David

It always gives me great pleasure to be able to recommend African fiction, and Voice of America, a debut collection of short stories from Nigerian writer E.C. Osondu, is a perfect candidate. The stories are accessible and straightforward, but distinctive and fresh. His characters live in horrible circumstances, but they are living, breathing people, not archetypes of African suffering, and they live and love, and laugh and cry, and hope and strive (“hustle” might be a better word) like the rest of us. As American immigrants, Osondu’s characters learn that America is just a place, filled with people, a little strange, perhaps, but basically “not so different”, from themselves. Perhaps, as we meet the orphans and criminals, prophets and seers, prostitutes and oil workers of Osondu’s Nigeria, we will realize much the same about them.

The latest installment in the career of His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Blackboard Monitor etc., Snuff, has the old copper ordered off to a vacation in the countryside, ostensibly for some rest and relaxation. Of course, he ends up up to his neck in the action—this time, there’s a little fuss involving goblins. Sir Terry Pratchett, no doubt Blackboard Monitor etc., has been doing this for so long that you’d think it would pall, but the Discworld series is as fresh and funny as ever, despite its creator’s 2007 Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Long may it continue.