Books

The Shipikisha Club x Mubanga Kalimamukwento

324 pp. July 23, 2026, Cassava Republic Press. Fiction/Zambia. Sali has murdered her husband. She’s the only real witness to his death—it was just the two…

Jacqueline

Nearshore x Steve Hawk

352 pp. August 18, 2026, Viking. Fiction. This review first appeared in The Sunday Long Read, August 30, 2026. Jamie Palmer, a lifeguard and avid surfer…

Jacqueline

The Cut Line x Carolina Pihelgas, Darcy Hurford

142 pp. February 3, 2026, World Editions. Fiction. This review first appeared in The Sunday Long Read, August 16, 2026. Right at the beginning of this…

Jacqueline

World Editions: Read the World A to Z

World Editions has just launched a new series, Read the World A to Z, with books from Argentina, Belgium and China. From World Editions: Read the…

Jacqueline

Eco24: The Year’s Best Speculative Fiction, edited by Marissa Van Uden

312 pp. November 18, 2025, Violet Lichen Books. Speculative/eco-fiction. In Marissa Van Uden’s introduction to this collection, billed as one of ‘nature-based speculative fiction,’ readers will…

Jacqueline

Excerpt from The Whispering Jacarandas x Zahirra Dayal

HRB is delighted to share this excerpt from Zahirra Dayal’s The Whispering Jacarandas, expected from Fly On The Wall Press on August 28, 2026. Fly on…

Jacqueline

Book Launch: Dr Brooks Marmon’s Edson Sithole: Law, Liberation and the Cost of Dissent

HRB attended the launch of Brooks Marmon’s Edson Sithole: Law, Liberation and the Cost of Dissent, an important and unique collection of selected writings by Edson…

Jacqueline

The Unrepentant: Short Stories x Sharmini Aphrodite

196 pp. November 1, 2025, Gaudy Boy. Fiction anthology. There’s something particularly meaningful about learning Global South history through fiction or non-fiction from the region in…

Jacqueline

A Review of ‘The Visit And Other Stories’ by Ebele Mọgọ Akumbu Uche

The Visit and Other Stories, Ebele Mọgọ, 2026; Masobe, pp 187 According to conventional wisdom, people are wired for success either in the arts or in…

Ifowodo Examines a Nation’s Dysfunction In “Why Does God Need A Gun?” – Sima Essien

Why Does God Need A Gun?, Ogaga Ifowodo, Masobe Books, 2026, 116 pages Over the past two decades, there has emerged a growing body of Nigerian…

In Jazz Negotiations, Echezonachukwu Nduka Scores a Symphony Out of Silence – Sima Essien

Jazz Negotiations, Echezonachukwu Nduka, Masobe Books, 2026, 112 pages   “What is life without jazz, without rhythm and harmonies tearing down walls?” —Echezonachukwu Nduka, Jazz on…

Everywhere Burns: On James Ngwu Eze’s Unbind Me Now – Ugochukwu Anadị

Unbind Me Now by James Ngwu Eze, Masobe Books 2026, 160 pages  A burning paper unfurls to reveal the words Unbind Me Now, boldened and capitalized,…

Despair and Hope in Adedayo Agarau’s “The Years of Blood” – Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera

Sometimes the work of an artist is a function of an event or an experience that has stayed with for a long time. And they sometimes…

A Review of ‘Tunde Onakoya, the Chess Champion’ by Lola Shoneyin – Akumbu Uche

Tunde Onakoya, The Chess Champion Lola Shoneyin, 2025; Tanja, pp 59  As the enthusiastic audience reception to media like the Disney movie Queen of Katwe and…

Yahoo! Yahoo! – Ikenna Okehʼs Portrait of A Flawed Society – Sima Essien

Yahoo! Yahoo! by  Ikenna Okeh, Linea House, 2025, 201 pp Before Ramon Abbas was snared by the FBI in 2020, he was better known on Instagram…

Defiling Our Forests: Véronique Tadjo’s “In the Company of Men” in the season of Ebola – Joshua I. Mokwuah

In May, the WHO confirmed a new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As of 5th July, 1582 cases and 508 deaths have been…

Living Sustainably Here: African Perspectives on the SDGs: A Review

Introduction In an era where the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are often discussed through Western-centric lenses, Living Sustainably Here: African Perspectives on the SDGs,…

anshita

Sarah Uheida Wins 2026 Ingrid Jonker Prize for Not This Tender

Dryad Press is proud to announce that Sarah Uheida has won the 2026 Ingrid Jonker Prize for her debut poetry collection, Not This Tender. The award…

anshita

Ugandan Newspapers Hold Political Leaders In Double-Binds

In 2011, Rebecca Kadaga became the first female speaker of Uganda’s unicameral parliament, raising hopes for the position of women in Uganda. Five years later, in…

anshita

Chenjerai Mabhiza

AFRICAN STUDIES LIBRARIAN AT MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Chenjerai Mabhiza is African Studies Librarian at Michigan State University (MSU), MI, USA. Prior to joining the MSU, Chenjerai…

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EASTERN AFRICAN LITERARY AND PUBLISHING NETWORKS CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Following a successful Call for Papers, the Eastern African Literary and Publishing Networks in the 1960s and 1970s conference, will be hosted at University of Nairobi…

anshita

AJI 2027 Call for New Journals

In 2025, Pluto Journals and African Books Collective (ABC) launched the African Journals Initiative working with a growing community of no-fee (‘diamond’) Open Access (OA) social…

anshita

Mandela Day & the New Botswana Notes and Records Issue

In this newsletter, we would like to shed some light on Mandela Day, celebrated annually on 18 July, as an opportunity to reflect on the enduring legacy…

anshita

Exactitude as Feeling: On Deborah Seddon’s Magnitude

Charged with intimacy yet articulated through an institutional and unforgiving language, Deborah Seddon’s Magnitude resists any impulse to elevate or soften the scene, remaining instead with…

anshita

The Sabi Prize, for Secondary School Students in Nigeria, Announces Inaugural Winners

Founded by Chukwuka Odigbo and Dawn Chinagorom-Abiakalam, and judged by Adachioma Ezeano and Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, the ₦2.95 million ($2,165) Sabi Prize for Critical Reading and…

Paula Willie-Okafor

OCM Presents: Essays from The Sabi Prize for Critical Reading and Writing

Up to 220 Nigerian senior secondary school students entered for the inaugural Sabi Prize, worth ₦2.95 million ($2,165). Their task? To analyze a chapter from Buchi…

Paula Willie-Okafor

“Resist Containment”: Iheoma Uzomba on Interdisciplinary Poetry and Winning the Evaristo Prize

A month after her production Pretty Dangerous: Four Acts on Womanhood wrapped in Canada, the Nigerian artist took home African poetry’s top honour. Her practice is…

Oluwatobi Adedayo

“Disability and the Grammar of Presence in Versus Versus”

In “poems that refuse containment, that arrive in waves, splintering, alive,” 100 Deaf, Disabled, and Neurodivergent writers from around the world give grammar to the “illness”…

Iheoma Uzomba

Afabwaje Kurian Grows Her Gbagyi Roots

The Gbagyi are an ethnic minority in Nigeria’s vastly diverse Northern Central region, with scant representation in mainstream arts and literature. With Before the Mango Ripens,…

Open Country Mag

Inside the Cutting Room of Nollywood’s Highest-Grossing Film Editor

Behind Funke Akindele’s 7.2-billion-naira box office dominance is Valentine Chukwuma, her top editor at Scene One Productions. In an industry that overlooks underdog talents, the 31-year-old,…

Oluwatobi Adedayo

The Digital Crusades of Ikhide Ikheloa

The Nigerian social critic riled up online controversies through blunt, unsparing commentary on African literature, politics, and establishment culture. His style has been criticized as abrasive,…

Victor Ebubechukwu Orji

The Rovingheights Bestseller List 2025: Presented by Open Country Mag

Releasing the fourth annual compilation of the only bestseller list in Nigerian literature: comprising the Top 100 books of the year, alongside the Top 50 in…

Otosirieze

The JRB Fiction Issue! (Vol. 9, Issue 3, December 2025)

Wamuwi Mbao • Makhosazana Xaba • Simon van Schalkwyk • Khadija Tracey Heeger • Sean Jacobs • Barbara Boswell • Kevin Goddard • Muthi Nhlema •…

Jennifer Malec

‘A reluctant, complicated love story spanning the globe and a myriad natural disasters’—Barbara Boswell reviews Ice Shock by Elleke Boehmer

Barbara Boswell reviews Elleke Boehmer’s Ice Shock, a novel saturated with extremes of love and increasingly calamitous climate events. ‘This was the last thing she needed,…

Barbara Boswell

[Sponsored] Listen to an excerpt from Cursed Daughters—the glittering follow-up to the award-winning bestseller My Sister, the Serial Killer

Cursed Daughters—the highly anticipated new novel from Oyinkan Braithwaite—is out now from Jonathan Ball Publishers! Braithwaite is a Nigerian–British novelist and writer. Her first novel, My…

The JRB

‘Always in search of uncompromising honesty in a compromised and compromising world’—Kevin Goddard reviews Kelwyn Sole’s latest collection of poetry, What is Owed?

Kevin Goddard reviews What is Owed? by Kelwyn Sole—a poet’s summing up of a life dedicated both to verse and to activism in South Africa. What…

Kevin Goddard

Can we engage with power without being corrupted by it? Sean Jacobs reviews Mahmood Mamdani’s new book, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State

Sean Jacobs reviews Slow Poison by Mahmood Mamdani, a rich and textured account of Ugandan and postcolonial African politics, and a layered personal history. Slow Poison:…

Sean Jacobs

[Sponsored] A chilling portrait of a shadow state—Kyle Cowan exposes 12 of South Africa’s deadliest cartels in Mafia Land

Penguin Random House SA has shared an excerpt from Mafia Land: Inside South Africa’s Darkest Cartels, in which multi-award-winning journalist Kyle Cowan rips open the terrifying truth…

The JRB

‘Performing poetry is a naked affair, but I’d rather be naked than take up residence behind a mask’—Khadija Tracey Heeger in conversation with Makhosazana Xaba

This is the tenth in a series of long-form interviews by Patron Makhosazana Xaba to be hosted on The JRB, which focus on contemporary collections by…

Makhosazana Xaba

‘What happens when one person’s truth is another’s blank stare?’—Muthi Nhlema chats to Ivor W Hartmann about his ZamaShort short story ‘Piss Corpse’

Muthi Nhlema and Ivor W Hartmann discuss trust, inspiration, writer’s block, and Nhlema’s latest work ‘Piss Corpse’, which was selected to be the debut story for…

Ivor W Hartmann