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Monday, 13 October 2008 |
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Published by Penguin.  This remarkably wise, prize-winning first novel is about power. Although the setting is deliberately not identifiable (like Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians), South African readers will find the kind of state power that Dovey depicts historically all too recognizable: it is illegitimate, brutal, and lacking gravitas or authority. The “earthly trappings … of people in power” (136) are everywhere, but those who exercise or resist power are presented in their private lives, stripped to their defecating, copulating and ruminating selves. And yet there is a beauty and freshness in the writing that kept me engrossed. The local effects are often delicate and subtle but they bear strongly on the novel’s themes, as when one woman remembers the cowries in her collection being “smooth and tight as a baby’s fist” (128).
When the story opens, the President of an unnamed country has just been deposed (by a long-standing rebel group, as it turns out) but the novel turns away from the violence that might have happened in the streets to explore power through tortured personal relationships. Gendered power becomes the main focus of the narrative, and, in a move that will again be familiar to South African readers, the novel’s axiom is that despotic state power infects all human relationships. Dovey works as a fabulist, but the Jacobean family, marital and sexual relationships she creates are more than allegorical for they also have a capacity to impact causally on the state power that they reflect. |
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Monday, 06 October 2008 |
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 The new novel recently published by Michael Cawood Green, entitled For the Sake of Silence, has considerably enriched the literary-historical landscape of Durban. The signal achievement of this book is the breathe of life it imparts to the former monastery of Mariannhill, by relating the compelling narrative of how the institution was established by a community of silent, contemplative Trappist monks in late 1882.
For most residents of Durban, Mariannhill occupies a somewhat enigmatic space in the cultural milieu of the city, and few people know anything of the background behind the beautiful collection of buildings located near the highway on the way out of town. By means of exhaustive research, Michael Green has created a broad portrait of the Trappist endeavour, littered with rich details of the monks’ lives and the various motives that inspired them. In the account he provides, the crucial factor in the fortunes of the monastery is its missionary character, which makes it unique among all the other Trappist houses ever established. Green examines the nature of this Christian effort to convert the African population of Natal to the faith of the colonisers, but it is the unintended consequences of this endeavour that forms the heart of the story.
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Monday, 06 October 2008 |
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 Zahrah the Windseeker is a tale of friendship, self-realisation, courage and adventure. Zahrah, the protagonist, has special powers of which she is at first ashamed. Yet when she has to travel into the forbidden jungle in search of an antidote to save her best friend's life, Zahrah discovers and embraces the strength and courage which lie within her.
The book, a work of magic realism, is remarkable in its originality and imagination. The author skillfully explores local myths about dada children, talking animals and the supernatural realm. The result is a captivating piece of fiction which both adults and children will appreciate. |
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Friday, 03 October 2008 |
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Blackbird is a captivating and rather enjoyable read. It is the tale of Maya and her husband Omoniyi's sufferings. Set in Lagos, it clearly depicts the fine line between the lives of the rich and the poor and portrays the vicious cycle of poverty, desperation, crime and eventual death. This novel reminds one of Festus Iyayi's style especially his Violence. The language is very direct and simple. There's little or no use of metaphors, it's almost like the writer is throwing the reality of the lifestyle of the downtrodden at us without polishing it or making it look less terrible than it really is. There is also a bit of humour and the language is spiced with local pidgin and a bit of Yoruba. |
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 |
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 This beautifully told story ignites a fire in the reader, especially the female reader, creating a world where nothing is impossible. Zukiswa focuses on the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) kings and queens and celebrates their dominance and independence respectively while at the same time emphasizing the importance of a united family. Unlike The Madams, here we see the woman dismantling that stereotype that defines her first as a mother, then as a wife and finally as a professional.
It is the tale of Nobantu's struggle to find her identity and finally do something for herself and not for her mother, husband or children. Patiently, she begs for her husband's support and he unwaveringly refuses because he sees it as a sign of incompetence on his part for his wife to work. Ntsiki, her lesbian friend , tries to persuade her to follow her heart with or without her husband and after much ado, she eventually does, proving to us that still waters indeed run deep. She wakes up and packs her things, leaving behind her husband, kids and mobile phone with no contact address. That marks the beginning of her not-so-smooth journey away from her bourgeois lifestyle in Johannesburg to a simple life in Soweto pursuing her dream to create a clothe line- Soweto Uprising. |
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