ZamaShort #5 'The Smell of Rain' by Libby Young

All ZamaShort publications are delivered in the epub format.

In the near future the Climate Crisis rages on relentlessly. On a farm, in the all but abandoned Cape Province in South Africa it has not rained for years, and yet Tilda and her dog Alfie somehow survive. Tilda’s life has shrunk down to a series of lonely routines in an echo of a life long gone. Until the day a desperate young boy breaks her isolation and everything changes.

“Something of the feel, atmosphere, tenor of this story stayed with me for many days after I read it; I feel it even now, writing about it. A brilliant story from Young, so succinct and precise in her delivery of this tale of women’s lives during a fairly inevitable near-future apocalypse. It’s intriguing how real it reads already when the Cape is so prone to climate crisis-related disasters—droughts, and fires.”

— Jacqueline Nyathi, Harare Review of Books.

Born in Zambia, Libby Young lived in various parts of southern Africa before settling in Cape Town. With a background in journalism that segued into web development, she now teaches English as a second language to adults from all over the world at the University of Cape Town, where she is also working towards a doctorate that combines environmental and cultural geography with literary studies.

The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.