‘Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa’ is now on sale from Catalyst Press!

From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart. 

Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception—the blurred lines between these forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans.

Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones … flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us … visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul. Click here to get your copy!

Praise for Captive

“With Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa, Short Story Day Africa once again showcases what is at the heart of African writing — bold creativity and diversity, proudly unapologetic, and deserving of being read across the globe.”— Karen Jennings, Booker Prize longlisted author of An Island

“With Captive, Short Story Day Africa upends our expectations of how a short fiction anthology should be put together. In here, all good things come in three. We linger—even luxuriate—in the writers’ imaginations for longer than a single story, witnessing in real time the thrilling shapeshifting of craft, vision, and preoccupation. Televised suicide pacts unfold in unliveable presents. Lovers leave because they want to stay. Girls with three faces defy the limits of space and time. In coastal towns, mountaintop villages, and frazzled memories: stories within stories within stories unfurl in wondrous heres and hereafters. The stories in this anthology, like all good stories, defy cursory summary. And like all good stories: they require digging into. What a wonderful addition to the literary landscape, what a delectable survey of the breadth, and indeed depth, of the African literary imaginary.” — Idza Luhumyo, 2022 Caine Prize Winner

“Relationships—nurtured and betrayed, challenged and discarded—dominate the bulk of the narratives, presented in various genres, including contemporary, dystopic, speculative, even the story-in-verse.” — Booklist

“Zadok and Moffett have gathered some seriously skilled, insightful authors. Those authors have poured unflinching and intense visions into these pages. The journeys awaiting you are profound.” — Lightspeed Magazine

Captive: New Short Fiction from Africa is a collection of stories by the 11 writers who completed the SSDA Inkubator, which is supported by the British Council Cultural Exchange programme, which supports cultural organisations, festivals, artists and creatives between the countries of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and the United Kingdom (UK) to create art, build networks, collaborate and develop markets and share artists’ work with audiences.

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