Everfair is a Sweeping Tale of Hope and Survival in a Steampunk African Nation

These are the words Old Kanna, the religious leader of a native tribe in Ilebo of the African nation of Everfair, speak at a funeral to honor the dead slaughtered by King Leopold’s men. And this is the Belgian Congo of 1896 as reimagined by Nisi Shawl in her novel, Everfair.
Everfair is a colony newly established by members of the Fabian Society. The colony is meant to be a haven for slaves fleeing the atrocities inflicted upon them by the king’s forces in the Congo Free State. Instead of dying by the thousands, they run to this promised land, where steampunk marvels exist, and they can replace missing limbs with new and better contraptions—and weapons. With this technology, they, and their allies in a nearby African tribe ruled by King Mwenda, can fight back.
In her historical note, Shawl, whose story collection Filter House is filled with fantasy drawn from varied African tradition, describes the atrocities carried out during the historical King Leopold II’s reign over the Congo Free State, where over half of the populace disappeared between 1895 and 1908. Millions died. “I like to think that with a nudge or two events might have played out much more happily for the inhabitants of Equatorial Africa,” Shawl writes. “They might have enjoyed a prosperous future filled with all the technology that delights current steampunk fans in stories of western Europe and North America. And more. In Everfair, they do.”

The funeral scene described above stands, serving as the metaphor for purpose the novel. This is Shawl’s eulogy for all of the enslaved people who died in the Belgian Congo and around the world. In the fictional colony of Everfair, she is giving them a voice and a better life in fiction than they were ever able to achieve in reality.
There are moments of beauty throughout, the prose lyrical and evocative. When a white Christian character hallucinates as he’s dying and meets an African god, it’s as if we are there, lying on the god’s anvil, bargaining for our own lives. The imagery is vivid and searing, even when we grow dizzy at following the alternate timeline across many points-of-view. I can’t imagine this story without those voices—African, European, East Asian, and African-American voices that were silenced in our history, now gifted the chance to speak.
This is a novel full of promise and hope, an important work that tells the story of voices lost to time and history. Everfair is a clarion call to the marginalized to speak up and be heard. It’s a chance for everyone else to be silent and listen.
Preorder Everfair, to be published September 6.