When Water Wants To

During embalming an arm jerks and strikes a mortician, leaving him unmoored. A pastor’s wife encounters a young congregant in her kitchen wearing her apron and preparing breakfast. A man’s attempt to make sense of why a tornado picked him up leads to a showdown with a cult leader. A daydreaming, gawky kid is appointed guardian of a watermelon that the ocean could snatch away. Love comes slowly, like water heating over a low fire or extra sugar being stirred into tea. In another story, the love of a father cannot save his musician son. A young woman living in a recognisable future contemplates the end of memory as her body transforms into the silver promise of a carapace. Another young woman feels she should be smiling but nothing stirs in her when her father wakes from death after 15 minutes. Battling portentous pre-dawn heat and still air, a bystander abandons removing caterpillars from a Ficus because the idea of touching them makes her squeamish. Elsewhere in the suburbs, in a fixer-upper from hell, crickets screech and squeal, their ringing like that of a demented alarm clock.

When Water Wants To presents the winners of the DALRO Can Themba Short Story Award. Celebrating the legacy of master storyteller Can Themba, this collection provokes, inspires, challenges and entertains with bold storytelling and keen social commentary. The stories range from the deeply personal to the wildly allegorical, playing with genre conventions and inhabiting a multitude of perspectives and unruly voices. These exciting new authors confirm the pre-eminence of the short story, and its oral antecedents, by delving into the national psyche in the conversations they have, the connections they make, and the themes, concerns and water-soaked imagery they share.