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Synopsis:
WOMB CITY imagines a dark and deadly future Botswana, rich with culture and true folklore, which begs the question: how far must one go to destroy the structures of inequality upon which a society was founded? How far must a mother go to save the life of her child?
Nelah seems to have it all: wealth, fame, a husband, and a child on the way. But in a body her husband controls via microchip and the tailspin of a loveless marriage, her hopes and dreams come to a devastating halt. A drug-fueled night of celebration ends in a hit-and-run. To dodge a sentencing in a society that favors men, Nelah and her side-piece, Janith Koshal, finish the victim off and bury the body.
But the secret claws its way into Nelah’s life from the grave. As her victim’s vengeful ghost begins exacting a bloody revenge on everyone Nelah holds dear, she’ll have to unravel her society’s terrible secrets to stop those in power, and become a monster unlike any other to quench the ghost’s violent thirst.
Review:
Tlotlo Tsamaase came onto my radar last month when I read The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022. The anthology is packed with incredible stories, but the two that really stick out are the two written by Tsammase. When I learned that xer first novel was going to be released this month, I had to read it. Luckily, Netgalley and Erewhon Books allowed me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
There are several reasons to love this novel before I even read the first sentences. The first is that Womb City is a wonderful title, and the cover art elicits so many different mental images, so many different curiosities that are about to unfold. The story starts with Nelah waking and her husband Elifasi wanting to hook her up to the wall with her microchip to make sure that she is not thinking about crime. The society that is built in Womb City, this dystopian Botswana, is filled with corruption, male superiority, power struggles, and men being leaders of everything, even though women are the backbone of society. In the first sections, the novel a marital drama about Nelah and Elifasi trying to have a child, trying to keep their finances in order, and trying to get along with each other. Neither of them trusts the other. All of this time, a wealthy business owner, Janith, becomes Nelah’s lover, and keeping this a secret quickly turns Nelah’s life upside down.
Womb City starts as a sci-fi novel, with consciousness jumping from body to body and the politics of this, from the rights of criminals to immigration waiting lists (those with money to the front of the line), investigations for criminals that might commit another crime in the future, and a mist on Sundays that is really the release of markers for the location of hidden dead bodies. The novel quickly turns from a sci-fi novel into straight horror. There are scenes that rival any horror novel I have ever read. The vengeance and anger at the core of the novel slowly turns the book into a conspiracy thriller that morphs the novel into a new, even worse type of horror, because the horrible acts that people are doing to one another is worse than any wrath of an ancient god.
At some points in the novel, I started thinking that Tlotlo Tsamaase wrote xer book with the idea in mind that this could be the only book xhe ever releases so xhe must put every idea xhe has into the plot. There are so many things that happen, so many different directions that this novel takes, and so many social issues that are examined, that it is impossible to really catch all of it the first time. It is exhausting, but in the way that you feel after a good run, the exhilaration of getting to the end makes the journey worth it. There are moments that feel like they could be slimmed down some, but as a whole, Tlotlo does so many great things in this novel that I will look for everything that xhe writes. I cannot get enough.
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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