"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
“For now, there is Baldie Fitzgerald. He doesn't know it yet, but he too will be changed.”
Sarah. On a wall in a house in Florida she collects postcards and photos from a hundred years ago: Baldie, the young man with one short leg; Ora, the girl with a wandering eye; Jack the chairboy: all three come alive under Sarah's probing gaze.
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...
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
An American jet fighter pilot is shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. Twenty years later, his body is found. An American team travels to the jungles of Laos to recover the remains of the pilot for burial at home. But upon arriving, they must deal with corrupt government officials, a police chief out on a personal vendetta and suspicious, reluctant villagers who believe it is their sacred duty to conceal the remains of the pilot from them.
5 x 8 | 296 pages | ISBN 978-1-926716-36-7 (pbk.) | Softcover
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.
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.”
This book is a response to ongoing literary trends: the treatment of words as images in art writing; the evolution of criticism as a form of creativity; and contemporary literary narrative that treats fiction as the greatest truth.
"All the fireworks of James Joyce's Ulysses its sleight of hand, and the streaming consciousness of Faulkner are at play..."
"...a unique roller coaster, and it's not one you want to get off."
--Author, Mark Jay Mirsky
Haystacks Kane is a 607-pound professional wrestler and dedicated butterfly collector. He’s been preyed upon, his innate kindness and gentle good nature harvested by unscrupulous promoters and conniving managers; an ex-wife who keeps him on the hook for alimony; fellow denizens of the sordid netherworld he inhabits; and the raucous ravenous crowds with a thirst for violent cheap thrills. After suffering a severe injury in the ring, Haystacks lies in his hospital bed, unable to speak and struggling to uncover the deeper truths of his existence.
Schlam’s exceptional talent as a writer shines through in this novel, as he skillfully weaves together a tapestry of voices, perspectives, and emotions to create a powerful and thought-provoking literary work that is sure to leave a lasting impression on readers.
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.
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
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 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_
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
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
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
Price$54.54
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.
