THE NEWLYWED'S WINDOW

Mukana Press collects a dozen stories by contemporary African writers in this new anthology.

Some of these 12 stories effectively address the shifting natures of identity and understanding across cultures; for example, a maid competes with her wealthy employer for the affection of the rich woman’s baby (who calls the maid “mama”) in “Black Paw Paw” by Obinna Ezeodili. Others play with their characters’ (and readers’) perceptions in order to reveal the deeper tensions of modern life. In the title story by Husnah Mad-hy, for example, a woman with a passion for people-watching becomes entranced by a couple in the house opposite hers, who present a vision of marriage that is much more appealing than the traditional one to which she feels resigned: “She could see the outline of their bodies as they connected, as she danced for him, as he placed kisses all over her, white teeth glistening in the dark; the sound of old Taarab music, a cacophony of drums, violins, Oud guitar, and other Swahili instruments, would drift into her room.” Unsurprisingly, the marriage turns out to be less romantic than it appears. These and other tales are uniformly lean and precise, and the prose is exuberant or mordant, depending on the story. Some manage both registers at the same time, including the final work, Victor Ehikhamenor’s “A Letter From Ireland,” in which a boy takes his grandmother—who’s been suffering from nightmares—to visit a village physician to learn the fate of her son, the boy’s uncle, in distant Dublin: “I readied my pen and paper to write down the prophecy of the gods as revealed to the native doctor. The old man was the privileged intermediary between the gods, my grandmother, and Uncle Sunday in faraway Ireland.” By the end, readers will come away anxious to see more from these authors.

A varied but consistently satisfying sampler of emerging artists.