One year ago during the Storymoja Festival, I launched my book, A Killing in the Sun, a collection of short speculative stories, featuring African science fiction, fantasy and horror. The reception of the book has been, surprisingly, warm, at times awed, and at times an outright ‘oh wow! Unbelievable!’ I did not expect this. I thought it would be only me sweating it out to sweet talk people into buying it, but somehow the book has marketed itself. To celebrate a year in print, here are a few of the reviews, some from renown African writers like Binyavanga Wainaina, Zukiswa Wanner, and Beverly Nambozo
“…punchy and awkward and well worth reading.”
K. Kamo, in Strange Horizons
“perfectly poised between the robustness of genre fiction and the more literary concern”Mark Bould, in LA Review of Books
“Memorable. Well plotted, well edited, with a cool Afro flavor in each story.” Zukiswa Wanner
“Intriguing…. There is a lot of pretty rich writing… rich storyteling…” Sunday Recommendations: Books and Podcasts
https://youtu.be/76UCrpnDfbE
“…as I read story after story, many times miserly-like, I kept being grateful that I hadn’t put it off any longer. It surpassed my expectations…… read A Killing in the Sun. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“This short story collection by Ugandan writer, Dilman Dila, is sheer entertainment with a thick seam of seriousness….The beauty of these stories is that each in their own way shows a human side, of people who love, hate, fear and yearn. Dila’s wonderful imagination lifts this collection into an alien yet familiar space, where the ‘other’ is lampooned in a fantastical way. “
Penny de Vries, African Writing Book Reviews.
“A treat for readers.”
Beverly Nambozo, in The Daily Monitor
“Something unique”The R.R.A.P.Magazine
“Enjoyable…. Dila has good material and can clearly write brilliant speculative fiction.”
“…something really special….” Binyavanga Wainaina
Here is the full snap review by Binyavanga on Facebook on Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Am about halfway through Dilman Dila’s collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. From the first page of the first one, felt that surge of anticipation of the possibility of something really special coming. With the best books, you sense it very early, and unconsciously. It is a kind of body-mind tingle, and then my buttocks shuffle about on the bench and I hunch forward to tunnel forward, and my eyes are now on eat, gobble, and eventually devour, and time disappears and I lift my eyes halfway through the book with a very familiar and rare fear (that it is going to end soon and life as I know it will be drab). For now, I have no grand things to say, except, fuck Facebook, I am diving back into the spell, only gently so I can draw it out. somehow.
“Many have been raving about Ugandan writer Dilman Dila, whose short story collection A Killing in the Sun (Black Letter Media) is what I want to spend my Christmas reading.” Binyavanga Wainaina, in The Guardian
Hmm, so what are you waiting for? Click here to get yourself a copy of the book from Amazon, either the print version or ebook, make it part of your Christmas gift purchases.
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