In a bustling city known for its overt class prejudice, Fatima and her child face the authorities while ensuring her neighbourhood gets justice at all times. Wanted and absconding from Kano for her fierce activism to a Lagos slum, she must contend with her unspoken fears, the penury of her comrades, and the totalitarianism of the powers that be.
‘A Country in a Fist’ follows the lives of marginalised women who must survive against all odds in the face of politics and power, grunge and guns. The story tries to write the wrong and at the same time right the wrong through the realities of the ruler and the ruled.
It aims to subtly rehash history, to exhume the memories that pinch us, which we’re often afraid to talk about. It attempts to raise existential questions about life and society that leave the reader pondering them after reading the last word.
I see Naira Stories as a big home for all African voices yearning to tell the stories they carry within them, stories that make us laugh and cry, stories that encapsulate who we truly are as a people, a nation, and a continent.
Being published in the maiden edition of Naira Stories Magazine places me, and many others, as the first in something great, and the euphoria that comes with it is intoxicating. Securing a home for ‘A Country In A Fist’ in the magazine means a lot to me, in the sense that it’s the first Nigerian literary magazine that published my work in print, and I want to believe, the first for other great works too.
Kingsley Alumona is a geologist, writer, poet, journalist, and media consultant from Delta State, currently living in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. He holds a BSc in Geology from the University of Nigeria and an MSc in Geophysics from the University of Ibadan. He’s a Senior Reporter with the Nigerian Tribune newspaper and the Founder and Managing Editor of Naira Stories Magazine. He’s an alumnus of the Nigerian Academy of Letters’ Creative Writing Workshop. His writings have appeared in the 2018 African Book Club Anthology, Kalahari Review, Nthanda Review, TUCK Magazine, Brittle Paper, Afritondo, Digirature, Ngiga Review, Pawners Paper, Omenana (Issue 17), Transition Magazine (Issue 131), Afrocritik, Botsotso Literary Journal, Fortunate Traveller, and Farafina Blog. You can reach him on Facebook: @kingsley.alumona.1.
