Hi, people of Iko!

Welcome to the Christmas month! Too much excitement? Oya, I’ll wait till next week’s Selects. Stories this week had me thinking a lot about time. Chioma Okoli’s “Burn Again” is time-travel in a way none of us has ever seen. I will not even get into how well-written it is, but it is so thrilling, and with so many pivots, it earned its place as the most-liked story on Iko Africa this past week. 

“Nwabueze stared at the woman before him. Brown and white cowrie shells adorned her matted hair,” she writes. “He ignored the blood stains on her white wrapper and the skulls around her waist. Time travel is a very dangerous magic, but he’d come for one thing….”

Burn Again is Afro-Mysticism at its very best. 

Time goes by, whether we do anything or not. It is the surest measure of the existence of a thing (To me, sha). Musing on time and a life spent is the theme of “Na Only You Go Be My Lover” by Angel James. Our Protagonist, Asari, is a septuagenarian who reminisces on the day she found her true love.

“The word ‘enough’ is an insulting attribute given to time. One can never have enough time”. In her story that stretches across time seamlessly and with poignant prose, Angel James explores love and loss as an indicator of fate and its “doings.”

What lengths do you go to when a celebrity has been “cancelled”? Would Darwin escape unharmed or suffer repercussions for his unintentional contribution to scientific racism in today’s cancel-culture environment?  “Cancelling Darwin”, Sandra Okpara’s imagining of the cancellation of Charles Darwin puts the father of evolution in the crosshairs of social media. 

“While it is crucial to acknowledge that Darwin didn’t directly orchestrate Ota Benga’s plight,” she writes, “the unintended consequences of his theories, amplified by a society embracing pseudoscientific racism, cast a long and haunting shadow over history.”

Lewis Udenyi Ogenyi’s “No Discount for Bad Dates” is a fun tale of love in Lagos, the city where love goes to die. We follow Mosun and Isaac, who finally get their chance to go on a date brewing for three weeks. Harmattan and a series of other unfortunate events make this one of our week's favourites. 

Umu agbogho elezina m oo! To Dance With Gods by Nduka Ebube Dike, a tale reminiscent of classic Achebe, follows Mmadiya as she defies tradition to see what women are not allowed to see. “Men staying awake one night in a year and chanting praises, do not move the gods”, he writes, “it is their job to care for and watch over humans, and they do it, abali iriji or no”

I know Halloween has passed oh, but we fancied this story by Abigail Oloda. In “The Accursed Home”, A haunted house torments a child and requires him to sate its thirst for blood. It was a bit of a nail-biter and a thrilling ride all the way through. 

What would you recommend? What stories have you read on Iko that had you like “AH!”. What are your favs in the last Ember month? I’d love to read your advice, insights and learnings. Let’s go deep.

Thanks for reading — and for writing.

Albert Nkereuwem, 

Editorial Manager, Iko Africa