Black Speculative fiction
Faber & Faber A Wreath for Udomo Faber Editions
Book Synopsis''The forerunner of an entire school of African literary art.' Sunday TimesThose men who are history now; did they feel like this? A 1950s Hampstead pub; a freezing night. Lois can''t tear her eyes away from the haunted, restless African man in the corner. Over brandy and stew, she discovers he is in awe of her friend, Panafrica''s greatest political writer and fighter. Their meeting inducts this stranger, Udomo, into London''s revolutionary community of exiled African activists: the start of a life-changing journey. Amidst the internal politics and love affairs, Udomo is inspired by other leaders'' independence uprisings; but when he returns to his native land to overthrow the colonial oppressors, his idealism is put to the ultimate test ... Inspired by Peter Abrahams'' befriending of future African heads of state in mid-century London, A Wreath for Udomo (1956) is a radical lost classic, unforgettably expTrade Review'An African writer, a writer of the world, who opened up in South Africa a path of exploration for us, the writers who have followed the trail he bravely blazed.' - Nadine Gordimer'Abrahams explored with sensitivity and passion, the injustices of apartheid and the complexities of racial politics . An important literary voice.' - New York Times'He writes with vividness and great dignity . The forerunner of an entire school of African literary art.' - Sunday Times'With all that has been written about Africa, hardly anything has been said about the most significant people of all - the African leaders, revolutionaries one moment, Prime Ministers the next. This unusual novel, written with a close and sympathetic knowledge, gives a fascinating insight into these men.' - Observer'Intelligent and exciting . Written with skill and sympathy.' - TLS
£9.49
Pluto Press Ere Roosevelt Came
Book SynopsisStrange and speculative, this 1934 pan-Africanist novel conveys the complexities of Black internationalism in the interwar yearsTrade Review'Bilbija and Lubin have made an outstanding contribution to literary Pan-Africanism by reintroducing the obscure Pan-African novel of Duse Mohamed Ali. This once influential Pan-Africanist ... a significant influencer, introduced Islam and the history of Africa to members of the UNIA. His novel and the accompanying essays make a welcome addition to the field.' -- Rey Bowen, University of Chichester'A compelling addition to the canon of Pan-African creative writing from the 1930s. The engaging, informative essays by the editors show how Ali brought to life core themes of African American literature for readers in colonial Africa.' -- Stephanie Newell, George M. Bodman Professor of English, Yale University'Ali's creative intellectual productivity was a major force in early twentieth-century pan-Africanism. The introductory material by Alex Lubin and Marina Bilbija offer essential tools for today's readers to appreciate this extraordinary, yet previously inaccessible, novel and its author. Reading this text through the multi-continental circuits of both its author's travels and the novel's protagonists, we recalibrate our own grid of pan-African literary productivity.' -- Dr. Leslie James, Queen Mary University of London'In recovering this daringly speculative serial novel by Duse Mohamed Ali, Lubin and Bilbija have excavated a landmark of literary Pan-Africanism while capturing the vibrancy of transatlantic Black periodical networks in the 1930s.' -- Brent Hayes Edwards, author of 'The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the rise of Black Internationalism'Table of Contentsi. Duse Mohamed Ali, West African print culture and an emergent pan-African literary formation ii. Duse Mohamed Ali in the history of pan-Africanism, pan-Islamism, and the Third World movement 1. Ere Roosevelt Came Appendix of other writings by Ali
£17.09
West Margin Press Black Empire: Or, Physical Geography as Modified
Book SynopsisWhat would happen if Marcus Garvey had achieved his dreams by force? Satirizing one of the most influential figures of twentieth century Black America, George S. Schuyler’s Black Empire is a remarkable look into the complicated politics of race and class. After witnessing a murder in Harlem, the promising young Black journalist, Carl Slater, is kidnapped by the incredibly charismatic but deranged Dr. Belsidus. Having secretly formed a Black Internationale, the doctor has plans to upset alliances between Europe and the United States when the time is right. As Carl slowly discovers the depth of the doctor’s insanity and witnesses the fallout from the ensuing revolution, he watches as the dream of an Africa for Africans is fully realized but questions the cost.Professionally typeset with a beautifully designed cover, this edition of Black Empire reimagines a classic of satire and Black speculative fiction for the modern reader.
£9.49
Graphic Arts Books Light Ahead for the Negro
Book SynopsisLight Ahead for the Negro (1904) is a novel by Edward A. Johnson. Written while Johnson was working as an assistant U. S. Attorney in North Carolina, the novel is a groundbreaking work of speculative fiction and Afrofuturism from a pioneering African American politician and lawyer. “I glanced through the floor but the earth was almost indistinguishable, and was disappearing rapidly. There was absolutely nothing that I could do. I looked up again at my friend, who was clambering up rather clumsily, I remember thinking at the moment. […] Involuntarily, I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, he was gone! My feelings were indescribable. I commenced to lose consciousness, owing to the altitude and the ship was ascending more rapidly every moment. Finally I became as one dead.” The son of an abolitionist applies to work at a school for African American children in Georgia. In June 1906, he joins a wealthy friend on a flight from New York City to Mexico, boarding an experimental airship at a West 59th Street pier. When an instrument failure sends them spiraling into the upper atmosphere, the narrator loses consciousness. One hundred years later, he lands on a lawn in Georgia, awakening to discover a utopian society in which anti-blackness has been completely eradicated. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Edward A. Johnson’s Light Ahead for the Negro is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
£7.01
Graphic Arts Books The Comet
Book SynopsisThe Comet (1920) is a science fiction story by W. E. B. Du Bois. Written while the author was using his role at The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, to publish emerging black artists of the Harlem Renaissance, The Comet is a pioneering work of speculative fiction which imagines a catastrophic event not only decimating New York City, but bringing an abrupt end to white supremacy. “How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was high-noon—Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down, then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in his limbs.”Sent to the vault to retrieve some old records, bank messenger Jim Davis emerges to find a city descended into chaos. A comet has passed overhead, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere. All of lower Manhattan seems frozen in time. It takes him a few moments to see the bodies, piled into doorways and strewn about the eerily quiet streets. When he comes to his senses, he finds a wealthy woman asking for help. Soon, it becomes clear that they could very well be the last living people in the planet, that the fate of civilization depends on their ability to come together, not as black and white, but as two human beings. But how far will this acknowledgment take them?With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W. E. B. Du Bois’ The Comet is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
£7.01
Graphic Arts Books Blake; Or, The Huts of America
Book SynopsisBlake; Or, The Huts of America (1859-1862) is a novel by Martin Delany. Serialized in The Anglo-African Magazine, the novel has had a complicated publishing history due to the loss of the physical issues in which the final chapters appeared in May 1862. Despite this, Blake; Or, The Huts of America is considered a brilliantly unique work of fiction from an author known more for his activism and political investment in Black nationalism. Through the eyes of his hero Henry Blake, Delany envisions a future of revolutionary possibility and radical resistance to slavery and oppression. Though it was largely ignored upon publication, the novel gained traction with the Black Power and Pan-Africanist Movements in the twentieth century and has earned praise from such scholars as Samuel R. Delany, who described it as “about as close to an sf-style alternate history novel as you can get.” Born free, Henry Blake is stolen into slavery from his family in the West Indies and taken to the Mississippi plantation of Colonel Stephen Franks. There, he marries Maggie, a fellow slave who happens to be the illegitimate daughter of Franks himself. When Maggie is sold away following a dispute with the master and his wife, Henry vows not only to find her, but to lead every last slave to freedom. He soon escapes, journeying in secret across the American South and interviewing enslaved African Americans along his way, learning the strategies of resistance and struggle they use every day for survival. As his reputation grows, Blake begins to organize a small uprising intended as only the first step of his radical revolutionary plan. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Martin Delany’s Blake; Or, The Huts of America is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.
£7.59
Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd Creatures of Passage
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022.Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash-reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw-has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man," who somehow appears each time he goes there.When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door one day bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face both the family she abandoned and what frightens her most when she looks in the mirror.Creatures of Passage beautifully threads together the stories of Nephthys, Dash, and others both living and dead. Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington, D.C., filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim themselves.Trade ReviewIn this beautifully written and gloriously conceived novel, Morowa Yejide reveals her mastery yet again. This novel is both contemporary and ancient, frightening and stirring, playful and wise, an unforgettable blurring of reality and genres from its haunted Plymouth automobile to the mysteries in the fog in this alternate America and hidden Washington, DC. With its lyricism and bold imagination, Creatures of Passage is unlike anything you've ever read. * Tananarive Due, author of Ghost Summer: Stories *Comparisons will be made to Toni Morrison and they will be well founded, but Morowa Yejide is in a class of her own with Creatures of Passage, a mesmerizing tale about love, loss, revenge, death, and restoration that hovers close to the edge of fantasy yet is deeply grounded in history and in a reality easily recognizable in the contemporary world. * Elizabeth Nunez, author of Even in Paradise *Although set in our recent past, Creatures of Passage is at heart a powerful ghost story about people haunted by the shadows of time and the shadows of blood. In the pages of this novel we discover a world that is fully recognizable, as concrete and real as Toni Morrison's Ohio, but also as fantastic and mythical as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo. That said, make no mistake: Morowa Yejide is a masterful storyteller in her own right, able to spin and sustain an inventive tale illuminated by a singular truth, that death is 'another form of living. * Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank *
£9.49
Jacaranda Books Art Music Ltd Creatures of Passage
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022.Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash-reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw-has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man," who somehow appears each time he goes there.When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door one day bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face both the family she abandoned and what frightens her most when she looks in the mirror.Creatures of Passage beautifully threads together the stories of Nephthys, Dash, and others both living and dead. Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington, D.C., filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim themselves.Trade ReviewIn this beautifully written and gloriously conceived novel, Morowa Yejide reveals her mastery yet again. This novel is both contemporary and ancient, frightening and stirring, playful and wise, an unforgettable blurring of reality and genres from its haunted Plymouth automobile to the mysteries in the fog in this alternate America and hidden Washington, DC. With its lyricism and bold imagination, Creatures of Passage is unlike anything you've ever read. * Tananarive Due, author of Ghost Summer: Stories *Comparisons will be made to Toni Morrison and they will be well founded, but Morowa Yejide is in a class of her own with Creatures of Passage, a mesmerizing tale about love, loss, revenge, death, and restoration that hovers close to the edge of fantasy yet is deeply grounded in history and in a reality easily recognizable in the contemporary world. * Elizabeth Nunez, author of Even in Paradise *Although set in our recent past, Creatures of Passage is at heart a powerful ghost story about people haunted by the shadows of time and the shadows of blood. In the pages of this novel we discover a world that is fully recognizable, as concrete and real as Toni Morrison's Ohio, but also as fantastic and mythical as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo. That said, make no mistake: Morowa Yejide is a masterful storyteller in her own right, able to spin and sustain an inventive tale illuminated by a singular truth, that death is 'another form of living. * Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank *
£15.29
Three Rooms Press The Unvarnished Gary Phillips: A Mondo Pulp
Book SynopsisAward-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics. Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the ’hood, masked vigilantes, and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare. Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, and author of One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, said this about pulp. “The most common definition of pulp is it’s fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as we’ve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization: not just action, but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds.” As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings (includes 4 original illustrations by cover artist Adam Shaw).Trade ReviewHigh Praise for The Unvarnished Gary Phillips“Phillips (One-Shot Harry) carves out a niche for himself in this eccentric collection. . . . Readers looking for action-heavy popcorn entertainment will certainly find it here.” —Publishers Weekly “The Unvarnished Gary Phillips is a fabulous exploration of the career of a true trailblazer in the crime fiction universe. Gary paved the way for a lot of us writers of color with his fearless artistry and sharp dialogue and his endless wit and wisdom. A magnificent collection.” —S.A. Cosby, best-selling author, Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland“The Unvarnished Gary Phillips is a blast of a collection by the wizard of pulpy crime stories set in the past and far into the future. Phillips gives us smart-ass characters punching their way through kick-ass action scenes. An incredible read!” —Rachel Howzell Hall, New York Times and Wall Sreet Journal bestselling author “Chaotic, funny, insightful and faster than a blast of speeding bullets. Into pulp fiction? Unvarnished is your Shangri La.” —Joe Ide, best-selling author, the IQ Series“Few people know pulp like Gary Phillips, who is not only a student of the genre, but a master. The Unvarnished Gary Phillips shows him in top form and with the verve and grit that are essential to the best pulp and hardboiled tales. I had a blast reading these. You will, too.” —Alex Segura, best-selling award-winning author, Secret Identity “Pulp is the jazz of literature, and Gary Phillips is it’s impresario—riffing and improvising on themes from mean streets to the phantasmagorical in seventeen compositions designed to flip your wig!” —Christopher Chambers, author, Scavenger, StandalonePast Praise for Gary Phillips For One-shot Harry “For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer.” —Lee Child“Phillips is a storyteller first, and the social chronicling never becomes didactic or overtakes the narrative.” The New York Times Book Review For Matthew Henson and The Ice Temple of Harlem “A wildly entertaining extravaganza.”―Booklist (Starred) For The Obama Inheritance “Cheerfully strange and purposefully bizarre.” ―The Washington Post “So sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination.” ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air For Astonishing Heroes: Shades of Justice “Gary Phillips is the man. . . . Hand-to-hand combat action, demons and magic to boot, internal dialogue, buckets of high-caliber bullets, plus scantily clad women and the heroes they love. Add a Black Dynamite blaxploitative filter and you’re in.” —Ebony “A book for anyone who remains nostalgic for the golden age of Toei films, blaxploitation movies, and lusty grindhouse cinema.” —Superhero NovelsTable of Contents1) Demon of the Track 2) Comstock’s Edge3) The Kwanzaa Initiative4) Thus Strikes the Black Pimpernel5) No Room! No Room!6) Fangs of the Fire Serpent7) The Darklight Gizmo Matter8) Shaderoc the Soul Shaker9) Grag’s Last Escape10) Bret Khodo, Agent of C.O.D.E.11) Enter the Silencer 12) Tobin and Gagarin13) Matthew Henson and the Treasure of the Queen of Sheba14) Tacos de Cazuela con Smith & Wesson15) Desal Plant No. 916) I, Truck17) Phantasmo and the Vault of Heaven
£12.59
