Salma’s Spirit

A supernatural young adult novel by A. H. Hokororo. The spiritual world is the backdrop of this fictional account of real events believed to have taken place in Dar es Salaam. A boy meets a girl and the mystery starts. They go to the cinema and dinner, but when the boy calls at the girl’s house the next day, he finds that the Salma he was with the night before has been dead for three years. The gripping story unfolds as Salma’s ghost spirit appears and disappears, making life unbearable for the boy and Salma’s father before it is finally calmed and laid to rest. A story drawing on Tanzanian spiritual beliefs and coastal supernatural traditions, where the boundary between the living and the dead can blur in unexpected ways. For young adult readers interested in ghost stories set in African urban contexts, and for adult readers curious about Tanzanian takes on supernatural fiction.