I have thusfar read every volume of The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction and, like its predecessors, 2023’s collection is excellent. 

I had already previously read and really enjoyed two stories in this collection – Wole Talabi’s, which is also published in his fantastic collection Convergence Problems, and P. Djèlí Clark’s Hugo-nominated “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” – but the rest were new to me. Starting the collection knowing that there were two five-star stories in it definitely meant I knew this collection would be strong. 

As with any anthology, some stories really stood out to me and were my favourites and others I didn’t care for as much, but overall this is a really excellent collection (as are the other volumes in this series). As always, I’ve found a few new-to-me authors that I really look forward to reading more from. I appreciate the diversity of the stories featured in numerous respects – they include a range of genres (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and several really genre-defying stories), diverse settings, diverse protagonists, and a breadth of themes – and absolutely recommend this anthology to speculative fiction readers.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, police brutality, war, death, death of a child, death of a parent, blood, murder, animal cruelty, animal death, self harm, suicide, colonialism, racism, sexism, misogyny, gender based violence, abandonment