Archive for the ‘Book Excerpts’ Category
by Chiara on Jan 27th, 2012
Today we bring you an excerpt from Roses and Bullets by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, a love story set during the Nigerian Civil War. Adimora-Ezeigbo, author of more than 20 books, is a previous winner of the NLNG Prize for Literature, “the biggest prize for literature in Nigeria”.
The excerpt comes courtesy Pulp Faction, which also features an interview with the author:
Then she heard a swishing sound and listened. “What was that noise,” she asked, turning to Udo. Udo looked blank. It sounded like a plane, but the swishing sound was strange. The seller was talking to her but she was not listening. The sound was increasing, and there was indication other people had heard it too. She heard a loud voice crying, “Hey, it is enemy plane-o! Take cover!”
Ginika did not have time to think, but the training she had had as a special constable guided her action, as she grabbed Udo’s hand and cried, “Follow me! Bend forward as you run!” They took off before the other people in the market who seemed mesmerized by the sound of the planes. Some of them stood in one spot, watching, as the first plane entered the space, in the sky, above the market. Ginika found the first tree at the edge of the forest and shouted to Udo, “Stop! Lie down beside me!” Even as she listened to the whooshing sound of the jet bombers, she heard the first explosion. The earth shook. Ginika flung one arm round the base of the tree and pressed her head to the ground; she could feel Udo’s body pressed to her side. “Stay down! Keep your body flat!” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t get up!” Was she trembling or was it Udo’s body quivering and shaking hers?
Interview with Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo:
The Nigerian literary scene is blessed with many gifted writers. In the midst of them all, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo shines like a thousand stars. Her writing career was launched when “The Call of Death”, a short story she wrote, got published many years ago. She is a former winner of the NLNG Prize for Literature, the biggest prize for literature in Nigeria; she heads the Prize’s panel of judges this year. Besides being a writer, she is also a scholar per-excellence – a professor – the former Head of English Department at the University of Lagos; critic; essayist; journalist; and administrator. She is the author of more than twenty books.
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by Carolyn on Jan 20th, 2012
In his final novel, Pawns, the late Zimbabwean author Charles Samupindi explores the Second Chimurenga as a war that was “neither heroic nor honourable”.
The online magazine Warscapes, dedicated to literature from war-torn areas, features an extract from the book, which was published shortly before Samupindi’s death in 1993.
Warscapes argues that Pawns has a “prophetic quality” which makes the book especially relevant to Zimbabwe today. According to Warscapes, the novel “presents ethnic tensions, violent ideologies, inchoate forms of nationalism and the general chaos of revolution; all of which seems to herald a present-day Zimbabwe teetering under the weight of Mugabe’s tyranny and experiencing deep political and economic instabilities”.
The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 2:
THEN…
Back in time some people were so thin that they had to jump around in the rain to get wet. Back in time.
GHETTO BOY
Why am I so nervous? Why have I never stood firm in the face of anything, any confrontation? Outwardly I appear quite normal, like the other boys of my age. But inwardly I see a hollow drum. Sheepish, fragile, unsure of myself – what makes me mad! – it is so unnecessary. I look at myself in the mirror. I break off giggling foolishly. What’s wrong with me? I feel so insecure, so vulnerable. And this stutter when I speak, of late it has become much worse. My tongue feels like a slab of cement at the bottom of my mouth when I try to say something. Even when I am alone.
I keep promising myself I’ll brace up and shake off this needless shyness once and for all. But before I’m through with my promise, I know it won’t work. It is useless. There is this horror brewing at the base of my stomach. Sooner of later. Sooner or later…And this horror moves along with me, clings to me like a dirty shirt. The horror that tonight amai will come back from the market where she sells vegetables and fruit and say, “It has been a tough day, children. Nothing was bought. We can’t eat tonight.”
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by Sophy on Jan 3rd, 2012
Times LIVE:
Gareth Cliff shares his thoughts on the pitfalls that can trip up the unwary holidaymaker
The holidays might be something you’ve been craving all year. We all love the end-of-year break, and we need it quite badly. There’s just one problem: you forgot about all the things that ruined last December for you because it was a whole year ago. Let me explain: there are things about the holidays that can bite you in the backside and turn what should be a festive, relaxing time into a nightmare. Here are 10 tips for a happy holiday.
1. You don’t need to go away to get away
There’s so much pressure to make the December holiday count. Some people splash out and go to Cuba, the US, the Seychelles or Bali. Cape Town, Plett, Sodwana and Ballito can be just as relaxing, and won’t give you headaches when you do your finances in February. You also might not need three weeks. One week is sometimes enough. Don’t be so self-indulgent.
2. Ninety percent of us don’t have beach-fit bodies
So we’re not going to feel too good about being scantily clad in public. You forget how awful you felt when someone you liked last year commented on how hot that other guy on the beach looked, while glaring disapprovingly at you. Just accept that nobody wants to look at you, and make the most of your time on the beach. Which brings me, conveniently, to point three.
3. You’re going to eat too much, feel stuffed and have indigestion from all the rich holiday food
You’ll put on a ton of weight, you’ll sweat in the heat, and you’ll hate your body in January. We all think we can moderate this, but we can’t. Christmas is pig-out time. Leftovers don’t help, and neither do the old ladies in every family who feel that their holiday duties consist of them force-feeding you cholesterol- packed rubbish like stuffing and fatty red meat. Just learn to say no.
4. You might meet some people on holiday
Even with the best of intentions, it is unlikely that these cool new people will still be in your life by June. Normally you’re already bored with them by the end of the holiday. Maybe they’re bored with you, too. You’re not going to meet your new best friend on holiday. Be happy with the people you’re with – family, friends, a lover – and forget about that cool group of guys you hung out with at the bar, the girls you met in the swimwear section, or the celebrity who rented the house next to yours and came around to borrow some booze. They’re holiday friends.
5. You’ll feel guilty that you wish you were single every day you’re away with your boyfriend or girlfriend
On holiday you’ll feel a bit hedonistic, you’ll be caught up in the joy of the holidays and the sense of reckless abandon, and you’ll behave like a single person – but you might not be. This will put your relationship under severe strain because there will be many opportunities for whirlwind romances and fun nights out, but you’ll have to stay in and do “couple things”. You may end up watching a lot of DVDs. Combat this feeling by accepting the benefits of reliable sex, or split up before the holidays start. If you really love the one you’re with, this tip is invalid.
6. Don’t spend all your money
Buy everyone a small, sentimental gift rather than splashing out on a Pierneef for your mom, just because you’re feeling guilty that she sacrificed her best years raising you. If you don’t buy something small for that great-aunt you usually ignore, she’ll harbour a grudge for many years. The Christmas table will be a miserable place for you when she hands you a crummy gift and you have nothing but a smile and reluctant kiss for the old bitch.
7. Your presents will be OK
You’re not seven years old anymore. When you’re seven, all those presents under the tree stir up an intense excitement that is the closest any human being comes to experiencing real magic. On the night you expect Father Christmas, every sound is a clue to his being there. You’re so excited that your little heart beats like an older person suffering from severe cardiac arrhythmia. When you open that present the next day, it is the best thing that ever happened to you. That doesn’t happen after you turn 23. You know it’ll be something practical, domestic or partially edible. Shopping for yourself is more fun. Actually, do that instead.
8. New Year’s Eve is going to be disappointing
I know I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, but there’s so much hype around NYE that people expect it to outclass every other party they’ve ever had. Chances are that it won’t live up to your very high expectations. You won’t even remember the countdown, and there will be annoying people pushing and jostling to kiss you and whoever you’re with, so you might even end up in a drunken brawl. You’ll drink too much yourself, lose your phone or wake up with a throbbing headache and a hundred text messages from people whose numbers you deleted two years ago. Just go with the flow and stay more sober than the person on your left … unless Charlie Sheen is the person on your left.
9. You might miss work
Not pine after the actual labour, but the routine, the office jokes, the sense of purpose. About halfway into your holiday you may start feeling guilty about things you didn’t do in the past year, and you might get a little excited about what you could still do in the coming year. This, too, will pass, but you’ll notice it becoming more apparent when you hear screaming kids, get badly sunburnt or wake up very hung-over. Forget about it. Work still sucks.
10. You’re going to be poor in January
You’ll forget all about your fabulous holiday, your tan will fade, you’ll be tired within the first week, and people will ask you where you went and what you did for the first three hours of your first day back. After that, they won’t care, so don’t keep telling them about the parasailing or the episode with the crocodile in the lagoon or when your wife slipped in the waves and her enormous breasts popped out of her top. Some of them worked through the holidays and they hate you. Just smile.
So whatever happens, whoever plots to screw up your time off, and no matter how bad the bad times are, holidays tend to be windows for some great memories to be made. You deserve them.
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by Sophy on Dec 23rd, 2011
This week’s Fiction Friday both anticipates and celebrates the forthcoming release of the new novel by Nadine Gordimer, No Time Like the Present. Gordimer’s short story, “The Ultimate Safari”, forms chapter one of the Caine Prize‘s tenth anniversary collection, 10 Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing. You can’t say we aren’t ending the year on a high note.
That night our mother went to the shop and she didn’t come back. Ever. What happened? I don’t know. My father also had gone away one day and never come back; but he was fighting in the war. We were in the war, too, but we were children, we were like our grandmother and grandfather, we didn’t have guns. The people my father was fighting – the bandits, they are called by our government – ran all over the place and we ran away from them like chickens chased by dogs. We didn’t know where to go. Our mother went to the shop because someone said you could get some oil for cooking. We were happy because we hadn’t tasted oil for a long time; perhaps she got the oil and someone knocked her down in the dark and took that oil from her. Perhaps she met the bandits. If you meet them, they will kill you. Twice they came to our village and we ran and hid in the bush and when they’d gone we came back and found they had taken everything; but the third time they came back there was nothing to take, no oil, no food, so they burned the thatch and the roofs of our houses fell in. My mother found some pieces of tin and we put those up over part of the house. We were waiting there for her that night she never came back.
We were frightened to go out, even to do our business, because the bandits did come. Not into our house – without a roof it must have looked as if there was no one in it, everything gone – but all through the village. We heard people screaming and running. We were afraid even to run, without our mother to tell us where. I am the middle one, the girl, and my little brother clung against my stomach with his arms round my neck and his legs round my waist like a baby monkey to its mother. All night my first-born brother kept in his hand a broken piece of wood from one of our burnt house-poles. It was to save himself if the bandits found him.
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by Sophy on Dec 23rd, 2011
Among the lesser-known details of the life of JM Coetzee – though there are, no doubt, many – is that the Nobel Laureate was once a member of an informal Malta Park cricket team, organised by the husband of Zoe Wicomb.
Coetzee returns to these days with a contribution to the essay collection Australia: Story of a Cricket Country, edited by Chris Ryan. His piece, entitled “Fifteen unsung South Africans and the revolution in fielding”, recalls the 1952 South African tour of Australia:
The sun is low in the sky over the Ryder oval, home ground of my old club Youlden-Parkville. The Ryder pitch, the track upon which over many seasons I experienced so much pleasure and so much pain, is cordoned off for the weekend match and tomorrow’s cricketers, my son and his schoolmates among them, the Super 8s, the under-12s and under-14s, are going through their paces.
It is clubs and grounds such as these, as Greg Chappell notes in his new autobiography, Fierce Focus, that have been the nursery of Australian cricket for three centuries. Cricket during that time has woven itself into the national story and the history that has emerged from that nursery is reflective of the country itself. And what this compilation of essays captures, quite superbly, is not simply the achievements of Australian cricket but the way our culture has been infused with its spirit, often as not providing the focus, the metaphor, through which we define ourselves.
While we haven’t yet managed to dig up Coetzee’s piece – the ultimate trophy – we are pleased to provide you with a taste of the collection in this edited extract from renowned historian Inga Cleninnen’s essay, “In the Pines”, an account of “local cricket” at Victoria’s Queens Park:
There is a lot of talk these days about childhood memories being the fountain from which we replenish our unique but depleting adult selves.
This generates even more talk about the reliability of memories. What follows is constructed out of irreplaceable, indispensable, unreliable memories, the only corrections being those insisted on by my brother, David Jewell, who played for the Newtown and Chilwell Cricket Club over many years.
Remembered: a cricket ground at Queen’s Park, Geelong. A beautiful ground ringed by a white line to mark the boundary, a white fence for leaning on and an outer ring of storm green pines. The sun is high at 2pm when the game begins; the shadows lengthening, the sounds of bat and ball more distant as the sun slants and the game moves to its close at six.
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by Sophy on Dec 19th, 2011
Sunday Times:
Born to a leading Inanda church family in 1871, John Langalibalele Dube would grow up to become the founding leader of the ANC. His early influences are described in this extract from The First President by Heather Hughes
John Langalibalele Dube was born at Inanda on 11 February 1871 – at least, this was the date he himself used as an adult. It was in all likelihood a retrospective approximation worked out with his mother (in relation to [his father] James’s ordination, perhaps), since the church records had been destroyed in the 1873 storm.
He did occasionally give other dates, but he fixed this as his official one when such things came to be required on passports and other legal documents. It was more than a matter of pragmatism: having a particular date of birth was the essence of that peculiarly modern quality, an individual identity.
His names, one Christian and one traditional, are significant.
John, a contracted form of the Hebrew for “God is merciful”, was an immensely important name in the early Christian church: there was John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ; John the Apostle; and John the Evangelist, associated with the New Testament gospel of St John. It became favoured by royalty in the Christian world. “John” must have seemed most suitable for a son born to the leading family in this momentous period in the life of the early Inanda church. It was already a well-established Christian name at Inanda and possibly this influenced their choice, too. Yet with James’s ordination still fresh in everyone’s memory, there was something especially deliberate in the parents choosing not to name their son after a missionary.
His second name, Langalibalele, “Scorching sun”, recorded his parents’ admiration for the elderly Chief Langalibalele of the Hlubi. In the early part of the 19th century, the Hlubi had faced even more terrible upheaval than the Qadi. They had been a strong chiefdom, settled in what is now northern KwaZulu-Natal, but they had experienced a number of deadly succession disputes just at the time of intense rivalry between the more powerful Zulu, Mthethwa and Ndwandwe polities. Defeat and flight set in motion a trail of displacement across the Hlubi area; it was what they called izwekufa, “death of the nation”. After years of uncertainty under Zulu authority, they had crossed into Natal in 1848.
Both the Hlubi and the Qadi were Lala, speaking the tekeza dialect, and both had gambled on British protection bringing peace and stability. Though they were located a very long distance from each other, there had been contact between the two chiefdoms, and one of Mqhawe’s wives was a Hlubi. On a more personal level, Langalibalele and James’s lives had followed certain parallels: James had fled with his mother as a very young child, just as Langalibalele had experienced izwekufa as a boy. Like James, Langalibalele was of high birth but not directly in line to the chieftainship. Unlike James, however, he found himself chief after a later round of succession disputes. It was he who had ushered the Hlubi into Natal; they had been permitted to settle on lands under the Drakensberg, where it was thought they might prove a useful buffer between the surviving San and white farmers, from whom the San tended to raid cattle.
Langalibalele had successfully rebuilt the chiefdom in Natal, acquiring some 40 wives and a reputation as a rainmaker. Like James’s close kinsman Mqhawe, he was a hereditary chief, which carried far higher status than those chiefs appointed by the “Supreme Chief”, the Governor of Natal. Langalibalele also demonstrated a great deal of autonomy, a mix of rejection and cooperation, in his dealings with the colonial government: he was “not inclined to be submissive to an authority which he sensed as weak”. Perhaps this was a quality that James and Elizabeth hoped their son would emulate.
The early signs were not promising that he would even survive babyhood. For the first two years of his life, John Langalibalele was ill much of the time, struggling for existence and spending long periods in the mission house being nursed by Lucy Lindley [wife of the American Board of Missionaries' the Rev Daniel Lindley] and his mother. It is difficult to work out what might have been the cause of John’s illness. Daniel Lindley diagnosed “inflammation of the lungs”, accompanied by high fever, so that the young child tossed restlessly through day and night. He treated the condition with a poultice. Perhaps John had contracted rheumatic fever. Whatever it was, it would recur and bring him down on several subsequent occasions.
His health did improve greatly through his childhood, though. The earliest photograph of him, which still hangs proudly in the living room of the family home at Inanda, shows a smiling, chubby cheeked, contented child aged about four. While his mother watched over him anxiously, life went on in its predictable pattern around them. James Dube delighted everyone in his new role. As Lindley wrote, “Thus far the results of this ordination have exceeded my highest expectations. Mr Dube is a live man, well endowed intellectually and personally, has a heart for his work, is amiable, discreet, and has much independence of thought and action. With all these good qualities he commands the respect and confidence of all who know him. While he shows that he is alive to the responsibilities of his new position, I see no sign that he is in the least lifted up with pride or that he will fall into the condemnation of the devil. It has gratified me very much to learn from him how well he appears to know the spiritual condition of everyone, converted and unconverted, under his pastoral care.”
He added that in the half-year since the ordination, the church had gained 11 new members. The Dube family business continued to thrive, too: although James’s salary was set at £24 per annum, he never took any money from the Home Missionary Society – he supported himself entirely by his oxen and wagons. The young John clearly grew up in a household that was both well thought of and well-to-do.
It has often been noted that John Dube’s life was bracketed by the momentous events that came to be called South Africa’s mineral revolution. In the year of his birth, what turned out to be diamonds were unearthed on an obscure hillside farm in Griqualand, away to the arid interior, and alluvial gold was discovered in the eastern Transvaal, sparking a gold rush. There were already upwards of 10000 diamond diggers along the Vaal River; they now turned their attention to the Griqualand farm, gouging out what would eventually be the Kimberley Big Hole. Deep and rich seams of gold would also be found in the interior, but not for a few years yet. These two subterranean treasures, gold and diamonds, would propel the subcontinent towards its own take-off to modern industrial development …
The young John Dube’s namesake, Chief Langalibalele, was engulfed in a series of catastrophic events in 1873 that were closely watched from the mission. Many Hlubi men were now trekking to the diamond diggings, acquiring a reputation as hard workers and helping to make the chiefdom strong once more. A favoured possession of returning migrants, almost a badge of status, was a gun. The Natal authorities, always anxious about such things, had many years before passed a law requiring all firearms to be registered. However, their fear was matched by their incapacity for enforcing such a requirement, so it was not implemented for a long time.
Then, at the beginning of 1873, the local magistrate suddenly ordered Chief Langalibalele to send all Hlubi men in possession of guns to attend his office to register them. The chief was at this time distracted by the recent death of one of his brothers and the prescribed rituals that had to be performed. In any case, he probably would not have been able to insist on his men obeying such an order. So he procrastinated. As a result, the Secretary for Native Affairs summoned him to Pietermaritzburg to explain himself, a hugely arrogant gesture, designed to belittle Langalibalele; he delayed again, torn between resistance and compliance. Already deeply suspicious of this influential chiefdom – the Hlubi had on occasion refused to pay taxes as a form of protest – the colonial government decided it was time to move against it. Plans were put in motion to arrest and charge Langalibalele with treason.
As the year progressed, there was a rising sense of alarm in the chiefdom that it would be “eaten up”. By November, panic had reached a pitch as the Hlubi scattered and Langalibalele fled into the mountains with several hundred followers and thousands of cattle. A small colonial force pursued him. During a skirmish on the pass, five members of this force were killed, three of them white. It was the first time since the British had taken control of Natal that white lives were lost in direct action to subdue its African inhabitants. Martial law was imposed and Langalibalele declared an outlaw. In the “flushing out” operations that followed, up to 200 ordinary Hlubi were killed. Realising that he would find no peace in the mountain kingdom of Basutoland, Langalibalele gave himself up and was escorted back to Pietermaritzburg to face trial. In a “mockery of justice”, and despite the strenuous efforts of the Bishop of Natal, John Colenso, the chief was permanently banished from Natal, hundreds of Hlubi were fined or imprisoned, and their cattle and lands confiscated. The Hluhi chiefdom effectively ceased to exist.
Early on, soon after the original order to Langalibalele to register guns, Chief Mqhawe seriously considered joining up with Langalibalele in a show of defiance at such an unreasonable and deliberately provocative gesture. It was popular lore among elderly Qadi still in the 1980s that the two chiefs had been preparing for joint action in 1873. Langalibalele was even supposed to have dispatched one Gamela to Mqhawe to organise preparations for war. Word that something was afoot reached Daniel Lindley at the time, possibly through James: it is inconceivable that they would not have discussed the matter, given the closeness between James and Mqhawe, and the respect James had for Langalibalele.
Lindley decided to visit Mqhawe to talk him out of a course of action that would spell disaster for the Qadi.
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by Chiara on Dec 13th, 2011
Peony Moon featured an excerpt from Gillian Schutte’s recently released novel, After Just Now, a post-modern tale of a woman who loses consciousness in a car accident and falls through time to meet her eighteenth century ancestors:
Hettie has brought me one of her dresses to wear. She has had to take the scissors and cut off half a metre from the bottom. She cannot believe I am a de Waal because I am so short. I tell her about my tiny grandmother who married the son of one of their descendants in the future.
She stares into my eyes and says, ‘I don’t know where you came from, but you crashed into our ox-wagon when we had just arrived back from the Cape of Good Hope. Now I do not think you are really very well. Let me give you some remedies.’
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by Sophy on Dec 11th, 2011
Anita Desai’s latest offering is The Artist of Disappearance, a trio of interconnected novellas set in the art world of modern India. The three stories – “The Museum of Final Journeys”, “Translator Translated” and “The Artist of Disappearance” – connect around “disappearance” albeit in different forms.
According to the Guardian‘s Maggie Gee, The Artist of Disappearance is Desai’s best since Fasting, Feasting. Read an extract from the book, courtesy NPR:
We had driven for never-ending miles along what seemed to be more a mudbank than a road between fields of viru lent green — jute? rice? what was it this benighted hinter – land produced? I ought to have known, but my head was pounded into too much of a daze by the heat and the sun and the fatigue to take in what my driver was telling me in answer to my listless questions.
The sun was setting into a sullen murk of ashes and embers along the horizon when he turned the jeep into the circular driveway in front of a low, white bungalow. This was the circuit house where I was to stay until I had found a place of my own. As a very junior officer, a mere subdivisional officer in the august government service, it was all I could expect, a temporary place for one of its minor servants. There was nothing around but fields and dirt roads and dust, no lights or signs of a town to be seen. Noting my disappointment and hesitation at the first sight of my new residence — where had we come to? — the driver climbed out first, lifted my bags from the back of the jeep and led the way up the broad steps to a long veranda which had doors fitted with wire screens one could not see through. He clapped his hands and shouted, ‘Koi hai?’ I had not imagined anyone still used that imperious announcement from the days of the Raj: Anyone there? But perhaps, in this setting, itself a leftover from the empire, not so incongruous at all. Besides, there was no bell and one cannot knock on a screen door.
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by Sophy on Dec 9th, 2011
Jenna Mervis’ debut poetry collection, Woman Unfolding, was launched by Modjaji Books last month. Michelle McGrane has featured a series of poems from the book on her literary blog, Peony Moon, including “The Waiting Room”, below:
The Waiting Room
My daily clock-in at the screen
begins with a mouthful of cereal
to the hum of a fan on a hot day.
From above, I watched you leave,
spied your curled crown between
the wisteria’s tendrils and lilac sprays,
kept you in sight until the fourth step.
I know well what comes after –
a key turning, then the splutter of a tired
engine you keep meaning to service
then the scrape of rubber on tar
then an absence of noise, a breach
in daily sounds of builders and dogs
as we all stop to watch you go.
There are things to be done,
‘woman’ things like laundry and dishes –
tasks you always saved for weekends.
And this brain of mine is in limbo,
waiting for some kind of response
so that I can move forward
get on with other things, other projects.
I am a car in neutral, idling.
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by Sophy on Dec 9th, 2011
The following is an excerpt from the new edition of one of Mahmood Mamdani’s first books, From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain, reissued just this week by Pambazuka Press. In the extract, brought to you by Pambazuka’s news site counterpart, Mamdani gives a personal account of life in a refugee camp in Kensington, London:
‘You’re cold. Why don’t you go downstairs and get a warm sweater and a coat? It’s free. There’s a women’s voluntary organisation that hands it out. Come, I’ll show you where it is.’ Ben led me downstairs, to the WRVS clothing room.
‘You are…?’
‘Mamdani.’
‘OK, Mr Mamdani. I have got a coat just for you. It’s a Parisian cape. Only slightly worn. Not more than two years old. And a hat to go with it. My, it’s from Harrods too.’ She examined the hat, and then added, ‘Harrods – that’s where the rich in this country do their shopping.’
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