Let Us Conspire and Other Stories brings together eleven vivid narratives that unearth the private and public struggles of life across East Africa. These stories centre people often silenced, daughters, widows, queer lovers, children, struggling with grief, love, shame, and power. In Noella Moshi’s “When They Let Me Speak I Said Nothing,” a daughter returns home after her father’s death, desperate to know if he ever truly loved her. She searches not just for a will, but for affirmation, while exploring a house thick with memory and judgment.
Other stories push against the expectations of womanhood and conformity. In “Let Us Conspire,” Idza Luhumyo transports us to Mtaa wa Saba, where young girls gather each week at the feet of the enigmatic Bi Kizee, drawn to her forbidden stories and free spirit. As childhood ends, so too does their access to imagination and freedom, sacrificed to the burdens of adulthood. In “The Last Shop” by Gladwell Pamba, a boy who stutters finds solace and transformation in the companionship of a coffin maker, Madam Supreme, whose own haunted past unfolds slowly, beautifully, and tragically.
From surreal dreamscapes to gritty realism, the collection pulses with urgency and emotional precision. A boy paints his way through trauma. A wife is divorced before her honeymoon ends, accused of not bleeding on her wedding night. A girl with a dead twin believes she can still taste her grief. These are stories of quiet rebellion and deep interior lives, stories that ask what is owed to the self in a world that demands silence. Bold and deeply human, Let Us Conspire and Other Stories is a fearless chorus of voices redefining contemporary African fiction.
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