The Believers: Stories

THE BELIEVERS IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 OCM BOCAS PRIZE IN CARIBBEAN LITERATURE, FICTION!

"Settings . . . are described in deft strokes . . . characters [conjured] with equal dexterity. Each story . . . delivers with integrity and verve . . . confidently and persuasively." — 2025 Bocas Prize Judges

". . . The Believers is a collective unsettling — an invitation to release yourself from the tales you think you know. [Herman's characters] . . . are undaunted players, powerful even in their acts of flinching and subterfuge, written with a startling immediacy." — Caribbean Beat Magazine

"Resonant . . . . With incisive prose, Herman renders each character with admirable nuance . . . delivering . . . illuminating and indelible stories." — Mubanga Kalimamukwento, author of Obligations to The Wounded

 A. K. Herman's wondrous and shattering debut collection imbues people on the periphery with power hardly visible to outsiders—where no one conforms to type. In the title story, to leave a seemingly friendly and supportive church, a family must risk everything. In "The Iridescent Blue-Black Boy with Wings (After Márquez)," children find a winged boy in a seaside village in Tobago. In "Ready for the Revolution?" uncertain lovers play rough with identity politics, and are set on an unexpected path.

In "Drink the Dew," love and wrath become one, while the young woman in "Inside" navigates a complicated business arrangement with her lover. In "Love," a scandalous affair produces a love child, born with a dark omen, while in "Exile," a pregnant teen from a staunchly religious family is exiled to have her baby in secret. A gardener in "Love Story No. 8" falls for a rich man's daughter to disastrous ends. The Believers is at once poignant and subversive, haunting and truly unforgettable.