ZamaShort #1 'Piss Corpse' by Muthi Nhlema

All ZamaShort publications are delivered in the epub format.

Meet Charlotte, Peace Corps volunteer fresh off the plane from Iowa to Malawi and teaching English at a local school. Loaded with hilarious preconceptions as an American, feminist, and agnostic, she expected an adventure — just not one where trousers mean pants and white privilege feels like the punchline of a bad joke. With the help of her spirited chaperone, Malawian Mbumba, Charlotte is ushered into a culture clash more like a train smash and has never felt more alive.

“‘Piss Corpse’ is a marvellous debut in the ZamaShort series. The very best elements of short stories – characters immediately brought to life, a setting both familiar and defamiliarized, a tight narrative arc with a perfectly paced ending, and, best of all, the type of satire that makes African humour so brilliant.”

— Tsitsi Ella Jaji.

“Nhlema's prose is electric and fizzy, accentuating the absurd in this delightful comedy of cross-cultural confusion. You will laugh your head off and be wowed by this tale.”

— Tendai Huchu.

“Nhlema writes with wit and irony. I enjoyed this humorous take on culture-clashes.”

— Brian Chikwava.

“‘Piss Corpse’ is a story with an attitude. It might even be the right attitude. In its ferocity, revulsion at male oppression and corporate cultural garbage, and its weird and coruscating wit, it reads like a mixture of Celine and early Ngugi. Paraffin for wine drinkers.”

— Imraan Coovadia.

“With biting satire and irreverent humour, ‘Piss Corpse’ dives headfirst into the messiness of cultural collisions, linguistic blunders, the pitfalls of performative wokeness, and the unexpected grace of getting everything wrong.”

— Ekari Mbvundula Chirombo.

When Muthi Nhlema isn't managing a non-profit or trying to understand his 12-year-old son’s obsession with anime. He is a Malawian writer best known for his adventures (and misadventures) in African speculative fiction.

His first novella, ‘Ta O'Reva’, which imagines Nelson Mandela’s return to a post-apocalyptic South Africa, won third prize in the 2015 International Freeditorial Long-Short Story Competition and was shortlisted for Best Novella at the 2017 Nommo Awards. An excerpt, ‘Legacy’, was longlisted for the 2015 Writivism Short Story Prize and was runner-up for the 2015 Dede Kamkondo Short Story Award. His short story ‘One Wit’ This Place’ was the opening piece in the speculative fiction anthology Imagine Africa 500 and was named one of the top 10 African speculative short fiction stories of 2016 by renowned writer and editor Wole Talabi. His second novella, ‘Hiraeth’, from the speculative eco-fiction anthology Mombera Rising, made the longlist for the 2024 British Science Fiction Association Awards.

In 2021, while battling writer’s block disguised as imposter syndrome, Muthi was selected for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, becoming the fifth Malawian to join since 1967. In Iowa, he initially set out to reimagine alternate futures beyond colonial ideas of progress and modernity. When his brain hit a wall, he became inexplicably distracted by another story — one that demanded to be told and nursed him through his writer’s block.

This was that story.

‘Piss Corpse’ was selected to be the debut short story of the ZamaShort imprint series of single short stories. ZamaShort is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story, giving each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed and savoured fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, with ZamaShort will continue to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.