Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House magazine, has led a life defined by restless searching. Born in Germany to two extremely driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in the epicenter of a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression, and the artistic lives surrounding him never felt more authentic. From backstage dressing rooms to the front rows of concert halls, Spillman was inspired to live for art—nothing was more romantic or ideal.In his early twenties, after an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents and different homes, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the bullet-pocked streets of East...

A one-of-a-kind collection showcasing the energy of new African literatureComing at a time when Africa and African writers are in the midst of a remarkable renaissance, Gods and Soldiers captures the vitality and urgency of African writing today. With stories from northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, this collection conveys thirty different ways of approaching what it means to be African. Whether about life in the new urban melting pots of Cape Town and Luanda, or amid the battlefield chaos of Zimbabwe and Somalia, or set in the imaginary surreal landscapes born out of the oral storytelling tradition, these stories represent a striking cross section of extraordinary writing. Including works by J. M. Coetzee, Chimamanda Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Chinua Achebe, and edited by Rob Spillman of Tin House magazine, Gods and Soldiers features many pieces never before published, making it a vibrant and essential glimpse of Africa as it...