Ernest Ogunyemi

A mixed-race woman’s search for her father in a fictional country.

Poda-Poda Stories is a digital platform for writers from Sierra Leone, whose literary scene was disrupted by a decade-long civil war and is now regenerating with great promise. “I started it to look inward and celebrate our own writing,” says editor Ngozi Cole in this interview. “What was missing was building bridges and connections.”

The novel—the first in his epic fantasy trilogy, Nameless Republic, based on 15th century West African empires—has been called “rich, wild, and occasionally dizzying.”

Three Africans are in the running this year: Damon Galgut for The Promise, Nadifa Mohamed for The Fortune Men, and Karen Jennings for An Island.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head will arrive 11 years after her first chapbook Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth.

“Only one universal ideology answers human cruelties, the excesses of power, bigotries, social inequalities and alienation: Literature,” wrote Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature, who turned 87 this week.

The Zimbabwean writer’s “blockbuster novel about the chaos of revolution, presented as an uncannily recognizable anthropomorphic allegory,” will arrive nine years after her Booker Prize-shortlisted debut We Need New Names.

The Nigeria-based writer and editor is shortlisted for his story “Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon,” which has been recognized by a slew of international science fiction awards in the U.S. and the U.K.