Fabulous reads – Mashigo’s stories will intrude on your imagination

Intruders, Mohale Mashigo, Pan macmillan, ISBN: 9781770106338

Comic-book writer, award-winning storyteller and wordsmith of significance, Mohale Mashigo, never disappoints.

She weaved the ordinary with the unusual to create a patchwork of images and feelings in beautifully crafted stories that, while out of the realm of the normal world, do much to bring the otherworldly into focus and create a reality that draws the reader into her narrative. Heartrending elements will keep all but the most dispassionate reader wishing for more, even as they turn the page to begin the next story.

One of the things that impressed me with this anthology of stories was how Mashigo told a story through three voices within the anthology, this gave depth to each of them as they unfolded. I turned back to the previous stories each time I read another part of the three untitled pieces (i, ii and iii), each occurring within the three sections entitled, The Good, The Bad, and The Colourful.

While some might not approve of the topics covered, it is worth realising that Mashigo is, at heart, a writer of young adult (YA) fiction. My 10-year-old loved the first story as a bedtime tale and asked for more of “the clever lady’s stories” the next evening.

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Without falling into the dystopian or utopian YA trope trend, Mashigo mashes both to create an Afro-futuristic series of stories. The African nature of the stories makes them very familiar but also some of the the archetypal stories on their heads.

There is no judgment or instruction in these stories, just characters and plot dancing together like holographic images. The experience is much like staring at a billboard as a commuter, trying to make sense of the images and words even as your taxi drives off, or another train rushes by, obscuring your vision and forcing you to accept that the story is gone.

As an introduction to Mashigo’s writing, this anthology offers much to readers of all ages and reading levels. It serves up ample inspiration to aspiring writers, and helps those who struggle with reading longer works of literature to develop a taste for local writing. From the teen to the middle-aged, there is something for every reader in Intruders.

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