Twelve new and emerging writers from Africa and the African Diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that tear us apart. Introducing Captive, the latest anthology from Short Story Day Africa.

Passion and mania, creation and destruction, honesty and deception: the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts--Claustrophobia & Inescapable Obsessions; Metamorphosis, Cycles & Identity; andSelf-awareness, Illusion, Delusion & Deception--the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans.

Journey from the fantastical Heaven's Mouth where time stagnates to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the beats of Tom Jones... Flip the page to Ghana to examine a neglected fertility fetish or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us... Slip into the small town life of a Ladybrand store clerk healing a broken heart in the arms of a man who cannot love him... Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the prismatic nature of the human soul.

Captive is the second anthology from Short Story Day Africa to be published by Catalyst Press, its predecessor Disruption receiving a 2022 Caine Prize win for "Five Years Next Sunday" by Idza Luhumyo and a 2022 Nommo Award shortlist nomination for "Shelter" by Mbozi Haimbe.