The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories is the first full-length book of fiction by award-winning contemporary Tanzanian author Esther Karin Mngodo. Its seven stories, translated from Swahili, range in style from lyrical realism to speculative fiction and Afrofuturism. The stories all share a distinct voice and focus on the feminine, and some are linked not just thematically but in terms of plot. Whether depicting a world of spirits behind the proverbial curtain, a dystopian future in which the sun is about to expire, or a sweltering-hot present-day fish market, Mngodo’s tantalizing fiction pushes beyond allegory and didacticism into the rich ambiguity of lived experience. She portrays intimate encounters between a wide variety of characters with compassion and wit, paying particular attention to class and gender dynamics.
Jay Boss Rubin is a writer and Swahili-English translator from Portland, Oregon. His book-length translations include Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi (Yale University Press) and New Virus by Halfani Sudy (forthcoming from University of Georgia Press), and he contributed to Two Lines Press’s collection, No Edges: Swahili Stories. His translation and translation-adjacent work has also appeared in Asymptote, The Common, The Hopkins Review, Living in Languages, Northwest Review and other outlets. He was the recipient of a 2022 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and the 2024 Loose Translation Award. He is a proud graduate of the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, and he currently serves as Managing Editor of Portland Tennis Courterly.
Esther Karin Mngodo was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1986. Bilingual in Swahili and English, she works across genres and languages as a fiction writer, poet, translator, journalist, editor and feminist publisher. In 2014, Mngodo was the winner of the inaugural Ebrahim Hussein Poetry Prize, one of Tanzania's major literary awards. Her prose writing has been featured in The Goddess of Mtwara and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2017, Imbiza Journal, The Citizen, The Chanzo and other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Jinsi ya Kurudi Nyumbani (How to Return Home), and the founder and publisher of UMBU, an online literary journal for women who write in Swahili. Esther is also an Open Society Fellow. She lives in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with her daughter, Jasmine.
“This is the first collection of Swahili Afro-Speculative fiction to come alive in English. The writing is rhythmical, nuanced, and transports readers to a contemporary world that is built on ancestral and religious knowledge and belief.” —Ida Hadjivayanis, Senior Lecturer in Swahili Studies, SOAS University of London
“The mystery of a failing marriage, the uncertainty of dystopia, a spirit with a dubious handle on his job. Esther Karin Mngodo turns her eye and pen to inventing worlds both realistic and speculative as she deftly moves us through the lives of Tanzanians. Mngodo’s stories are invitations: go on, sit beside her, she has something to tell you.” —Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky and winner of the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing
“These seven short stories conjure up the whole gamut of human existence. They are serious, joyful, painful, and deeply feminine. There is poetry, politics, culture, and class here. I read the short stories in their translated language, English, and can feel the musicality of the original language and its adopted language’s success at capturing it.” —Lidudumalingani Mqombothi, Winner of the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing
