tim Baroraho • Bob G. Kisiki • Julius Ocwinyo • Acan Innocent Immaculate • Beatrice Lamwaka • Hilda J. Twongyeirwe
Daniel is in the twilight of his life, tormented by doubts, of cuckolding, illegitimate children, horrors of war and the inanity of all human activity. A miraculous childhood survivor of the Nazi prison camps at Bergen-Belsen, Daniel recounts how he is shipped to Canada when the war is over...
182 pages | 5.5" x 8.25' | ISBN 978-1-926716-57-2 (pbk.) | Softcover
THE WAR OF NONEXISTENT WOMEN by Jason Price Everett
'Nonexistence' represents the paradox at the pinnacle of the human mind, of evolved intelligence: the ability to conceive of something that is not real and does not exist. The word itself is a tribute to imagination.
PERESTROIKA: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth by João Cerqueira
398 pages | 5.5 x 8.5 | ISBN 978-1-926716-77-0(pbk.)
In the turbulent landscape of an alternate Europe lies the captivating tapestry of "Perestroika," a literary masterpiece that weaves together the threads of revenge, redemption, and catharsis against the backdrop of an imaginary country called Slavia. With a masterful narrative, this novel stands as a testament to the indomitable spirit of humanity in the face of political upheaval.
Finalist for the 2021 Eyland Awards, Finalist for Fiction Factory Chapter Novel Competition 2022, finalist in the 2023 Latino Book Awards, and winner of the 2023 HFC European Book of the Year.
THE MATCHSTICK GIRL brings LGBT undercurrents to nineteenth-century Russia, as our young protagonist struggles with class differences, schoolgirl relationships and her search for self-empowerment._x000D_
222 pages | 210mm x 148mm | ISBN 978-1-926716-81-7 (pbk.)
Estuaries, translated by Tiago Silva, brings to the English-speaking world one of the most powerful works of Portuguese neorealism: Esteiros by Soeiro Pereira Gomes.
“They were the sons of men who were never children…”
Discover a foundational novel of Portuguese neorealism — In "Estuaries", Tiago Silva’s translation brings the haunting beauty and political urgency of Soeiro Pereira Gomes’s original to today’s readers.
With lyrical clarity and historical urgency, Estuaries reintroduces a forgotten Europe and a timeless call for justice. This new translation is both faithful and fearless, reviving a classic for a new generation of readers who are unafraid to confront the past.
"Perfect for fans of social realism, European history, and international literature."
"A lost gem of Portuguese resistance literature enters the English canon."
Set in Montreal, Ensemble takes us through the throes of existential crises as lives and marriages are overturned by a man’s restless yearning.
A philosopher is suddenly forced to face the questions he lectures on when they materialize out of the theoretical and into the practical after he falls for a student in his class. Meanwhile his wife, an accomplished musician is left to deal with the disintegration of their marriage and the new silence that descends upon her life as she dissects her husband’s inner workings and confronts the object of his desire. Told in clinical honesty, Ensemble deconstructs love and relationships in the 21st century.
4.72 x 7.48 | 148 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-29-9 (pbk.) | Softcover
From hitch-hiking across the 49th parallel to plane trips to Montreal, road trips to Halifax, drinking in parkades and jamming in friends’ lofts, Unwanted Hopeless Romantic Morons captures the trials and disenchantment of a disconnected generation. Lost in the vastness of Canada, the “Dead-at-25s” isolated in suburbia are lured somnabulistically to cities where they find further alienation and disappointment.
"The prose flows, liquid with passion..." Levi Asher, Literary Kicks.
172 pages | 5 x 8 | ISBN 978-0-9809108-9-6 (pbk.) | Softcover
Rathwell’s writing is “a fistful of sentences written with the subtlety of a geisha and the terse certainty of stainless steel.” - John Olson, Author
“There must have been a bad bite. Something had gestated. He wasn’t imagining it. There were wet, frozen pebbles tumbling in his veins. There was a sugary sense of euphoria, a smell of orange blossoms, of piss, of diesel.”
God’s Wife and the Synonymous X, Jesse Chase's first novel follows the protoganist on his search for a new cultural and literary theory while he champions an ethics of self-recovery and rehabilitation of personal narrative in a world of masks, capitalism and oppression.
170 pages | 5.5 x 8 | ISBN 978-1-926716-43-5 | Softcover
Lock 7 is the highest and last lift up the historic Welland canal. In this literary novel, it is also the dominant metaphor for Leo’s final life epiphany. The one that always seems to come too late...
230 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-50-3 (pbk.) | Softcover
Suddenly thrust into the middle of a battle between evil and more evil that has been raging for centuries she learns of another world co-existing with ours, but invisible to her until that fateful day.
The Award-Winning, Best-Selling Series "Arielle Queen" by Michel Levesque
5 x 8. | 230 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-32-9 (pbk.) | Softcover
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
5 x 8 | 302 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-10-7(pbk.) | Hardcover
In a remote village of Laos, rival gangs plot to seize control of the land and exploit its resources for their own gain. But when their plans are threatened by Sithana's appearance, a deadly chain of events is set in motion that will test the limits of loyalty, courage, and love. As tensions rise and alliances shift, a web of corruption and deceit is revealed, and the villagers must band together to fight for their way of life.
“Through this fast-paced novel, replete with kidnappings, espionage and fugitive war criminals, Abraham Boyarsky captures the Chassidic communities, their lives and their voices.”
Sender Pleskin is a self-proclaimed trauma specialist dedicated to serving his Chassidic community and to ‘gently’ nudging it into modernity.
When a Bubmer Hasid child falls inexplicably into a coma, Sender and his team jump to action. Hunting down leads in his investigation, Sender follows the signs that he interprets to be Divine Providence as they lead them down a circuitous path that will test not only his faith, but all he was and is.
5. 5 x 8 | 228 pages| ISBN 978-1-926716-40-4 (pbk.) | Softcover
Call it America. Vast the tumble-rocket-particle-wave shows the world in a rush to arrive depart and become and forget and remember everything all at once. Call it history. Call it time and memory the way water is the measure of the clock your bones the measure of love. I mean everything passes. I said the earth is a sentry, everything passes and nothing escapes. Call it home; call it exile in a kingdom of rain. - Empire Burlesque, Charles Talkoff
276 pages | 5" x 8" | ISBN 978-1-926716-42-8 (pbk.) | Softcover
The Ministry of Ambiance, Fluffy-eared Generals, Special Agent Automatic Turpentine, Katzenberg’s Super Atomic Piston Ring, Mr. Jellybean and Agency men all vie for your thoughts. Welcome to a post-9/11 paranoid world that would have had Hoover dancing in his closet. In the finest tradition of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, comes a strong American author writing in the great American paranoiac’s voice as every page busts forth with a wild and elusive prose that takes the reader on a wild ride where anything becomes a possibility...
5 x 8 | 302 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-10-7
Price$24.88
300+ pages, 50+ contributors, 10+ countries
"This is not just a collection of poems and short stories; it is a granary of artistic abundance! For here, will you find a rich variety of masterfully crafted pieces in a range of style, including those that draw from the African oral storytelling tradition. It is a montage of pieces of literary art, curated in a manner that allows for the ‘strict grammarian’ forms of expression to coalesce with those given to poetic licentiousness."
Whichever your favourite genre is, this anthology of East African literature has delivered something that has not been served to readers in many years. It is a fitting gift to the lovers of literary art in this first quarter of the 21st century.
