Across many African literary traditions, the boundaries between the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen, are fluid rather than fixed. Ancestors, spirits, dreams, and myth are not simply fantastical devices but are unremarkable facts of lived realities, belief systems, and cultural histories.
In contemporary African literature, these spirit worlds influence how writers explore memory, identity, history, violence, belonging, and the unseen forces at play. Whether rooted in folklore, spiritual traditions, or the surreal, the ghostly often becomes another way of telling the truth.
Our moderator is Karina M. Szczurek, an award-winning author, editor, publisher, and founder of Karavan Press. Joining her are Dilman Dila, a Ugandan writer and filmmaker whose work blends speculative fiction with folklore and spirituality; Sven Axelrad, the South African author of Buried Treasure, whose literary fiction draws on magical realism to blur the boundaries between the real and the uncanny; and Faraaz Mahomed, a South African writer who utilizes his background as a clinical psychologist and human rights researcher to examine both the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the human experience.
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Can you describe how ghosts and spirits feature in your books and what they mean to you?
Dilman Dila: I don’t know if I ever call my characters ghosts or spirits. If I did, then it’s at a moment when the education that has been drummed into my brain overshadowed my awakening. Using words like ghosts or spirits undermines what these entities actually are. When you talk of a ghost or spirit, you perhaps imagine a formless creature that looks human but can float about like a cloud, passing through walls at will. Spirits too are depicted in a similar manner. But in looking at the world view of many African people, you’ll see that there are no ghosts, no spirits. When the dead return to the world of the living, it is rarely (perhaps never) in spirit form. They might come back as animals (often as snakes, which is why snakes were not killed in many African cultures) or as birds.
My ghosts are not omniscient narrators on life—they are still themselves, headstrong, selfish, caught up in petty pursuits, but they are kind too, more appreciative of friendship, humbled by their own deaths, very much rooting for the living.
When I imagine a character, they are often an extension of myself, and they are as alive to me as the ancestors and all the other entities that populate the religious beliefs of African cultures. But I also think that some of them are actually from the distant past, or from the future, and they perhaps have some messages for us. It’s one reason I embraced solarpunk as a genre, for I see solarpunk as a kind of activism that imagines a better world. So my solarpunk characters, I hope, will likewise feed the imagination of people and perhaps in future someone will try to recreate the utopias I daydream about.
Faraaz Mahomed: I am unsure if the apparition in my story is a ghost—that is perhaps one way to see it, and indeed from Salim’s point of view, Sawligha is a ghost. She could be a hallucination though, or something that we don’t have a word for. I like working with that ambiguity. The same question applies regardless—about what we don’t necessary experience in the tangible, and about our relationship with the intangible. It was a foil to Salim in the case of Mother/Land, because he is such an intellectual, and because this was a moment of having to question whether everything is just that logical. It’s really about questioning logic and making the case for mystery and weirdness. The oddity of Sawligha’s reappearance, in whatever form, was a way of paying tribute to her. She owns her own story.
Sven Axelrad: In South Africa, people introduce themselves with a CV. Within the first two minutes, you will no doubt be asked what you do for a living, maybe where you live. If you ask me that, I would tell you that I am an accountant working at a factory that makes tampons. If you ask me what I’m passionate about, the answer is infinitely better. I’m an author, and I’m teaching myself to speak Spanish and to smoke for a novel I’m working on called The Nicotine Gospel in which cigarettes form the basis of religion. I might even tell you about my dog. We might even have an actual conversation and learn about the people we are and not the badges and masks we wear. The ghosts in my novel have been buried in the wrong graves and have forgotten their names. They mill around the Treasury chatting to each other. With all the usual conventions stripped away, they truly interact. I did this to circle back to this idea of identity and what it means and how we would interact if the usual conventions are removed.
My ghosts are not omniscient narrators on life—they are still themselves, headstrong, selfish, caught up in petty pursuits, but they are kind too, more appreciative of friendship, humbled by their own deaths, very much rooting for the living.
Ben Okri writes in A Way of Being Free, “Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.” How do you relate to the term “magic realism” and its rich literary traditions in Africa and beyond? Who are the writers who influence and / or inspire this aspect of your own work?
Sven Axelrad: Magical realism is less a stylistic choice than a way of seeing the world. Songs can be transcribed onto a page but despite all those clever clefs, crescendos, and squiggles, it does nothing to explain what it feels like to be driving through the night with your window down, the city lights blurred in boh-keh while listening to your favorite song. Realism is fine. It just isn’t for me. Probably because I don’t think you can write about life by simply relaying the facts. A little magic is needed to bridge the gap between the facts and our first loves, the death of a pet, that quiet moment before you step onto a stage, and all the other complicated emotions we feel daily. Life itself is mysterious. It’s dangerous. Our fates are unknown. Magical realism helps to explain and interpret what that feels like better than any other medium. In Africa we seem to understand this, as do writers in Latin America, but the style is much wider spread that that. I have many heroes to choose from: Alejandro Zambra, Mariana Enriquez, Roberto Bolaño, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, and more. I wish I could listen to records with all these people, just to hear the music they have inside them.
Faraaz Mahomed: I was asked recently if my novel, Mother/Land can be described as “magical realism.” My understanding of the magical realist idea is that it is about a lack of a “line” between the real and the unreal, so in that sense I could claim to be a magical realist author. Insofar as who writes these narratives well and who I look to as inspiration for those aspects of my own storytelling, I think Ben Okri is among the most inspiring. I am a huge fan of Olga Tokarczuk and Jonathan Safran Foer, who use magical realism as avenues to unpack some really heavy themes.
Dilman Dila: I normally don’t mind labels, though I must say that “magical realism” isn’t an accurate term. It is still fantasy and science fiction and horror, or simply literature, and to call it “magical realism” is sad. One might say that African cultures, in real life, already have the spiritual living alongside the ordinary, and so calling it fantasy or horror means it is disassociated from the reality of life on the continent. But I’d prefer fantasy or horror because I’m not writing anthropological texts, which is what some people expect when they read my works.
I read Amos Tutuola’s The Feather Woman of the Jungle when I was in university, and it struck me that I could actually write that kind of story. The other book that set me firmly on the path of speculative fiction was Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler, for it was the first book I read, even before Tutuola’s, in which I saw black characters as central figures. But while reading Tutuola’s book did not make me raise an eyebrow, for it was set in an African world so I expected Africans to be in it, I was surprised to see black characters in Wild Seed. Those two are the books that I should say influenced me to take on specific, but I got a lot of inspiration from Stephen King, particularly Christine and The Tommyknockers.
Humor and/or wit feature in your work to address serious issues of the heart or to comment on the socio-political ills of the world. Can you tell us about the genre- and border-crossing qualities of wit and humor and how you use them in your writing?
Fiction offers us an entry point into a much more truthful world.
Faraaz Mahomed: I think of the real world as genuinely quite nonsensical, so poking fun at it is a regular pastime of mine. We have created silly institutions, banal rules and quite ridiculous norms, all for the sake of keeping order and making the world “work.” I wish that Mother/Land had more openings for humor though, because there were times when I found that I wanted to poke even more fun at the world (Sven and Dilman are great inspirations there).
Sven Axelrad: When I was in university, I worked at a bar on the weekend and at a DVD store during the week. To kill the time, I watched almost every film in the store. I learned the value of contrast and storytelling in 1999 from my job in a DVD store. Buried Treasure, and all my novels, have serious stakes involved, existential darkness waiting for you in an alleyway, loneliness that can wipe you off the chess board if you aren’t careful. All this darkness serves only to contrast the beauty—kindness, friendship, love and of course, dogs. Humor is the ultimate form of contrast. I was at a funeral a few years ago and afterwards I went out with the family for dinner. We told stories. We cried but we also laughed a lot, real tears-streaming-down-our-face laughter. Humor is everywhere, and most importantly, it’s there when you need it the most.
Do you believe that fiction can play a unifying role in a world where the realities of history and politics are so often weaponized to divide us?
Faraaz Mahomed: Fiction offers us an entry point into a much more truthful world. I remember reading The Idiot and realizing that it had real, genuine activist leanings and who’s to say that it has not achieved those? My day-to-day work involves the field of human rights. Advocacy, litigation, policymaking and all of these other forms of social work are important, but fiction is equally important because it can truly offer substantial change for people. I’m really proud of the company I’m keeping in the fiction world.
Sven Axelrad: Of course I do. When I created the fictional town of Vivo, I was going through some personal stuff, quietly losing hope, sinking into a dark place I had no idea how to get out of. In this state, I set the stage of Vivo. I made the stage, but I had no plan or idea what my characters would do with it. What I discovered as I began to write was something that has changed my life. Each of my characters is flawed, a little selfish, caught up in the grand and petty importances of their own lives, but when the chips are down and they are faced with hard choices, almost all of them choose to act with kindness; flawed kindness, reluctant kindness, but kindness nonetheless. Kindness like weaponized light illuminating the dark. I believe that fiction, reading books by people different than yourself, with different ideas, lives, and choices, is a beautiful gift both to the world and to yourself. Empathy is communicative. It’s catching. It’s a chain-reaction. It reduces anger. You’ll probably live longer if you read. Also, it’s fun.
Dilman Dila: Fiction speaks to people differently, and our enjoyment of a book or film is determined by our own experiences and histories. Perhaps fiction can broaden our perspectives, make us empathize with those who are not like us, or fill in the blanks in our knowledge of other cultures. Through solarpunk stories, for example, we can have something to hope for, a future to build, and that indeed can. But if it unifies, then it creates a more homogenous world and that is a very dangerous thing. Dystopic. Human beings thrive on diversity, and a more diverse world is less susceptible to manipulations by leaders.
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#ReadingAfrica Week is an annual celebration of Africa Literature organized by Catalyst Press and runs from November 2 through November 7.
Buried Treasure by Sven Axelrad will be released from Catalyst Press on January 26, 2027.
The Blossoming of the Big Tree by Dilman Dila is available from Ododo Press.
Mother/Land by Faraaz Mahomed is available from Catalyst Press.
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