Where Rivers Go to Die

by Dilman Dila

Overview

The stunning, new collection from the Ugandan master of Africanfuturism.

A young teen, haunted by the ghost of his father, takes it upon himself to save his brother and his people from a warlord's marauding army. A frustrated detective is driven to the brink, confronting the vengeful spirit killing grooms on their wedding night. What happens when British colonials find Martians in Africa, a brash warrior battles his elders and ancient horrors in order to secure paradise for his people, or an exiled abiba is stolen away to find his true destiny? 

Emerging Africanfuturist writer/director, Dilman Dila, brings us Where Rivers Go to Die, a startling collection of eight wonderful tales full of imagination, wonder, sorrow, power, and hope that weave Uganda's wonderful myth and reality with its past, present, and possible future as only he can.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781495617508
Publisher:	Rosarium Publishing
Publication date:	06/14/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	1,007,784
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Dilman Dila is a writer, filmmaker, all round storyteller, and author of a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. He has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2013) and for the Nommo Awards for Best Novella (2017), and long listed for the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition (2014), among many accolades. His short fiction have featured in several anthologies, including African Monsters, Myriad Lands, AfroSF v2, and the Apex Book of World SF 4. His digital art has been on exhibition in the US and in Uganda, and his films include the masterpiece What Happened in Room 13 (2007), and The Felistas Fable (2013), which was nominated for Best First Feature by a Director at AMAA (2014) and winner of four major awards at Uganda Film Festival (2014).

Editorial Reviews

06/19/2023

Dila (The Future God of Love) goes for the jugular in this collection of eight afrosurrealist horror stories. Whether dealing with a grief-burdened police officer haunted by a specter impersonating his dead wife (“Fragments of Canvas”) or the disembodied soul of the victim of an attempted murder pursuing his attacker (“Kifaro”), Dila delivers thought-provoking perspectives on human foibles and demonstrates his range by melding African lore with urban legend and detective fiction tropes. A police officer’s search for a serial killer evolves into a hunt for a mythical monstrosity in “Monwor,” while in “The Last Storyteller,” the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds blur for a woman equipped with an augmented reality device. Readers may balk at the fatphobic sentiment in “The Flying Man of Stone,” but this is a rare misstep in an otherwise meticulously concocted volume full of starkly vivid imagery and gripping prose. These tales are guaranteed both to tickle the imagination and give readers the heebie-jeebies. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"The stories of Dilman Dila leap from the page and grab you by the throat with intrigue and urgent imagination. An impressive American debut!"

—Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner

“Get ready for strange truths written in pure, powerful words.  Frightened and curious, hopeful and brave, the heroes of Dila’s stories lead his readers through razor sharp dangers to the rewards gleaming at every one of his stories’ surprising and satisfying ends.  From sheer delight in the futuristic flight of Ugandan ornithopters, to sweetly nasty certainty as to the alien identity of the “savages” bedeviling clueless white colonizers, Dila delivers pleasure after pleasure to minds eager for fiction’s freshest glories.” 

—Nisi Shawl, award-winning editor of New Suns and author of Everfair  

“A book filled with spirits, monsters, resource wars, techno organic horrors, trans dimensional beings, wondrous machines, and so much more. Where Rivers Go to Die reads like literary episodes of Love, Death, and Robots meets Black Mirror, doused in African fantasy, folklore, and futurism. Dilman Dila shines here as one of the most creative storytellers of our age, weaving together an impressive set of imaginative, character driven, and reality-bending tales examining issues of everyday life, gender, spiritualism, politics, war, and exploitation through the lens of the strange, the bizarre, and the otherworldly. The genre needs more like this!”

—P. Djèlí Clark, author of A Master of Djinn and Ring Shout  

"Amongst contemporary storytellers of the Afrocentric speculative, Dilman Dila's work inhabits a locus occupied by few others. Every tale thins the border between the is and the could-be: boosted by straospheric imagination while grounding you in the concerns of the contemporary African. I never pass up an opportunity to read a Dilman Dila story."

—Suyi Davies Okungbowa, author of Son of the Storm  

"Dilman Dila deals in dualities. This collection by one of Africa's most consistent speculative fiction authors is an excellent showcase of his ability to defy genre and effortlessly blend superstition and science, fear and fascination, reality and unreality, uniqueness and universality, into wonderful, exciting stories steeped in culture. Full of immersive worldbuilding and a persistent horror sensibility rendered in sharp, efficient prose, Where Rivers Go to Die is a highly enjoyable read."

—Wole Talabi, award-winning author of Incomplete Solutions and editor of Africanfuturism: An Anthology.  

''Dilman Dila is a well-established figure in the African Speculative scene. His various disciplines -film-making, animation, writing etc - inform all aspects of his work holistically. Among the results are thoughtful, deep-reaching tales, constructed upon a firmament of rounded research and experiential detail. His sparse, journalistic style amplifies the strangeness of his narratives and at times his voice resembles a slightly supernatural Hemingway.'"

—Nikhil Singh, author of Taty Went West and Club Ded

From the Publisher