Reflections on Novels by Christopher Mlalazi, Chielo Zona Eze, and Yvonne Vera

Perhaps this is my new way of reviewing some of the books I have read but which I may not get time to review soon. I will share the things that stood out, things that come to mind when I think about the books. This post features three of the many books I read during the summer: The Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera (FSG),Many Rivers by Christopher Mlalazi (Lion Press), and The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zona Eze (Okri Books).

Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins is a rich novel that demands several readings. Even the writer warned her readers in an interview with The Financial Gazette that they had to be patient and thorough. I get the sense that Vera was not just trying to be experimental, but that's the style her subject matter demanded. Each time I think of this book, I can't get over the image of Thandabantu store in Kezi where all the action was--it was the center of those entering or exiting Kezi, the connection of Kezi to the outside world, linked to Bulawayo by a road that brought smiles as well as tears. I always picture this West-facing store, its veranda, the mupfura tree (Vera uses the word marula) in its front. I can see the demobilized soldiers sitting there, shrowded in the uncertainties of return. The store casts a hue of hope just as it presents an ominous possibility.

Vera's love of the landscape rubs off on you when you read her works. Even the way she describes Bulawayo touches you, she takes her time to describe it, covers one street at a time, zones in on every flower, and takes you to people milling about or standing against the walls of tall buildings, adhering to an urbanity that liberates and confuses.

The scenes that describe rape and other atrocities of the Gukurahundi era are devastating; you want to stop reading, but the language pulls you in, the artistic rules supreme ,and you don't know if you are supposed to be pleased by such an artistic execution of pain....then you remember that art, even where it turns violent, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, takes you to that place of release and satisfaction, hope and pleasure. Perhaps, that's why Vera turned to literature and not memoir, biography or historical documentation.

In Chris Mlalazi's Many Rivers, published by Lion Press (UK), the plot is so vivid that you can barely forget anything. That crossing of the Limpopo in the dark is done well, even the moment when the river attacks, you can feel what Qinisela feels wrapping around his legs as he tries to walk through the deep water. Here there is a sense of mystery and suspense because the reader suspects that Qinisela was attacked by a crocodile, and when two members of this border-jumping crew go missing, the danger looms larger, even though our protagonist is still alive.



Mlalazi knows how to create color contrasts, he will make you feel the weight of the darkness of the night, much like Achebe,or Conrad before him, does. You are there, you hear the sounds of the crickets. In fact, Mlalazi likes to notice the little creatures, and will deafen you with the sound of cicadas on short notice. Qinisela, the protagonist, our character sent on a quest to South Africa by cruel circumstances in Zimbabwe , can "hear the trill of cicadas", like we do, and he gets "the wierd feeling that this sound...[is]lodged deep in his mind."

I can picture the road to Johannesburg at night, when there is not much traffic, and all that surrounds you is darkness and the flash of the occasional car coming your way. This has the effect of creating a powerful mood for the story.

I also can see poor Qinisela knocking on the door of the post office which he thinks is his friend's address, then the unfortunate encounter with the armed street kids who nearly kill him. This turns out to be only one of the many rivers Qinisela has to cross, a preview of the life Johannesburg will present to him.

I didn't care so much about all the shootings and the easy loss of life, but I remember them. Who can forget the notorious, gun-toting South African, Gasa, who the newly-initiated Zimbabweans work with in a gang. One minute you can be friends or lovers, the next he kills you and goes on like nothing happened. Associations are broken in the same breath they are made, and the one person you are left standing with can turn out to have been your enemy all along. Life becomes very cheap, as valuable characters are introduced only to be destroyed, and Johannesburg becomes a very dangerous place, which, of course, in the reality of the novel, and beyond, it is. Everything is there: brothels, all-night bars, gangs...you start to feel that LA has nothing on Johannesburg. So I have this lingering picture of dark corners, shady deals, dark alleyways, dim and dangerous nightclubs, abandoned gas stations, haunted suburbia, and all the dirty money that exchanges hands.

But dirty money in one context is clean and welcome money in another. Qinisela ends up making a lot of such money--very easily (a few lives are lost, of course) and he sends a lot of it back home to his mother. Even the mother questions how he could make that much money in two weeks, but she is happy that she can now begin life again, in a Zimbabwe where even what would qualify as dirty money does not exist.

I liked Mlalazi's commitment to his story, the plot, the details, the research.... It was a good introduction to the Johannesburg I don't know. I liked the vividness of the storyline and the attempt to connect everything, but I was a bit unflattered by the coincedences (where all the characters, some accidentally met) will be linked by the time the story ends: it made the writer's presence too obvious, so that the story felt written and not told....but, guess what, after all had been done, I was grateful for a writer so in control of his story that no scene is wasted.

And the protagonist can return home with his loot. That felt a bit too easy at first, but considering that it could happen, and that many, many people died on the way, I let go of my readerly grip, and was glad that he got what he wanted, or what he didn't think he would get. I didn't celebrate his wealth, but I congratulated him for his determination (because, given a chance, it could have been used more positively): that's when I realized I had just reaf an action, suspense thriller....

I also read The Trial of Robert Mugabe. The audacity of the title drew me to the book, because not too often do you see fiction with such a promise. You are actually shocked at first because you may know who the villains are in the story, which living people they represent, but not often do you actually see a novel entitled Adolf Hitler, or Mussolini, or Idi Amini. You can see The Last King of Scotland, and you can see Animal Farm. So I wanted to see what this book had to offer: it's something about the pervasive nature, false non-fiction promise of the title that invites you. For a minute you might be tempted to treat it like the biggest headline of the day, then as you begin, you know you are in the province of fiction, but the whole time you know it centers on a real person (and what fictional work, even one featuring rocks as characters, doesn't?). So I really wanted to see what Eze was doing here, what he was making the reader deal with.



And I was dealing with a lot in such a short book. I keep picturing Dambudzo Marechera among the judges, then Yvonne Vera video taping the proceedings and showing Youtube clips as evidence. In such a grim story, you can appreciate little doses of humor, and the dead people at the trial (because they are all in or near heaven) laugh sometimes. Picturing that trial and the Mugabe character trying to defend himself before his turn comes is worthwhile.

The victims of Mugabe are each telling a story about how they died. I liked the witnesses, but their stories didn't always impress me. They were telling things I had seen on CNN, BBC, and other media. However, for someone not aware of them, these details will feed a great need for the information that builds strong evidence against the villain. The testimonies cover all of Part 1; Marechera and Vera don't get to do what I expected they would do. And here we are talking about the actual Marechera and Vera fictionalized, and if you know them well, you will smile as their idiosyncracies are dropped into the the story.

But things take a sharp turn in Part 2. The story is in the hands of Yvonne Vera and it becomes a pastiche of The Stone Virgins. I just love literature that gives a bow of respect to the genius of works that came before it. But we don't get to encounter Vera's usual writing style; what we get, because what seems urgent in this book is the message, are filling details of what really happened to some of the characters in The Stone Virgin. At the trial, Vera has to give a testimony that centers on the characters of her novels, who are also Mugabe's victims. Vera, who infused her work with some historical verisimilitude, dealt with Gukurahundi in The Stone Virgins, but she was careful to deepen her treatment of the issue. You may read the whole novel without realizing this detail, like how someone may read Toni Morrison's Beloved without realizing its emphasis on slavery. Eze lays bare what happened in Gukurahundi, and the accusatory finger is clearly pointed at the Mugabe character, but that same finger makes the Joshua Nkomo character nervous too.



You have to hear Marechera's speech in Part 2, just after the verdict from the Almight has come in. Mugabe is shocked as to why is has to be sent back to Zimbabwe to grow up, and Marechera explains why Zimbabwe, and not Hell, is the best place to punish Mugabe. Here Eze attempts to capture Marechera's distinct style, and we are treated to references in Greek mythology. Here is a taste of Marechera's speech:

"I grant myself to quote from Yvonne Vera's book, from which she has read her stories. It goes thus: 'Naked hips danced Jerusalem dances at the small city hall for the first black mayor.' Yes, that was how happy we were when we began to rule ourselves. Naked hips. Supple hips. Innocent hips that did not realize we would soon be forced into a house of hunger."

On the aspect of the details Eze's novel gives, I wasn't hearing what I haven't heard in the media over the years, but again, there is nothing to stop a writer from turning such details into the core of a literary work.

And this leads to one aspect of Eze's novel that I liked. The author, who is Nigerian, either once lived in Zimbabwe for a long time, or he is a great researcher. What he does with the Zimbabwean culture, mores and ideosyncracies is wonderful. Everything down to names of specific places (in Kezi, for instance); dialogue sounds Ndebele or Shona, and there is a strong understanding of Zimbabwean pre- and post-colonial history.

Eze is a great writer too; the prose delights you, and he does things with style, the subplot of the novel being the voice of a clever scholar defining concepts for us in what looks like the Chicago style. I read the footnotes closely and found them complementing the unfolding story very well, the kind of style one would have fun with in a literature or fiction class.

The Trial of Mugabe will be published in the United States by Okri Books on September 15.