BackHomeAbroad and Other Stories

BackHomeAbroad presents fifteen stories of lives crossing continents, cultures and personal histories. Hollist explores how migration reshapes narratives that confront racism, patriarchy, memory and the unresolved weight of home.

In “Outbreak at the Renaissance”, a woman attributes her marital troubles to the physical scar she got from escaping death in Sierra Leone’s civil war. “Okonkwo’s Revenge” follows two characters from Things Fall Apart as they break free of the limits of Chinua Achebe’s book. In “Foreign Aid”, a man returns to Sierra Leone after twenty years to find that he is a stranger in his homeland. Finally, border towns fighting over a disputed piece of land are united by a hermaphrodite in “Wherever Something Stands, Something Else Must Stand Beside It”.

These compelling stories portray people between worlds, highlighting the tensions and possibilities of movement, memory and change. Hollist’s voice is confident, incisive and quietly radical, marking this collection as an essential contribution to contemporary African literature.