Chris Dunton Born in South Africa, Beverley Naidoo went into exile in Britain in 1965. There she became a children+s writer and educationalist. Like all her four novels to date, her first book, Journey to Jo+burg, combined an exciting plot with uncompromising realism. A -discovery+ story, it took in subject-matter such as rural poverty, student protests and pass raids. Banned in South Africa until 1991, it was an enormous success elsewhere, selling over a quarter of a million copies, reprinted now as a Collins Modern Classic. Other novels followed, exploring children+s lives in South Africa, with Chain of Fire focusing on forced removals, and No Turning Back on street-children. Naidoo+s latest, The Other Side of Truth (Penguin) breaks new ground, telling the story of two Nigerian children adrift in Britain after the assassination of their mother and their clandestine escape from their own country. It is a credible, tense and shocking story that provides fresh insight into the pain of exile and the dumb cruelty of bureaucracy. In your new book you turn to the lives of Nigerian children exiled in Britain. How did this come about? There are several strands. First, my consciousness of the tragedy in Nigeria under [General Sani] Abacha. I remember Nigerian friends in 1994 talking so hopefully about South Africa+s move towards democracy, at a time when Nigeria itself was reeling under a particularly severe military regime. I wanted to speak on that. Then I wanted to write about the situation of children who inherit politicised parents, parents who are determined to stand up and speak out against abuse; I wanted to explore how do such children handle this inheritance.
Third – and the reason for siting the major part of the novel in Britain – young people in the UK reading my South African novels tend to see the issues as playing out -somewhere over there+; I was keen to show that the issues – injustice and the neglect of human rights – are very much in Britain also.
So what do you hope your British readers will get out of this novel; or your South African readers – are you expecting similar responses?
I hope all of them will engage with characters – young people – who+ve had their lives turned inside out overnight, and yet have great personal and cultural resources, helping them find a way to cope. For South African readers, well, I hope it helps them make connections globally, looking beyond their own borders. This business of coping – finding strategies to deal with immensely difficult situations – that+s central to the novel, isn+t it? Yes. I chose a child, Sade, who has a certain level of maturity – and I tried imaginatively to take myself through the processes she goes through, to try to gauge how young people cope, how big political situations impact on children. Isn+t it also a novel about the challenges involved in finding out the truth of a situation? When the Nigerian government is confronted with the children+s escape, they lie, and Sade asks, -What could you do when you were up against people who told powerful lies?+
I began the book with a John Donne quotation, which speaks to me very much: -On a huge hill, / Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will / Reach her, about must, and about must go.+ I also had in mind the Gramsci maxim, -Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will+. Look at what Sade sees. At the school she+s placed in in Britain, one of the girls who bullies her might be expected to be an ally – a girl of Jamaican parents. What does Sade make of that? Well, she doesn+t become cynical. Because in part of what her parents have given her in terms of their belief in humanity. That+s a powerful force for parents to pass on, irreplaceable.