Meet Muthi Nhlema

Muthi Nhlema is the author of the ZamaShort debut short story 'Piss Corpse'. When he isn’t managing a non-profit or trying to understand his 12-year-old son’s obsession with anime, Muthi Nhlema 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.
 
'Piss Corpse' was that story.

Drops 1st May 2025. 
 
Available for Pre-order:

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