Twelve authors, twelve tales of love and travel - some sweet and touching, some bleak and disturbing. This collection includes stories by writers from Australia, Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and Zimbabwe. The authors have won or been nominated for prizes and awards including the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Pushcart Prize and Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award.

 

They offer the reader a meet-cute on the streets of Zimbabwe, a classic American road trip replayed with an elderly Jewish patient and his black orderly and an encounter between a withdrawn war veteran and his beautiful neighbor in Iran. They follow a couple from Malawi who endure an odyssey in search of a better future in Europe, a woman in New Zealand who has to make a choice when her husband decides to become a woman and others.

 

These stories are about the power of love to heal us, give us courage and make us want to be better people. They are also about its power to harm us, deluding us into submitting to control, deception and abuse. The authors of the twelve stories in this anthology are Alice Bingner, Tendayi Bloom, Shirley Fergenson, Nod Ghosh, Tendai Huchu, Stanley Kenani, Lily Mabura, Jackie Davis Martin, Catherine McNamara, Marlene Olin, Barry Reddin and Gregory Wolos.