BOOKS FROM BOTSWANAWomb City
Tags:
Female author
Description:
"A fierce, furious, and fearless debut that has its finger on the pulse--no, the gushing wound--of our world's most invasive cruelties." --Daniel Kraus, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Shape of Water "Masterful . . . Tsamaase has created a disturbing techno dystopia in a future Botswana that terrifies with its echoes of our own increasingly authoritarian cyber-policed world. This beautifully written work haunts and upends expectations with its resurrected ghosts and gods and ancestors of Motswana cosmology. What an accomplished debut!" --T. L. Huchu, Caine Prize finalist and author of The Library of the Dead This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid's Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman's right to her own body. Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman who uses a microchip to monitor her every move, Nelah's perfect life is precarious. After a drug-fueled evening culminates in an eerie car accident, Nelah commits a desperate crime and buries the body, daring to hope that she can keep one last secret. The truth claws its way into Nelah's life from the grave. As the ghost of her victim viciously hunts down the people Nelah holds dear, she is thrust into a race against the clock: in order to save any of her remaining loved ones, Nelah must unravel the political conspiracy her victim was on the verge of exposing--or risk losing everyone. Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a twisty, nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. In sickeningly evocative prose, Womb City interrogates how patriarchy pits women against each other as unwitting collaborators in their own oppression. In this devastatingly timely debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a searing intelligence and Botswana's cultural sensibility to the question: just how far must a woman go to bring the whole system crashing down?
Reviews:
(6 months ago) |
14 Mar, 2025
I had criticisms that died with each twist. I thought this book asked too many questions to be coherent, and I'm still not convinced it doesn't ask too many questions, but it might be because I can't wrap my head around all of them. Yes, the book change of pace in the middle is jarring, but it becomes a different book (from following a person in a dystopia to a Dostoyevskian thriller). I would argue that pace change is justified by the 3/4 point when it becomes a third book (Dostoyevskian thriller to Matsiengian spinning top). I'm going to need at least the rest of the day to put my brain back together.
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(6 months ago) |
12 Apr, 2025
I enjoyed most of this book. It was a futuristic, horror filled thriller with well developed characters and constant reveals that keep you turning the page. Some of the elements seemed pulled from other works of fiction (Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report came to mind quite a bit, as did David Cronenberg’s Existenz) but Taamaase does an excellent job of weaving this into her specific scenarios so the ideas are sufficiently different. The book also provides a thought provoking look at how society views women despite claims of equality. The one feminist aspect of the book I didn’t like was that it strongly connected being a fulfilled woman with being a mother. I would love to read a book with a strong female character who is complete and happy in her life and has no desire to have children.
The only other major criticism I have of this book is its ending. **STOPPING READING HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS*** The ending of this book was horrible. In a Jesus-like action of sacrificing herself by dying for the sins of the world Nelah, rather than stopping a cycle of violence inflicts death and revenge on those of her choosing (see Camus, Albert: The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown ). She then allows those she deems worthy to select a new body with just as little disregard for the body’s original owner as her predecessor. Rather than a world of equality she seems to be setting up a world where women dominate with the same superiority men had enjoyed - so in the end nothing will really change, roles will simply be reversed. This ending is, to me, a missed opportunity. Luckily I was able to disregard it easily enough and just remember the rest of the book which was excellent. |
