We are now in the season of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. But if it weren’t for the encouragement set up by the Caine Prize for African writing, we wouldn’t have had the same early recognition of talent from African countries.
The master of the short story, Raymond Carver, is known for the damage he creates with the small artillery of economised words. Nothing happens in his blue-collar characters’ lives–language is sparse here, too dear to be jabbered out in the manner that popular, first person fiction is now known for in north America (for an excellent rant on the poverty of the worlds inhabited by contemporary novelists’ imaginations, see Siddhartha Deb’s response in “Gentrified Fiction” ).
Check out the 2010 Cane Prize for African Writing, A Life in Full and Other Stories, for an antidote to that horrible trend in story-writing.
The characters sometimes remain silent, not because they are unaware of the their own volatile emotions, or the triggers that detonate quiet worlds – but because the external world is often not ready to comprehend complexity. Included in the collection are the finalists Ken Barris (South Africa) for “The Life of Worm”, Lilly Mabura (Kenya) for “How Shall we Kill the Bishop,” Namwali Serpell (Zambia) for “Muzungu,” Alex Smith (South Africa) for “Soulmates,” and Olufemi Terry (the eventual 2010 winner in the picture above) for “Stickfighting Days.”
Lilly Mabura’s “How Shall we Kill the Bishop” is a meditation on the life of Father Yasin. In the dusty, soldier-infested Kenyan town in which Fr. Yasin, other priests, bishop, and their cook, who is “no less of a priest than any of them” still carried out the ceremonies of Christiandom – singing the 5th century poet Sedulius’ Easter song, wearing the regalia appropriate for each rank – they encounter little, other than their own unbearable attachments. That, is, until the day Fr. Yasin intervenes in the affairs of soldiers: he walks in to a strobe-lit “joint.” He is not there to partake, but to untangle a scrawny girl from this place – she who had, until recently, surprised them with a wellspring of soprano. Early in the story, Yasin realises that the “condition of man” is his attempt to “forget” – whether is his addiction to cigarettes (Fr. Ahmed); a woman (Fr. Seif); that he was tested the most before admission into priesthood (Fr. Dugo). Their determination to absent themselves of something then intruded into every space they entered. For Fr. Yasin, the elephant that accompanies him is his attempt to forget that he is without a father: the son of a prostitute, he has no image of a father to place on a shelf. Here, in his attempt to take the church songbird out of the place in which she cannot sing, the burden that has accompanied him his whole life arrives to do battle with him.
In “The Life of Worm,” Ken Barris chronicles a dog’s life – through the owner’s obedience to his dog’s whims, aggression, and quivering needs. The narrator is a man ensconced behind electrified fencing and alarms, trapped behind fears of intrusion and intruders. Worm supposedly exists in order to make the owner fear less about the loss of his possessions, but because he requires vigorous exercise – it is his aggression and energy for which he is employed, but those are the same characteristics that enslave his master, who must endure sleepless nights while Worm shuffles around, barks at random noises, simultaneously alarmed and alarming.
Namwali Serpell’s “Muzungu” takes place in the blearly thirst of the sundowner set: she’s captured the near-still life of expatriate life, replete with pool, sunburn, cigarettes in beer-bottles, and parental oblivion. It is this neglect that leads Isabella to the excluded “servant’s quarters” behind – to discover her difference: that she is mzungu, ghost-girl. Unseen by the white-expatriate set, but very visible to those others who, themselves existed beyond a certain line of vision.
Olufemi Terry’s “Stickfighting Days” is story about virility, skill, youth, and life – but also about rules, boundaries, discipline necessary to excel, the enforcers – the “judges” – of the limits within which we can play games, and how, at times, those enforcers are removed from the game, so that rules do not have to be followed.
“Soulmates” chronicles the love story of two who came together before the time allowed it – a Dutch peasant girl sold by her family to a violent farmer in South Africa meets the love of her life: Titus, a fellow-slave on the farm. Their “godless lust” is still recorded as a crime – but writer Alex Smith’s reveals that they rescued each other by discovering, for each other, the beauty that the body can provide – rather than the violence that one body can do to another.
Also included are the stories completed by a select group of writers who took part at the CDC Caine Prize Writers’ Workshop, held at the Gellmann Conservancy at Ol Nyoriro, Laikipa Province, Kenya. Why do writer’s retreats take the writer out of their urban environments, and place them in idyllic locations that is more reminiscent of the 19th Century’s vision of the safely romantic? What did these writers – many of whom are combatants of urban landscapes – make of the “puff adder settled right by the entrance to the workroom” and the impala, elephant, and lion who “showed a close interest” in their proceedings? There’s a good story.–Neelika Jayawardane
