Published in 2019
288 pages
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. She has written for the New Inquiry, Strange Horizons, and Tin House, among others. Her work has won several awards, including the Campbell, Crawford, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. She teaches African literature, Arabic literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University.
What is this book about?
World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus award finalist
Divided into “Tender Bodies” and “Tender Landscapes,” the stories collected here in this first collection of short fiction from a rising star travel from the commonplace to the edges of reality. Some of Samatar’s weird and compassionate fabulations spring from her life and literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void.
Tender explores the fragility of bodies, emotions, and landscapes, in settings that range from medieval Egypt to colonial Kenya to the stars, and the voices of those who question: children, students, servants, researchers, writers. Tender includes two new stories, “An Account of the Land of Witches” and the Nommo Award shortlisted “Fallow.”
