Speak Gigantular (eBook)

Irenosen Okojie (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
216 Seiten
Jacaranda Books (Verlag)
978-1-909762-30-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Saboteur Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Jhalak Prize. A startling debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Butterfly Fish. Okojie's collection of stories are captivating, erotic, enigmatic and disturbing. Irenosen Okojie's gift is in her understated humour, her light touch, her razor-sharp assessment of the best and worst of humankind, and her unflinching gaze into the darkest corners of the human experience. Okojie has created a world with errant Londoners caught between here and the hereafter, where insensitive men cheat on their mistresses and can only muster enough interest to fall for one- dimensional poster girls and where brave young women attempt to be erotically empowered at their own peril. Sexy, serious and at times downright disturbing, this brilliant debut collection sizzles with originality.

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian and the Huffington Post. She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review as well as And Other Stories. She co-presented the BBC's Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has also judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Formerly the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021. She is the director and founder of Black to theFuture festival. Her new novel Curandera is published by Dialogue Books.

Textauszug

Animal Parts

Henri Thomsen lived in the Danish town of Frederiksberg near Copenhagen. At ten-years-old he possessed one distinguishing feature; a long furry grey tail. The tail sprouted above his buttocks and through the hole that his mother Ann had been forced to make in the seat of all his trousers. Otherwise he looked like an average boy, with a shaggy mop of light brown hair that hung down over his forehead, inquisitive blue eyes and deep dimples in his cheeks into which his mother Ann sank adoring kisses.

As Henri grew older it became increasingly apparent that Ann was not going to be able to keep his tail a secret from the townsfolk. As uninhibited and unashamed as any child should be, Henri ran with oblivious abandon, not aware that words were forming against him, even at his tender young age. That minds were closing firmly, decidedly, and that he was not destined to enjoy his worry-free existence much beyond his early childhood years.

Strange things happened in the town now and again. Like the winter all the statues heads had gone missing, only to appear on the rooftops weeks later, one side of their faces collapsed while a splintered blue light flickered in their sockets. In the beginning, people thought Henri and his furry grey tail was some sort of joke. “Have you seen that Thomsen boy?” The town gossips ignorant spite-filled words went from door to door carried by the wind. “Wish he’d take that stupid costume off.” The more they voiced their ugly opinions, the harder their stance on Henri became.

 

Across town Jorgen had spent the day finishing the tree house he’d invested hours into, outside of his job checking tickets on the ferries. When he heard the wind rustle and the words made their way to his ears.

“A freak,” they said, “an abomination that needed to be locked away for the safety of everyone.” When the voices of the two postmen gossiping about the boy with the tail caught his attention, Jorgen almost smashed a hammer through the left corner of the small picture frame he was hanging. “Who knew what diseases he was carrying? Why should they be put at risk?”

Jorgen listened, intrigued. His lazy left eye began to turn like green die spinning in static. Knowing how it felt to be slightly different from people, a shot of anger spread through his blood. He listened until their voices petered off.

That evening, Jorgen undressed to find a small, blue ball of light darting around under his skin. Absentmindedly, he picked up from his bedside dresser the small hammer he had been using earlier that day, repeatedly smacking it into his body, trying unsuccessfully to pin the blue ball frenetically travelling over his limbs. During the night the town’s residents slept fitfully, the sky above their beds black like the tea that darkened their tongues.

 

As a baby, Henri’s tail was a pearly stub, barely visible under his pale, white skin. Once he started growing so did the tail. At aged three, it shot out thick and strong. Ann, spellbound, watched him from her bedroom, in the bathroom, the hallway, everywhere; horrified, fascinated, trying to identify the smell of her own corrosive fear. It was a feeling she associated with the town and its inhabitants, even though she had been born there and had grown up among the very same people and strange occurrences.

Shortly after his birth, Ann took Henri to see the doctor for his well-baby check up. As she changed Henri, the last thing she worried about was her appearance. Rolling up the sleeves of her checked shirt, she tied her hair into a haphazard golden knot and scooped him up from his bed, hurriedly heading out the door. Ann was a pretty woman but the strain of worrying about Henri had slowly taken its toll, giving her a slightly harassed look. There was no man around to reassure her or hold her hands down when in utter frustration she clawed out fine clumps of hair from her head.

They’d trudged up to the local doctor, a dark navy blanket wrapped around Henri to cover his tail.

Later, she parted company with the doctor more confused. He couldn’t tell her why her son had a tail; he assumed it must be some form of mutation. The boy was perfectly healthy otherwise and not in any danger. He recommended going to the hospital in Copenhagen for further tests. No. Ann had been adamant, she didn’t want Henri being prodded and experimented on. Deep down, she knew all of that would have come to nothing.

At home she grabbed a nondescript grey file of newspaper clippings from under the bed; stories of unusual people from around the world; A baby born in India with multiple sets of lower limbs who the locals believed was the reincarnation of one of their most revered Gods. A woman whose spine had overgrown and protruded through her skin like the dorsal vertebra of an ancient mythic creature. Her hand stilled over the file. Soon, she would start sharing these tales with Henri. She felt reassured somehow that these strangers had begun to talk to her from the shadowy space beneath her bed.

As time passed, Henri became the one constant in her life. He kept her company while from home she ran a tiny cottage business, making jams that she sold to the townsfolk and local shops. She was almost as famous for her jams as she was for her son. Aware of the provincial tastes of the townspeople, Ann would fold in exotic flavours into her sweet fruit as it cooked. The most popular ones were chocolate and banana, almond and orange, and apricot with vanilla. She attended to them in the small cosy kitchen of her home, adding a variety of spices, a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon and sometimes even sea salt. Henri would proudly hold the jars while she filled them with the cooled fruit, his tail gently wagging. She would label them carefully using brightly coloured paper she allowed him to stick on the jars.

They made deliveries in her old turquoise Fiat 500 which sputtered loudly along the town’s quaint roads, so that people always heard them coming. They were reliable Ann and Henri, team jam procurers extraordinaire. They mostly delivered on time. On the doorsteps, rifling through the variety of jeweled toned, sweet-smelling jars in Ann’s basket people would often ask Henri if he knew his mother’s secret ingredient, staring at the jars as though sinister things lurked behind the sweetness. These times were their main interactions with the community and a social lifeline for Henri. Ann rarely had visitors to her home. Occasionally in winter when he made his rounds, Hans the mill operator would drop wood by the house, face ruddy, full red beard unkempt, smiling at Ann as if he was the bearer of known truths. Other than him, no-one came.

At night Ann listened to her mother’s old radio with the faulty knob that came off if you gripped it too enthusiastically. Now and again, she swore she could hear her mother’s crisp, flat voice dispatching parental advice between frequencies. During these moments, sharp pains hit her chest. Curling up into a ball, she could barely breathe. What had she done? What would become of her son? The loneliness and desire for a child before him had been all-consuming. Were anything ever to happen to her, she did not trust the town to take care of her son, but the world out there beyond it was even more frightening.

 

Eleven years prior to Henri’s birth, a stranger had turned up at Ann’s door. When Ann had heard the knock at the door she first thought it was one of her neighbours and she had found herself silently wishing it was the one she liked, as opposed to the obnoxious hellion who lived directly across from her. Upon opening the door, Ann saw no-one she recognised. Standing before her as if she had intentionally arrived at the address, although Ann had no knowledge of her, was a woman with a sharp black bob and an accent Ann couldn’t place. Feline looking, she had perfectly symmetrical features and a seductive air about her. Her full red mouth blew misty air into Ann’s face. Her long, slender fingers curled. Dark, almond shaped eyes glinted. She wore black jeans paired with a white polo neck.

The woman spoke directly at Ann in a firm measured tone. She said in a throaty voice that her car had broken down at the top of the road and asked if she could use her phone to call someone for help. The woman wore an electronic bracelet on her wrist that flickered blue light as she languidly waved her hands in emphasis, almost as if she was bored. Ann noticed small, circular blue blotches on her right arm.

Before Ann knew it, she was pulling the woman in from the cold and the heavily falling snow. Tall and lean, the woman shook snow off her boots, then trailed behind Ann into the sitting area where the fire blazed and a nearly empty bottle of scotch stood on the mantelpiece. She noticed Ann’s red-rimmed eyes, her tear streaked cheeks.

“Bad timing?” she asked in a cool but empathic tone. “I won’t keep you.”

The alcohol she’d consumed made Ann feel light-headed, although she was happy to have company.

The woman tucked strands of hair behind her right ear. For the first time, Ann spotted a large birthmark that had been obscured by her hair. It was blue, lotus shaped. She’d never seen a blue scar before. She tried not to stare. The flaw made the woman appealing and somehow more approachable. Ann had...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.6.2016
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: 0349700923 • African Spirituality • African writers • Aliens • BAME writers • Beautiful • black british • black writing • BOLD • butterfly fish • Contemporary • Dark • disturbing • Edge Hill Short Story Prize • Erotic • evocative • Extraterrestrial • Fantasy • Gender • Ghost Stories • Heritage • Human Experience • Humankind • jhalak prize • literary fiction • London • magical realism • must read • nudibranch • Original • Poetic • puzzling • Race • relationships • rising literary stars • Saboteur Awards • Sci-fi • seductive • Sexuality • shirley jackson award • short fiction • Short Story • Special • Speculative Fiction • Stories • Strange • Underground • Unique • Unorthodox • Urban • Women
• ISBN-10: 1-909762-30-X / 190976230X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-909762-30-5 / 9781909762305