Jane Rosenthal
The Picador Book of African Stories edited by Stephen Gray (Picador)
Unity in Flight (Botsotso)
Tenderfoots (M&G Books)
‘Africa is difficult to see because it is gun-shaped and heart-shaped. It takes heart to see her. It takes some cultural and racial overcoming. Actually it takes being a true richly grounded human being to see her without prejudice, superiority or an agenda.” This tiny snippet from Ben Okri’s impassioned address at the award ceremony for the Caine Prize in July last year gives some of the flavour of what lies in store for the reader of these three collections of short stories.
In the Picador collection editor Stephen Gray has selected work from about 1980, the result of many years of reading and networking, and has made considerable effort to include countries such as Mauritius, Sudan, Morocco and Mozambique, often left out of such compilations. His introduction is an elegant and erudite summary and discussion of work already done in this area.
Of the 40 stories one of the most powerful is Rosita, until Death by Luis Bernardo Honwana, which takes the form of a letter from a woman to her lover urging him to return to her. Though it is in the unlettered language of the voiceless poor, her strength, dignity and common-sense affection shine through it. It is a remarkable tribute from Honwana, who works for Unesco.
There are five South African stories of which my choice would be Ivan Vladislavic’s The whites only Bench, a wickedly dry meditation on memory, history and the artefacts of apartheid. Equally delightful is Chris van Wyk’s Relatives, in which a young man recounts an incident on a trans-Karoo train, making fun of that familiar South African angst that arises from finding that the enemy is already within the gates.
The publishers and editors of Unity in Flight clearly believe in letting the writing stand or fall by its own virtue, as there are no biographical notes at all about the six contributors preferable to the intrusive notes which precede the stories in the Picador book. Yet they are clearly all South African and the title story, by Marapodi Mapalakanye, is about a launch of one of the manifestations of the Azanian People’s Party, at which a recently released prisoner appears like Banquo’s ghost to challenge the current leaders who betrayed him. Written in a fever of lyricism reminiscent of Okri, it is one of the few overtly about politics.
Another is Courageous and Steadfast by Alan Horwitz, which examines the results of white cultural influence on society through an evening with delegates to a conference on development and the post-1994 struggle. Then there are Phaswane Mpe’s four connected stories, which revolve around the death of a student, Refentse, following a hijacking in a campus pub, highlighting the uncomfortable intersection of rural and city life.
By way of light relief there is Michael Vines’s wacky Condition One, a nerd’s fantasy of abduction by a dangerous girl criminal shades of Buffalo 66 and Quentin Tarantino. Vigorous and original, this is an outstanding collection of stories.
Tenderfoots contains stories by the five shortlisted writers for the first Caine Prize for African Writing, which was instituted to honour the late Booker chairperson, and is awarded to published works (the rules are given at the back of the book). It is also the first fiction published by M&G Books. The winning story The Museum, is by Leila Aboulela; in it, a wealthy Sudanese student in Scotland, having a battle with the subject of statistics, seeks the help of a local working-class lad. The cultural gulf between them is delicately observed.
Another brilliant piece of writing is Can We Talk by the well-named Shimmer Chinodya. Almost a novella, it is mainly narrated by an engaging rogue who addresses his wife on their marriage, his infidelities and his need for her companionship. Chinodya’s other story here is the source of the title, in which Tenderfoots are shoes, but richly resonant with other meanings. The other authors include a French Somalian resident in France, and two more Zimbabweans, one white, one black.
Gray makes the point that African short fiction is not merely the natural extension of the oral storytelling tradition, but exists as a “longstanding continuum of distinction”. These three collections reveal just how diverse and formally innovative this is. And though, as Okri says in his excellent address, Africa, vast and rich, may indeed be hard to see, these stories will help to bring her into sharp, connecting, kaleidoscopic focus.