Claire Light, Slightly Behind and to the Left, 2010

[yatima]

Four fiercely brilliant stories, in order of increasing brilliance. The first deals with toxic masculinity in an unbelievably prescient way, given our current predicament:

This was the other side of their bravado. She looked at him with such infinite care and respect, for she hadn’t known before how much more terrifying it was to be a man than to be a woman.

The second is a laugh-out-loud grimdark Black Mirror episode set in space. The third is a (maybe?) love story so weird it reminded me of Flatland.

But the fourth story! That one, a picaresque journey through space with a hauntingly familiar subtext, brought to mind my Dad's exquisite first edition of The Ship that Sailed to Mars, and all of Borges, and George Takei's Twitterstream. And if that combination doesn't pique your interest, I don't even know what to tell you.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 1953

[yatima]

Content warnings for intimate partner violence and child murder.

I struggled with this one a lot. There is no denying that Things Fall Apart is a masterpiece, beautifully and hauntingly written, harnessing all the power of the English language to condemn British colonialism with the stark authority of first-hand experience. It's an immense achievement of reclamation that paves the way for the work of the Nigerian and Nigerian-American writers that I unreservedly love: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi and Nnedi Okorafor.

Things Fall Apart is also profoundly of its time. The central character Okonkwo, who is brought so vividly to life, is a violently abusive husband and the murderer of his foster son. His sheer awfulness does not detract from the majesty of the story, which evokes both the tribal society of the Igbo and its wrenching fracture. It does, though, make it difficult to spend a lot of time with Okonkwo. This is an important book as the near-contemporaneous The Naked and the Dead and The Old Man and the Sea are important: just be prepared to grit your teeth through way too much period-appropriate misogyny.