Meerkat Press has unveiled the cover of Crimson in Quietus, the forthcoming Sauúti novel by African Australian author Eugen Bacon, a Solstice and British Fantasy Award winner and a founding member of the Sauúti Collective.
Supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, Australia, as part of the University of Tasmania’s Hedberg Fellowship, Crimson in Quietus is a new kind of literary mystery where the investigator is not a detective, but a sound magic scientist.
The novel revolves around Muso’mi, a maadiregi, an expert, highly gifted from childhood in the art of consuming sound—her mother calls it stealing sound. Now a recent graduate from the Mahadum of the Mother’s Whisper, and a research fellow, Muso’mi seeks to pursue higher studies on the language of silence, if only to understand her own gift. But the head of the mahadum is an opportunist who wants more than Muso’mi can give. When her friend unearths a secret but disappears before she can disclose it, Muso’mi transverses the pools of quietude across the planets to follow her research and find the missing woman
Praising the novel, Trica Reeks, Meerkat Press Publisher, says:
“I connected with this exquisite and extraordinary story in such a powerful way, in the only way that Eugen’s writing can move me—as far back as Claiming T-Mo, through Mage of Fools and more, all of them Black speculative fiction. I knew at once that I wanted to publish this new novel.”
In her words, Angela Slatter, award-winning author of All the Murmuring Bones, says of Eugen’s earlier work:
“Bacon’s sentences are ceaselessly reaching with a boldness that would have made Angela Carter proud. Her stories are restless and relentless.”
Keith Rosson, award-winning author of Road Seven, Smoke City and The Mercy of the Tide, added saying:
“Bacon’s stories are languid, endlessly strange things, and she makes them seem effortless.”
Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was announced on the honor list for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’.
Crimson in Quietus is scheduled for publication in September 2026.
Sarah Adeyemo
Sarah Adeyemo is a poet, writer, editor, and spoken word artiste from Nigeria. She is a fellow of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. Sarah has work published or forthcoming work in ANMLY Lit, D’Iit Review, The Fiery Scribe Review, Con-Scio Magazine, Sevhage Review, Okiti Literary, Synchronized Chaos Magazine, Pepper Coast Magazine, The Weeds Review, Akpata Magazine, The Shallow Tales Review, The Muse Journal, The Weganda Review, Everscribe Magazine, Afrillhill Press, TV-63 Magazine, Poems for Persons Interest, Northern Writers Forum Journal, Eboquills, Rinna Lit. Anthologies, and elsewhere. Her works have been shortlisted for the 2025 Labari Prize for Poetry and longlisted for the 2025 Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize. She serves as the Managing Editor at Words-Empire Magazine, a Poetry Editor at Yarnz Magazine, PFPOI, and a News & Feature writer at the Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit). She was a writing resident of the Rongo Artist Residency in 2026 and is currently a writing resident at the Ebedi International Writers Residency. She is a member of The Swan Collective. A dramatic poet who tweets @sarahinkspires.
