Songs for the Shadows

Your feelings are of no consequence.

Shad-Dari has escaped her past, her dreams now in reach. An excavator of the valuable old sounds of Órino-Rin, she steals tiny, unheard fragments of the sacred songs to erase the painful echo of her home planet, Ekwukwe. In one rebellion too far, she sets off a chain of events that severs her from time itself, forcing her, without another way forward, to face her past.

“Set in the Sauúti universe and tightly packed with rich worldbuilding, Songs for the Shadows is crafted in beautiful prose and depth, meditating on silence and sound and song as powerful cultural entities—a magic system of sound excavation and the folding and manipulation of time that blew me away!”—Tlotlo Tsamaase, Caine Prize Finalist and author of Womb City

“In Songs for the Shadows, Ntumy continues the work of the Sauúti Collective, in immersing the reader into an expansive and complex world in which the magic and power of the oral—prayers, wails, chants, songs, words, and therefore stories—have been elevated to the most valued cultural artifacts. I was mesmerized by this world and by the rule-breaking, self-inventing Shad-Dari who, in seeking to drown out the echoes of her past loses everything she thought she needed.”—Gothataone Moeng, 2024 Whiting Award winner for Call and Response: Stories

“Cheryl’s writing is magical, lyrical and breath-taking. Imagine a world created by and out of sound—and that sound is linked to our very beings. Plus the beautiful evocations on the non-linearity of time and how we deal with the voices from the past. Bravo!”—Joyce Chng, author of Fire Heart