INDABA, MY CHILDREN by Credo Mutwa (Payback Press)
Payback Press, part of Scottish publisher Canongate, is devoted to new and old works by important black writers. Among the titles already published under this imprint is Chester Himes’s Harlem cycle of murder mysteries; two famous books on black music, Leroi Jones’s Blues People and Ben Sidran’s Black Talk; novels by rapper-to-be Gil Scott-Heron and former pimp Iceberg Slim; and screenplays by Melvin van Peebles. New titles to look out for include John Szwed’s biography of offbeat jazzman Sun Ra.
Credo Mutwa’s Indaba, My Children, first published in 1964, has now joined the list. This extraordinary work by the visionary “medicine man” retells (reinvents?) African myths, stories and history, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in prose. The rhetoric is charged and the tales are dramatic.
Folded into the vivid storytelling, however, is the story of Mutwa himself, the one-time altar boy fighting, with his own African narratives, against being classified as “an inferior sub-human” in racist South Africa. He finds the universal and dignifying themes in African law and legend, asserting humanity’s common parentage and essential unity.
AFRICA: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE CONTINENT by John Reader (Penguin)
Winner of the 1998 Alan Paton Award for non-fiction, this book provides a very readable sweep through the continent’s history, from its ancient geological beginnings to today’s massacres and miracles (Rwanda and South Africa in metaphysical opposition). John Reader is excellent on making the small facts – food, climate, building materials – provide a picture of larger processes. The two chapters on the post-colonial era are a bit thin, and this book will not replace the works on the subject by Basil Davidson and Roland Oliver, but it’s not a bad place to start.
PAPER PROPHETS compiled by Jenny Hobbs (Zebra)
Author Jenny Hobbs has collected a vast hoard of quotations from writers on every aspect of writing, from deep questions about the roots of creativity to practicalities such as doing it by hand versus typing, or stratagems to get started. The range of opinions expressed is as wide as the spread of those quoted. The emphasis is on information, providing glimpses into the writing process, and there are many gems. Some are just funny: as James Thurber said, “With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.”
THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO JAZZ ON CD by Richard Cook and Brian Morton (Penguin)
This vast tome (1 745 pages) is surely the most comprehensive work on jazz recordings available. Jazz: The Rough Guide may provide an easier introduction to who’s who in the field, but the evaluative detail in this volume, as it focuses on individual CDs, is unparalleled and of great benefit to the serious fan. As critics, Richard Cook and Brian Morton are sharp but sympathetic, and they write with humour and grace.
LOST CIVILISATIONS OF THE STONE AGE by Richard Rudgley (Century)
Richard Rudgley is not going down the Graham Hancock route: this is no book of breathless speculation about Atlantis being Antarctica. Rather, it is an entirely serious – and deeply fascinating – look at the prehistoric origins of the ancient civilisations once thought to have erupted rather suddenly in Mesopotamia and elsewhere some 10 millennia ago. It makes much more sense, as Rudgley points out and argues with a fine grasp of the evidence, that a long process of social and technological evolution, in a time traditionally thought of as a very dark age, led to such vital developments as writing.
ON THE BRINK by Jonathan Fenby (Little, Brown)
A longtime correspondent from France for various news organisations, Jonathan Fenby tries to diagnose “the trouble with France”: the land of liberte and egalite, with a monarchic presidency; place of cultural and intellectual brilliance, with legislation to govern the use of language. Fenby paints vivid portraits of French society and politics, closing with a riveting account of Francois Mitterand’s corrupt, amoral rule and its aftermath. Best of all, Fenby writes elegantly and with considerable panache.