Tartarus Press

publishers

Caged Ocean Dub is published as a sewn hardback of 242 pages, printed lithographically, with head and tailbands, and d/w.

 

First edition.

 

ISBN 978-1-912586-45-5

 

Sorry - out of print.

 

There is no ebook available through Tartarus Press.

Caged Ocean Dub

Dare Segun Falowo

 

This new collection of eighteen weird, vivid, beautiful stories by Dare Segun Falowo, rising star of African Literature, explores Nigerian life, culture and belief through the prism of the writer’s extraordinary imagination. The stories range from the historical slipstream of ‘Eating Kaolin’, to the gleaming horror of ‘Ngozi Ugegbe Nwa’, in which a strange and beautiful mirror wreaks havoc on the life of a young Lagos model, to the lysergic science fiction of ‘Convergence in Chorus Architecture’.

 

Falowo describes his collection thus: ‘These texts are mostly inspired by real events and/or emotional states, and were also fuelled by my love of indigenous cosmologies and pop culture symbolism. They were written in various caged spaces, where the pulse and ambient sounds of the world outside became, after a while, like arrhythmic waves crashing on the shores of my listening.’

 

Glittering and strange, deeply humane and percipient, these stories attest to the rude health of the new wave of world supernatural fiction—Caged Ocean Dub is in the vanguard of that wave.

 

About the author:

Dare Segun Falowo is a writer of the Nigerian Weird whose work draws on cinema, indigenous cos-mologies, pulp fiction and the surreal. Falowo's short fiction has appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Dark Magazine, Baffling Magazine and others. Falowo has also contributed to the anthologies of black speculative fiction: Dominion and Africa Risen. Their lysergic science fiction epic, ‘Convergence in Chorus Architecture’ was longlisted for the BFSA for Short Fiction.

 

Dare currently lives in Nigeria, between Ibadan and Lagos, where they are trying to find their truth in text, symbol and Spirit

 

Reviews:

"A self-described practitioner of 'Nigerian Weird,' a rubric broad enough to take in both the word-intoxicated Amos Tutuola (The Palm-Wine Drinkard) and Booker Prize winner Ben Okri (The Famished Road) . . .  Falowo knows his Gabriel García Márquez." Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

 

"Falowo’s transporting debut collection combines the fantastical, the spiritual, and the everyday to vivid effect." Publishers Weekly

 

"If one were to search for a term to best capture what Falowo is doing in these stories, it might be ostranenie, Viktor Shklovsky’s phrase that has variously been translated as ‘estrangement’, ‘defamiliarization’, or ‘making strange’. In ‘Art as Technique’, Shklovsky describes defamiliarization as an artistic technique of making the familiar seem strange, as though it was being seen for the first time ... one of Shklovsky’s translators, called it ‘enstrangement’ – a combination of ‘estrangement’ and ‘making strange’ – perhaps the most accurate descriptor of Falowo’s work." Gautam Bhatia, Interzone

 

"Tartarus has simply outdone itself with this collection and I'm just over the moon that they've chosen to highlight the work of this Nigerian author, which is, simply stated, superlative. Falowo's writing meshes together surrealism, the speculative, the weird and the strange as well as folklore, mythology and tradition, all of which put together mark something new and exciting on the literary weird scene, although to try to pigeonhole this book into the 'weird' category simply doesn't do it justice." Nancy Oakes, Oddly Weird Fiction

 

"Caged Ocean Dub is a remarkable debut. Falowo's style is poetic, dazzling, and perhaps a little heady for readers used to firm restraint and the (very artificial) conventions of realism. There is power here, and strangeness, and a sense of cultural tectonic plates shifting. None of which are bad things." David Longhorn, Supernatural Tales

 

"Embracing folklore, realism, surrealism, science fiction and even poetry, Falowo’s fearless stories are electrifying, terrifying and a joyous reading experience." Rick Kleffel, Narrative Species

 

"Dare Segun Falowo isn’t your everyday storyteller, and that’s every reason to read him. . .  an exciting and highly imaginative writer . . . Caged Ocean Dub reminds you of the pleasure of reading, simply reading. . . . Falowo superbly crafts each story’s hook, entrancing and luring you into a dream . . ." Aurealis #159

 

"I would recommend this short story collection to anyone who is looking for a combination of weirdness, horror and poetry!" British Fantasy Society

 

 

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