Everfair

Nisi Shawl

Everfair, the brilliant Neo-Victorian alternate-history novel from acclaimed short-story writer Nisi Shawl, potently explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had adopted steam technology as their own.

In Shawl's eloquently explored vision, told by a multiplicity of voices that have historically been silenced—Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another—Fabian socialists from Great Britian join forces with African American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as former slaves returning from America and other places where African natives and their descendants were being mistreated. The work of keeping this land their own is near impossible, and tragedy is unavoidable. Yet the citizens of Everfair are determined, and even try their hand at the rewarding tasks of governance, invention...and romance.

Everfair is not only a beautiful book, but an inspiring and educational one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history. Shawl's speculative masterpiece thereby reframes the notorious atrocities of Leopold's reign into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history.