The Pot and Other Stories

Stories of the 6th FEMRITE Residency for African Women Writers

Imagine you are held aloft by a group of wonderful women from Uganda, Ghana, Botswana, South Africa and Niger. Then with skill and grace you are carried across Africa to meet engaging characters that they know well. Reading The Pot and other stories is both a delightful literary experience as well as a journey deep into intimate spaces on the Continent. Although the stories are individualistic and they tackle a variety of themes, there is seamlessness in the style. Each writer presents us with characters that take you by the hand into vividly painted worlds. Each writer seems to pick up where the other left off. Each has achieved storytelling excellence.

Eight stories, eight writers, five countries, one remarkable journey. Reading this collection we are reminded that Africa is a birthplace of human kind and as such the origin of all storytelling. These writers have skilfully crafted a collection that honours an ancient tradition. This anthology presents a range of issues. Some stories paint everyday life with a light comic touch as in the story in which a policeman sees the future of his marriage suddenly tied to the destiny of a cooking pot, while others use the mundane as the vehicle to probe difficult questions of destiny or the role of a local story-telling in a country with a brutal history.

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