Disruption: New Short Fiction from Africa

Including 2022 Caine Prize winning story ＂Five Years Next Sunday＂ by Idza Luhumyo, 2022 Nommo Award shortlisted story ＂Shelter＂ by Mzobi Haimbe and 2023 O’Henry Prize for Short Fiction winner ＂Mother＂ by Jacob M’hango

This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. These evocative, often prescient, stories showcase new and emerging writers from across Africa to investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more.

In Disruption, authors from across Africa use their stories to explore the concept of change--environmental, political, and physical--and the power or impotence of the human race to innovate our way through it. From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s ＂Before We Die Unwritten,＂ to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s ＂Static,＂ to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s ＂Shelter,＂ Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster.

Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present.

Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.