3.5 stars.

Did I know anything about South Sudan? No. That's kind of why I'm reading this, duh. Chosen for my read around the world challenge, There Was A Country was a surprise and delight to find. South Sudan claimed independence from Sudan in 2011, which makes it one of the newest countries in the world.

In editor Nyuol Tong's introduction, he is reluctant to point to the familiar authors who form the "diaspora of former refugees and war survivors" and call them South Sudanese literature, due to the complexity of categorizing African literature within and outside the context of its colonial legacies:

South Sudanese culture, in other words, is a strikingly hard to define thing. To further complicate our brief, all of the stories collected here were written in English. As Ngugi [wa Thiong'o] would phrase it: is this not "the final triumph of a system of domination"?

...That the first anthology of fiction bearing the nation's name is in English, a colonial language, demands an explanation.

The intent, above all, is to allow the South Sudanese stories to reach as many people as possible: "... colonial languages reinforce this [subjugational] unity as a common medium of communication and of national identification, an umbrella under which different ethnicities and cultures can find equal representation ... it seems reasonable to use it to send our own work out into the world."

Here we find war, but also so much more than that.

And now, as always when it comes to short story collections & anthologies, have my entirely useless selection of notes:

ESCAPE BY EDWARD EREMUGO LUKA
"The night weighed heavily on me, for it reminded me that they would come for me one day. When they did, I would be ready for them. They have no faces, but I had a fair idea of who they were."

Leaving your friends and family behind, determined to return one day for them. I wonder.

PORT SUDAN JOURNAL BY VICTOR LUGALA
"Sudanese make friends easily, even with the devil."

Having American money makes you an imperial agent - well, you're not far off, I imagine.

"I never knew why [the Nubian woman] had failed to maintain a husband; this woman knew everything to do with beer and hangovers and taking care of men ..." yeah, dude, I think I know exactly why she "failed" to maintain a husband. That's it, right there.

WHAT DOES THIS ENDING MEAN? DID HE SEND HIS OWN NEPHEW AWAY? WHO WAS JUMA? what

THE BASTARD BY NYUOL LUETH TONG
Combination of medical science and local spiritual custom .

Diviners make things up, "validating what the people who had come to them already believed" not because the spirits don't exist, but because the spirits are stingy with information so as not to spoil the future and their own fun in watching it. I like this.

LEXICOGRAPHICIDE BY TABAN LO LIYONG
????

HOLY WARRIOR BY DAVID L. LUKUDU
"But he was afraid, really afraid. He did not know why he was terrified; was it not his choice to come and die?"

POTATO THIEF BY JOHN ORYEM
Call someone a name long enough and they will become that which you call them, out of a resigned inevitability or, in this case, sheer goddamn spite.

LIGHT OF DAY BY SAMUEL GARANG AKAU
The phrase "stepping on someone's balls, a bit" is a much better way to say "pulling someone's leg".

This is an interesting look at a teenage courtship in Sudan, Yom fencing with cutting words and Mayom trying his damndest to be suave (he fails, but she reluctantly finds him charming regardless). Also? Oblique references to the rhythm method, which I never would have guessed adolescent boys would know anything about.

TALL PALMS BY ARIF GAMAL
Thanks to this poem (and some casual google sleuthing), I now know that according to popular folk knowledge, forcing a snake to drink milk will help rid you of all evils.

On an shallower, aesthetic level, this book is nicely put together, with a cut-out cover and art by Gregory Euclide.