Midnight in the Morgue and Other Stories
₦10,000.00
An undocumented immigrant returns home after facing the indignities of the American Dream working as a washer of the dead, only to be met with a tragedy. A child struggles to come to terms with the fate of their beloved one-eyed chicken Otuanya – treated as a family pet but destined for the cooking pot. A family lives in fear of the dreaded Shadow Fever that haunts their town, keeping them trapped indoors after sunset or risk falling to an eternal sleep. From realistic explorations of family life, including parenthood and infidelity, to gritty noir and fantastical horror, the stories collected here are a testament to the endless imagination and possibilities of African literature. These witty, provocative and compulsively readable stories grapple with themes of feminism, patriarchy, class and exploitation, showcasing the role of the writer as an astute observer of life. This anthology is a generous offering, a feast of diverse, delectable narratives, with something for everyone.
Femi Kayode works in advertising and has written for stage and screen. While studying for an MA in Creative Writing – Crime Fiction at the University of East Anglia, he wrote his first novel, Lightseekers (Bloomsbury 2021), which won the Little, Brown/UEA Award for Crime Fiction in 2018. Lightseekers was selected as a Best Crime Novel of the Month by The Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times and Irish Times, was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month. His second novel, Gaslight (Bloomsbury 2023) was a Zoe Ball Radio 2 Book Club selection, a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month and was shortlisted for the Ian Flemming Steel Dagger. Femi lives in Windhoek, Namibia.
Karen Jennings is a South African author whose novel An Island was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Her most recent novel, Crooked Seeds, came out in 2024. She is currently writer-in-residence as a post-doctoral fellow at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP), Stellenbosch University, where she explores history through fiction. Karen is also co-founder of The Island Prize for Debut African Novels.
Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian writer and author of four novels. She earned a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, for her dissertation entitled “In the Shadow of Ala: Igbo Women Writing as an Act of Righting”. Chika has received a number of awards for her writing, including the 2012 NLNG Prize for Literature, for her novel On Black Sisters’ Street. She is the recipient of a number of fellowships, including the 2014 Sylt Fellowship for African Writers. She currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
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