Everfair

From noted short story writer Nisi Shawl comes a brilliant alternate-history novel set in the Belgian Congo.

What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What

might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier?

Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American

missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King

Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well

as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African

natives were being mistreated.

Shawl’s speculative masterpiece

manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex

relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful

book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.