Fiction

Alien Stories

Celebrated Nigerian-born writer E.C. Osondu delivers a short-story collection of nimble dexterity and startling originality in his Boa Short Fiction Prize-winning Alien Stories.

These eighteen stories, each centered around an encounter with the unexpected, explore what it means to be an alien. With a nod to the dual meaning of alien as both foreigner and extraterrestrial, Osondu turns familiar science-fiction tropes and immigration narratives on their heads, blending one with the other to call forth a whirlwind of otherness.

With wry observations about society and human nature, in shifting landscapes from Africa to America to outer space and back again, Alien Stories breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as ‘aliens’ within a complex and interconnected universe.

Praise for E. C. Osondu

“A vital voice in the short story, telling us new truths with deep humanity." –George Saunders

“Osondu looks at the human condition in all its poignant absurdity; with observant wonder and subtle humor, he portrays our capacity for heartbreak, resilience, love, courage, sorrow, and most of all, our unique capacity for hope and hopelessness rolled together.” —Mary Gaitskill, author of This Is Pleasure

“E.C. Osondu has written uncannily direct stories with nothing ‘posed’ about them. This is a collection of real power, surprise, and harsh beauty.” —Amy Hempel, author of Sing to It

“A very modern, compassionate voice...Osondu is ceaseless in his willingness to examine the human condition in all its glories and frailties.” —Kirkus

FormatPaperback

Publication DateJune 11, 2021

ISBN9781950774319

$17.00

About the Author

E.C. Osondu is the author of Alien Stories (BOA, 2021), which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize; Voice of America (HarperCollins, 2011); and the novel This House Is Not For Sale (HarperCollins, 2015). He is a winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Allen and Nirelle Galso Prize for Fiction, among other awards. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, AGNI, n+1, Guernica, Kenyon Review, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, The Threepenny Review, Lapham’s Quarterly, New Statesman, and many other places, and his work has been translated into over half a dozen languages including Icelandic, Japanese, and Belarusian.

He earned his M.F.A. from Syracuse University, where he was a Syracuse University Fellow. He lives in Rhode Island and teaches at Providence College.