Review: Mami Wata and the surge of a risen tide
Lost Ark Dreaming takes us into a world undreamt by Western philosophies.
Jacqueline Nyathi
One of my favourite things about non-Western speculative fiction is how the to see a world wholly different from what our Eurocentricised imaginations allow. This is not the world of the Enlightenment philosophers; rules of cause and effect instead obey ancient laws and beings.
In Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s novella, a catastrophe has led sea levels to rise, causing Lagos to flood. A far-sighted businessman set up five offshore towers called The Fingers, with upper levels reserved for those who can afford to move there. Lower levels are for a few refugees and the grunts who keep things running. When there’s a tower breach below ocean level, is it a mechanical failure – or have the monsters of the brine broken in?
Well, monsters are not usually what we think, and we are so often more monstrous than those we fear. This is a novella about class, revolution, loss and memory, set in West African cosmology: it is wonderful but gut-wrenching how Okungbowa links the spirit of the deep, Mami Wata, with the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved people.
Additionally, the forays into a different form for messages from outside of time are beautifully poetic. This novella has warmth and humour all the way through, setting it apart from lots of other speculative fiction that Takes Itself Seriously Because It Has Things To Say. Okungbowa makes his points without being didactic.
It’s a fun and thoughtful read. Come for the speculative elements of the story, stay for the Afro in AfroSF. Lost Ark Dreaming feels like the introduction to a whole story universe, so perhaps readers can look cosmology of each story primes the reader forward to more.