Shaun de Waal
Finding Peter Mayle’s book about France, Toujours Provence, in the contemporary fiction section of a bookshop recently, I pedantically pointed out that it wasn’t fiction and should perhaps be in the travel section. “But it’s travel fiction,” said one of the assistants, clearly not swayed by my arguments.
I was reminded of this when the list of finalists for the M-Net Book Prize (at R50 000 for each of four winners in the different language categories, still South Africa’s most lucrative book prize) was announced this week.
The finalists in the English-language section are, in alphabetical order, Dog Heart by Breyten Breytenbach (Human & Rousseau), Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona (David Philip), The Devil’s Chimney by Anne Landsman (Jonathan Ball), The Ibis Tapestry by Mike Nicol (Random House), and The Tikieline Yuppie by Mehlaleng Mosotho (Vivlia).
This is a very respectable list. All the books on it, with the possible exception of the Mosotho novel, which hasn’t yet attracted much notice, have been well reviewed. A good range is covered, from Nicol’s post-modern novel drawing on facts revealed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Magona’s powerful look at the repercussions of an event akin to the Amy Biehl killing, to Landsman’s atmospheric picture of an Oudtshoorn woman caught in a tragic love story.
The Breytenbach book must be regarded as a front-runner – a new work by one of this country’s most prolific and revolutionary writers.
Dog Heart (published in English, not Afrikaans, in South Africa) has been highly acclaimed as one of Breytenbach’s best works and an important meditation on the nature of memory. The trouble is, it’s not a novel.
The M-Net prize goes to a novel; in the past, no distinction has been made between novels for teenagers and novels for adults, high or populist literature. But all its winners are indubitably novels.
Last year, as one of the judges, I suggested that Michael Cawood Green’s Sinking – a poetic reconstruction of a 1960s disaster, padded out with pseudo-academic notes and commentary – could still be seen as a novel. Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which has a similar form (a long poem followed by lengthy notes), is seen as a novel.
Since the modernists of the early part of this century, the category of the novel has been stretched ever wider, and it may be argued that part of what some novels do is to challenge the boundaries of the medium.
But what makes a novel a novel? And what is a legitimate stretch of the form? If a novel is a continuous narrative of considerable length, how much does the length count? Graham Greene’s publishers told him in the 1930s that nothing of fewer than 75 000 words could be published as a novel. Since then, however, many a text shorter than that has been published and accepted as a novel. The revered novels of JM Coetzee, for instance, are seldom longer than 50 000 words.
Is it a matter of the characters and situations in the novel being fictitious? Or is it a matter of how fact is pulled into a fictional space and transformed by the exercise of the imagination?
There are many avowedly autobiographical novels that draw openly on real people and events. A book such as Edmund White’s The Farewell Symphony is a novel, but it often reads more like autobiography. And a recent study of Koos Prinsloo’s stories showed just how much they depended on lived fact, often without much change at all. Many writers perch their works on precisely that divide.
But Breytenbach’s Dog Heart does not claim to be a novel. Subtitled A Travel Memoir, it recounts the author’s return to the places of his youth. Several real people appear, under their own names, and despite some obvious pseudonyms for his closest associates (his wife is called “Lotus”), even Breytenbach plays none of his usual games with the identity of the narrator.
There are phantasmagoric passages and poetic meditations, but the framing structure is clearly a non-fictional voyage through a real South Africa. The work may use some fictional techniques, just as Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart does, but it still presents itself as factual, as “true”.
These are the questions that will have to be answered, at least in part, when the winner of the 1999 M-Net Book Prize is decided. I’m glad I’m not a judge this year.
n The finalists in Afrikaans are Annerkant die Longdrop by Anoeschka von Meck, Duiwelskloof by Andr P Brink, Liesbet Delport se Oorlogboek by Berna Ackerman, Op Soek na Generaal Mannetjies Mentz by Christoffel Coetzee, and Verliesfontein by Karel Schoeman.
In Nguni, the finalists are Itshwele Lempangele by Vusumuzi Maurice Bhengu, Koda Kube Nini na? by Livingstone Lubabalo Ngewu, and Umlimandlela by Ncedile Saule.
In Sotho, the finalists are Ditlabonyane ke Ditlaboima by Jacobus Ramokokobadi Lesibana Rafapa, Hlabang Tlou ka Diloka by Lazarus Malebana, Matubatsana by Jim Mokoena, Nna le Dikengkeng tsa ka by Skantz George Molefe, and Sehlekehleke sa Deidro by Victor Tshepo Masima.
In Venda, it’s Magala a Vhahali by Sampson Nditsheni Mahamba, Ndi Mboni-de! by Nanga Raymond Raselekoane, and Pfumo la Mulalo by Lucas Maanda Mufamadi.
And in Tsonga, it is I Vutomi by CM Lubisi and Ndzi ta Hlula by Shadrack Makanbane Khoza.