Second paragraph of third story (“Timebox”, by Janelle Monáe and Eve L. Ewing):

“What are you doing? It’s freezing out.”

Five stories set in the world of Monáe’s Dirty Computer, about women caught up in the near-future totalitarian state of New Dawn, where those who don’t fit in, especially in terms of gender and sexuality, face memory wiping by the powerful state. It’s rooted in her Hugo finalist album and film from a few years back:

All five stories are billed as being co-written by Monáe and a series of other writers. They all take the fictional society in new and slightly different directions; my favourite was the third, “Timebox”, co-written with Chicago activist Eve L. Ewing, in which two women discover a room in their apartment which sits outside time, and react to it very differently. But these are all good and thought-provoking, and recommended. (Eligible surely for the BSFA’s new Best Collection category next year?) You can get it here.

This was top of my pile of unread books by non-white writers. Next is a rather different one: The Return of Eva Perón with the Killings in Trinidad, by V. S. Naipaul.

This is also the first write-up here of a book that I finished this month.