Wasafiri 125
Edited by our Deputy Editor, Vamika Sinha, Wasafiri 125 explores 'Living in the Melancholony'. The term 'melancholony' is used by artist Abdul Halik Azeez to describe a place that 'constructs itself for and through the eyes of the white westerner'. This issue applies the term, more broadly, to not only the structures, but the affect, of living under a colonial, racial capitalist gaze and legacy.
Read a range of writing from across the African continent (from Rwanda to Uganda, Botswana to Nigeria, and beyond); interviews with prizewinning writers on how literary and political practices intersect; and our usual mix of poetry, reviews, fiction, life writing, and articles spanning a variety of regions and subjects: including love and language across caste barriers, the ethics of erasure, spectating, living, and writing during genocide, and much more. We also present here the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize-winning pieces.
Contents
Editorial
Living in the Melancholony
Vamika Sinha
Articles
The Ethics of Erasure: On the Practice and Politics of Cultural Expression
Anshuman A Mondal
Tracing the Anancy Spider-Trickster in British Caribbean Writing: Andrea Levy's The Long Song
Natalie Anna Lucy
Life Writing
Language Is a Fuse Waiting to Be Lit
Deepa Bhasthi
Chair Tombs on the Hill: What We Buried, What We Broke
Luke Liu
All the Gifts: Remembering Maryse Condé
Thomas Glave
Interviews
'Fugitivity Is a Practice': Vanessa Kisuule and Sarah Lasoye in Conversation
Rivers Solomon
Writing as Living Archive: An Interview with Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
Zoë Norridge
Loyalty to Language: A Conversation with Madeleine Thien
Jeremy Tiang
Fear in Different Forms: An Interview with Kiran Desai
Santanu Bhattacharya
Art
Revisiting German Vietnamese Relations in Art and Literature: Khuê Phạm and Sung Tiêu
Eva Bentcheva
Fiction
Anciens Combattants
ML Kejera
Stress
Lília Momplé. Translated from Mozambican Portuguese by Beth Hickling-Moore
Iko of Benin, King's Diver
Jo Bardsley
Just a Body Part
Farah Ahamed
The End of Winter
William Ghosh
East Street West Street
Bharath Kumar
Poetry
Boyz N the Hood
Rafael Mendes
Sutton Hoo
Flora Beagley
Long Exposure
Onyekachi Iloh
Tlokweng
Tawanda Mulalu
the (w)ren boi
Emer Lyons
Place Name: Hubli
Devi Sastry
In the Eyes of the Night
Nur Turkmani
Review Essay
Tectonic Shifts: Writing the Indian Far Right
Quarterlife – Devika Rege
Saraswati – Gurnaik Johal
The Lucky Ones – Zara Chowdhary
Anu Khosla
Reviews
I have brought you a severed hand – Ghayath Almadhoun. Translated by Catherine Cobham
Document – Amelia Rosselli. Translated by Roberta Antognini and Deborah Woodard
Godelieve de Bree
Dust Settles North – Deena ElGenaidi
The Dissenters – Youssef Rakha
Omar Sabbagh
Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century – Joya Chatterji
Anandi Rao
Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets – Rachael Boast, ed
The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound – Raymond Antrobus
Jennifer Wong
South Side – Akin Adesokan
Chris Dunton
How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir – Camille U Adams
The Matter of Absence – Patrick Chamoiseau. Translated by Carrie Jaurès Noland
Louise Gerodias
Literature Against Fundamentalism – Tabish Khair
Amina Yaqin
Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority – Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf, eds
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams – Jason Allen-Paisant
Rebecca L Foster
Ferdowsnama – Shandana Minhas
Maaz Bin Bilal
