KalahariLog

I have been reading African literature for the last two months. Some of the books I read were good, others not so good. On the recommendation of a friend who knows the author, I read Unity Dow's "The Screaming of the Innocent". Apart from the over-the-top title, the book was a fine, if bitter, re-telling of a story of a ritual murder case from a few years back. The author of the book if a 40-something woman on the High Court (this the equivalent of the Supreme Court, and here there are only 3 judges on it) who has already made a mark in her profession a few years back when she forced a change in the constitution allowing women to pass on citizenship rights to their children (a right previously reserved to men only). As Tanya is still reading this book, I won't write more about it other than to say that it paints a different picture of Botswana than McCall-Smith's books.

Among the strange-verging-on-bizarre books I would put The African Origins of Civilization by Cheikh Anta Diop. In the 50's, when Senegal was struggling for independence, the Senegalese author was working on his PhD in Egyptology in Paris. It took 10 years after his original submission, for him to convince his advisors to approve his work and a great deal of his dissertation went into his book. He later became the leading proponent of Afrocentrism, the answer to Eurocentrism, which denies any contributions from Africa's people. The main point of the book, that the Egyptian civilization is a black African civilization, is made very convincingly. However, some of the other claims are a bit out there. Still, a fascinating read! It's quite funny to see the arguments the French and the Brits used to weasel out of the problem that while Egypt was prospering, say 3000BC, Europe was a barbarian wasteland, while at the same time argue that Egypt's pharaohs must have been whites.


A couple of Nigerian writers are often listed in most lists of African must-reads. Wole Soyinka won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. He seems to be an outspoken critic of corrupt governments, and he's been in prison for it. When the latest dictator came to power in Nigeria in the 90's he went on a self-exile to the US (teaching at Emory University for 5 years). One of his most acclaimed books is "Ake" which is autobiographical and tells the story of him growing up in the village of Ake in Nigeria. While it is very well-reviewed and probably well-written, I found it too self-congratulatory. OK, so he was a smart kid, but is it necessary to remind us that on every other page? Yes, he went to school with older kids; yes, he learned things faster than the rest; yes, he won a scholarship... Maybe I'll read another book by him, but one not about him.

Chinua Achebe is the other well-known Nigerian writer. His most famous novel, the tiny "Things Fall Apart" is reputed to be the most-read African novel of all times with over 10 million copies. The book was written in the 50's and before Nigerian independence. It tells a story of the early days of British colonization. Like most books about those days, there is a lot in there about religion, culture-clashes, and the usual stuff one expects to see. I was uncertain at the end if his criticism was heavier on the tribal superstitions and cruelties or on the colonial and missionary zeal and corruption. It was utterly depressing, and if one is feeling too happy for one reason or another, I recommend this book as an antidote.



Thomas Mofolo's "Chaka" is one of these books which surely must get assigned to African studies read-lists as one can find many copies for $0.01 on Amazon. This is a re-telling (not strictly biographical) of Shaka Zulu's story, Shaka, of course, being the fierce Zulu warrior who was the only thing that could have gotten the Brits and the Boers together in the 1830's. The writer was a Lesotho man of letters (one of very few of that time, in the early 1900's). It was originally written in Sesotho and then translated in English. The story of Shaka is yet another one that I am not sure what local people feel about: he was probably the most famous warrior, king, and everything else in recent African history, and he could have stopped European incursions from the southern tip of Africa. But he was also brutal, evil, and very likely crazy too. While causing a lot of pain to the Europeans, he also devastated all nearby African tribes, leaving behind some of the largest mass migrations of displaced people.

The only really fictional fiction-book I've read is one by Naguib Mahfouz, who is another Nobel Prize winner from Egypt. The book is called "Harafish" and until about 50% of it, I was enjoying it. As Tanya pointed out, it had a feel similar to that of "Hundred Years of Solitude" by of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but set somewhere in the Muslim part of Africa (I would guess Egypt itself, but neither geography, nor dates, nor countries are mentioned) rather than in South America. However, the idea (generation after generation of flawed people who fail to live up to their promise) gets tiring after 5 generations. After the 10th generation, I had lost track of the hundreds of names of underdeveloped characters, who are more like stick figures than fully-fleshed out people. Incidentally, Mahfouz worked as Director of Censorship in Egypt yet he was a controversial character, regularly getting in trouble for writing about things he was not supposed to write about (God, homosexuality, etc.) and in the aftermath of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, he was stabbed by religious fanatics. He survived and lived until August 30th this year, when he died at the age of 95. He is the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel prize for literature. I liked the book enough to invest (books are expensive here, at about $25 for a small paperback) in a trilogy by him that is said to have won him the prize.

I am taking a break from African literature with a sci-fi 500-pager called "Century Rain" by Alastair Reynolds, which reminds me of Iain Bank's high-brow sci-fiction, with excellent plot, characters, and a good dose of cyber-punk and film-noire thrown in for a good measure. The picture is of a baobab tree at around which one of the fancy lodges in Kasane is built -- these trees are amazing even at the end of the winter when they are still leafless. The second picture is of one of the fabled frogs that come out of the desert when the rains. It rained last night and here's one at our door. The last picture is of knowledge-hungry warthogs, trying to find their way in the University.