100 Books Like AfroSF

Omenana to Infinity is an anthology of collected works formerly published in Omenana Magazine. The anthology is edited by Mazi Nwonwu and Chinelo Onwualu, like the magazine its stories are culled from. The duo also founded and edited the magazine which is the first African, exclusively speculative fiction magazine. It's important to me because it contains some of the earliest works of speculative short fiction by African writers I would read as an issue of a magazine and did a great lot in platforming speculative fiction writers on the continent. 

It contains work by some of the most brilliant speculative fiction writers on the continent and also expands on the title, Africanfuturism, in its Introduction by Nnedi Okorafor. She also happens to have a story in the book. Another of the stories in it, by Motswana writer Tlotlo Tsamaase won the 2021 Nommo award for short story and a number of works in it, like Egoli by Tendai Huchu also made recommended reading lists and Year's Best anthologies. The anthology itself was a finalist in the Locus award for best anthology.

It's the first of its kind, the first installment in a line of Year's Best African Speculative Fiction anthologies meant to spotlight the works of African writers and writers of African descent. Year's Best anthologies have been a genre thing for over 5 decades. This is an important installment in the development of African speculative short fiction. It was published by the editor as well in a small press he founded, Jembefola Press. The anthology made him the first African editor to be a Hugo award best editor finalist and a Locus award best editor and best anthology finalist.

Terra Incognita is an anthology of the Short Story Day Africa Prize. Published in 2015, it contains 19 speculative fiction stories charting the length and breadth of Africa. Its stories touch on folklore, colonialism, and a host of other topics. Published in 2015, it was one of the earlier anthologies along with the AfroSF anthology to check out, that heralded and inspired the new wave of anthologies coming out of the continent. 

I was expecting the quintessential and stereotypical forbidden romance, and instead, what I read was one of the best explorations of humanity (in its various forms) I’ve ever encountered.

The novel explores how AI and androids might impact society in terms of art, politics, personal relationships, and much more. The author also has a way of making music important and beautiful – a difficult thing to do when it comes to being restricted to using text.

This book has been timely as policymakers in the carbon-intensive economy of South Africa is in the throes of a developing framework and plan for implementing a just transition to a low carbon economy.

It brings some of the best thinkers and doers in science, policy and academia to unpack the key shifts – social, economic, and technological and builds on thinking in earlier works on transitions.

A great journey through how and why corporate South Africa is responding to the green transition.

It features case studies of leading national and multi-national corporations charting the sometimes bumpy road to integrating sustainability in business models.

From retail, energy, finance, insurance, and banking sectors businesses share the highs and lows of going green. 

I read this novel in university in a course taught brilliantly by the scholar WH New. It was the first time I understood the complexity of layers in great literature. Ostensibly about a businessman who buys a farm, it encompasses race relations, power in all its guises, sexuality, relationships to nature, and how character influences personal destiny. Written with outrage and compassion.

I kept The Conservationist in mind when I wrote my own book as an example of what a novel could be, but more than that, it taught me how to think about the world in a new way.

The ex-pat novel has become something of a South African genre, what with many young people searching for new opportunities overseas, in flight from the old repressive racist regime or, latterly, the corrupt, inefficient new regime. In his debut collection of short stories, The Alphabet of Birds, Naudé referred to "the diaspora of fearful, grim, white children from South Africa," and this novel is another variation on that theme. It’s easy to fall into stereotype and cliché, and part of Naudé’s achievement is to remake the familiar scenario into something wholly original, in an account of his main character’s search for the missing reel of a film made by a Jewish filmmaker in Hitler’s Germany.

The novel contains vivid accounts of life in a ‘squat’ in London, as well as the grim atmosphere of an East German film school under Russian occupation – contrasting with the hedonistic excess of… show more.

Bosman is one of South Africa’s finest short story writers and these funny, gentle, poignant tales are set in the wild northern reaches of the country where farmers struggle to make ends meet. I am particularly drawn to the way Bosman captures the landscape of bushveld and Kalahari, of wild animals and a hardy pioneering way of life. It’s also a corner of South Africa that I love to go on safari to enjoy the Big Game experience, encountering elephants, rhinos, lions, and the like…