Fiction

Wasafiri is pleased to publish the pieces shortlisted for the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. The poems, essays and short stories in this series showcase the best new writing from the best new writers across the globe — in all their diversity and complexity.

Wasafiri is pleased to publish the pieces shortlisted for the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. The poems, essays, and short stories in this series showcase the best new writing from the best new writers across the globe – in all their diversity and complexity.

In this extract from Amal Sewtohul’s Made in Mauritius, translated from French by Nadiyah Abdullatif, the narrator explores his complex heritage, and the lineage of his father, an worker from China, who would eventually make his way to Mauritius.

Read an exclusive extract from Ingrid Persaud's 'The Burke Street Chronicles', first published in  Wasafiri 110, and part of a series of sharp, funny audio short stories produced by BBC Sounds. You can read the full excerpt in Wasafiri 110, now available to download or purchase online.

Winner of the 2020 Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Fiction for ' How You Make Jamaican Coconut Oil', Sharma Taylor’s debut novel, What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You, is a vivid and moving story of belonging, family, and inheritance.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled new writers from all over the globe.

Wasafiri is proud to publish the shortlisted works of the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. These poems, essays, and short stories detail a range of emotions and experiences, produced by skilled emerging writers from all over the globe.

To celebrate the launch of Wasafiri 109, read an extract from Monica Ali's  Love Marriage (2021, Virago Books), a warm and tender novel that examines the ways in which class, race, and culture intersect in contemporary Britain.

Download the full text of 'The Book Smuggler' for free until the end of January, or read it in Wasafiri 10 8: House of Wisdom … When I was a young boy, my grandfather taught me the difference between stars and planets.

There is no better lycée than Our Lady of the Nile. Nor is there any higher. Twenty-five hundred metres, the white teachers proudly proclaim. ‘Two thousand four hundred ninety-three metres,’ points out Sister Lydwine, our geography teacher.

2020   … We’ve lived in separate boxes in Hackney all this time.   … I pull off the mask that conceals my nose and my mouth. I’m among the trees now, looking for you. Are you on the towpath? I check my phone. No messages.

Branko A single year brings two big changes: I become a man and my brother becomes an American. My new status is announced by Mrs Mitchell from over the road when she hears that my voice is breaking.

That night I snuck out of the house and walked for half an hour to Ramlet AlBayda. It was the only public sandy shore left in Beirut, courtesy of the warlords who ran the country after the end of the civil war.

Read an exclusive extract from Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, which explores the lives of working class women in contemporary Japan.

Anasuya lies between the crumpled bedding. Even the slightest touch of the chenille blanket irks her. The cooler spews warm air into the bedroom of their top floor apartment in Bangalore. The walls seem to glow with heat like a tandoor. She kicks the blanket into a ball, pushing it into a corner.

Hina-chan has such beautiful skin, I think as I wash her. Using a linen washcloth I’ve specially ordered to avoid irritating her delicate skin cells, I start from her toes, working slowly up the length of her body stretched out supine in the water.

When you are interviewed for BBC documentaries in your palace, they will want to know how you met. Cast your eyes downward and tell them how you were a shy and hardworking secretary in the State House typing pool. Omit to mention that you were married. Lie that you were divorced and not looking.

I woke up at 4:12am on 27 December and it was gone. It stayed for Christmas and Boxing Day and then just disappeared. It’s not that I don’t know where to find my table, it’s that I don’t know how to find it, and I’ve got to find it because … I can’t quite touch the future without it.

Isabel Waidner is a writer and critical theorist. Their novel We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (2019) was shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize and is currently shortlisted for this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize.

James Young is a Northern Irish writer, translator and journalist. His short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals, and as a journalist he has written for several leading newspapers and websites.

The fraught intricacies of a mother-daughter relationship form the core of 'Third Person Female', woven from the fabric of day-to-day life, shared cooking, childhood memories—and the differences of age and culture that flare up in the face of a new and unexpected relationship.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi landed on the literary landscape with her ‘great Ugandan novel’, Kintu, which won the Kwani?