Tag Archive for: colonialism

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Wild Fictions | Amitav Ghosh

 

Amitav Ghosh’s superb essay collection maps the turbulent waters in which human survival, climate breakdown and colonial history converge, and the migrant’s smartphone becomes the talisman of a “global citizenry of desire.”

“Climate change and migration are in fact two cognate aspects of the same thing,” he writes: the outcome of a frenzy of production and consumption in an age of disaster capitalism, imperial violence, and the delusion of “neutral” progress.

Wild Fictions is a timely atlas of entangled destinies, highlighting the increasingly endangered symbiosis of the human, the more-than-human, and the planet we call home.

 

The Old Drift | Namwali Serpell

 

The Old Drift is the debut novel by Zambian author Namwali Serpell. It follows the lives of three interwoven families in four generations from colonial times to modern Zambia. In this epic story a swarm of mosquitos narrate in a repeated ‘Greek Chorus’, giving us a view of human history from a species that knows our skin and blood. It has been described as the Great Zambian Novel and reviewed for The New York Times Review of Books by Salman Rushdie.

In The Old Drift, Serpell experiments with different points of view introducing extraordinary characters, “a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, and homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines. It is a playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. The moral? To err is human. The Old Drift is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time.”  Winner of the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Archipelago | Monique Roffey

Inspired by the flooding of her brother’s house in Trinidad in 2008, British-Trinidadian Monique Roffey’s novel is an immersive account of a father’s flight to the Galapagos after a catastrophic flood kills his infant son. With its sharp insights into the legacy of colonialism and the havoc wreaked by a warming planet, Archipelago is both a love letter to the quixotic Caribbean Sea and an electrifying portrayal of life lived on the front line of the climate and ecological emergency.

‘There’s a warmth to this book, an exuberance and a wisdom, that makes the experience of reading it feel not just pleasurable but somehow instructive. It’s funny, sometimes bitingly poignant. A brilliant piece of storytelling.” — Andrew Miller, author of Pure, winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2011.

Read our Librarian’s top climate change fiction picks by heading to our Fiction section’s

The Nerves and Their Endings | Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

The body as a measuring tool for planetary harm. A nervous system under increasing stress.

In this collection that moves from the personal to the political and back again, writer, activist, and migrant Jessica Gaitán Johannesson explores how we respond to crises. She draws parallels between an eating disorder and environmental neurosis, examines the perils of an activist movement built on non-parenthood, dissects the privilege of how we talk about hope, and more. The synapses that spark between these essays connect essential narratives of response and responsibility, community and choice, belonging and bodies.

 

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson discussed her book The Nerves and Their Endings with Writers Rebel’s Toby Litt back in November 2022. Read their conversation and learn more about the book here.

The Mermaid of Black Conch | Monique Roffey

‘His stomach trembled with desire and fear and wonder because he knew what he’d seen. A woman. Right there, in the water.’ On a quiet day, near the Caribbean island of Black Conch, a mermaid raises her barnacled head from the flat grey sea. She is attracted by David, a fisherman waiting for a catch, singing to himself with his guitar. Aycayia the mermaid has been living in the vast ocean all alone for centuries.

When Aycayia is caught and dragged ashore by American tourists, David rescues her with the aim of putting her back in the ocean. But it is soon clear that the mermaid is already transforming into a woman.

This is the story of their love affair, of an island and of the great wide sea.

‘Mesmerising’ Maggie O’Farrell
‘A unique talent’ Bernadine Evaristo
‘Not your standard mermaid’ Margaret Atwood

 

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