An almost-blind mother pawns her daughter off to save her. A grieving son must bury his Muslim father in twenty-four hours in the thick of winter. A doctor battles to save her partner from himself. Desperation makes a young businesswoman seek out a spiritual experience. Domi(natrix) wants to give life to her sexual kinks in her repressive household. The weight of the word "slave" is put to the test during a first date in conservative Idaho. Two men kidnap a White man to fight the infiltration of oil companies in Southern Nigeria. A boy escapes his bipolar mother. A young girl tries to spell out the strange words her parents fight with.
These stories are an excavation of what it means to be at the labyrinthine crossroads of desire, ambition, and tradition. The author explores the indelible erasure of personhood and fitting into all the hard places in a bubble where injustice reigns. As such, she fillets the flesh as these characters try to exercise autonomy in their worlds and swim against the uncontrollable tides that mold their lives. The characters are forced out of their stasis, and the collection contemplates whether they ultimately succeed or fail.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Queensland Literary Awards, The University of Queensland Non-Fiction Book Award

Shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize

Readings Best Books of 2024, Non-Fiction

The story of Australia's Black convicts has been all but erased from our history. On the First Fleet of 1788, at least 15 convicts were of African descent. By 1840 the number had risen to almost 500. But although some of these lives were documented and their likenesses hang in places like the National Portrait Gallery, even their descendants are often unaware of their existence. In recovering their lives, Santilla Chingaipe offers a fresh understanding of this fatal shore, showing how empire, slavery, race and memory have shaped the nation.

Longlisted for the Center of Fiction First Novel Prize 2025

It's 1999, and best friends Sal and Charo are striving to hold on to their dreams in a New York determined to grind them down. Sal is a book-loving science nerd trying to grow beyond his dead-end job in a new city, but he's held back by tragic memories from his past in Santo Domingo. Free-spirited Charo is surprised to find herself a mother at twenty-five, partnered with a controlling man, working at the same supermarket for years, her world shrunk to the very domesticity she thought she'd escaped in her old country. When Sal finds love at a gay club one night, both his and Charo's worlds unexpectedly open up to a vibrant social circle that pushes them to reckon with what they owe to their own selves, pasts, futures, and, always, each other.

It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them-as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma's sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm-are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story-that of a family in hot water.
Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Ma's husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert?
One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way.
An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.