Half Portraits Under Water

Half Portraits Under Water is a collection of 10 short stories following different, yet thoughtfully connected characters through the shifting political terrain of post-independence Africa. Award-winning author Dennis Mũgaa’s skilfully crafted stories run into and out of one another in a way that makes the collection feel not only temporally textured, but also thoughtfully layered, with each story carrying you to a new place by picking up from where the former left off. His characters vary from a mother trying not to lose her son to a group of nomads wandering through Egypt, to a young girl mourning her twin sister. Yet the feelings underpinning their experiences are shared, and they coalesce into a vivid depiction of the ripples of colonialism felt across different regions and time periods of African history. The common thread between all the different strands Mũgaa’s stories weave together is the identification he crafts for the reader with each of his characters, and the underlying sense of care and compassion it is informed by.