bookshy: December 2014

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The 'Meet' Series is my chance to interview anyone I would love to meet that is involved in African literature. This month is extra special as I have had the great pleasure of meeting two wonderful authors. Today, I bring the second author in my two-part special.

Back in March, I delved into the world of a crazed gynaecologist and a psychologist trying to bring him down. It was a terrifying novel, which still gives me chills whenever I think of it. Which is why I am so excited that in my extra special 'Meet' series, I have the pleasure of meeting Joanne Macgregor - the author behind the chilling psychological thriller, Dark Whispers. Enjoy!!!

Thanks so much for having me on your fabulous blog!

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself (where you’re from, what you do, any fun details)?

I’m a born and bred Joburger, deeply rooted in the frenetic adrenaline-rush of this amazing city. I have lived here among the Hadedahs and mine-dumps all my life. Johannesburg isn’t a beautiful city – though we do have fabulous trees – but there’s something about the vibe and the pace that’s exciting. Or maybe we all just have altitude sickness.

By profession, I’m a Counselling Psychologist in private practice, dealing primarily with adult victims of crime and trauma. It’s tough work and to combat creeping burnout, I started writing fiction several years ago. Now I consult and write on alternate days, and in completely different head- and physical spaces.

I started my professional life as a high school English Teacher, but at different times in my life I have also worked as an IT trainer, a waitress, a theatre dogsbody, a management consultant and I once had a job handing out helium balloons in a shopping mall, while wearing a bathing suit and high heels!

What was the first piece you ever wrote?

I had a poem published in our city’s newspaper at the age of 7 years and I’ve tinkered with writing ever since, but I started writing my first book – or trying to – about nine years ago. It was a biography of the sole survivor of the 2003 “Sizzlers Massacre” of nine men working in a Cape Town massage parlour. Although it was never published, I learned an enormous amount about writing and that gave me the confidence to begin writing books that have, thankfully, been published.

What draws you to writing?

I think it’s that the work is so varied that even I can’t get bored. Each time there’s a rhythm to getting the idea, fleshing it out in pleasant daydreams, getting it down on paper, editing and rewriting, and these days, of course, marketing, but it’s never the same. Each new book is like a new baby, and you can’t quite be sure what it might become! Also, I have just always been in love with words, so becoming a wordsmith has felt like coming home.

What do you do when you are not writing?

I work at my day job, mother my kids and read in every spare moment. I’m a pretty good cook, too, so you’ll likely find me in the kitchen instead of at parties :).

On Novels

You are a successful writer of YA novels in South Africa, so before I go into the questions I am dying to ask about your latest novel, Dark Whispers, could you tell us a bit about your ‘books for under 18s’?

I have two books for younger YA readers which have been published, and many more already in the pipeline. Turtle Walk and its sequel Rock Steady tell the story of three girls at a high school in South Africa. In every book, they’re a year older and in a higher grade, and in each they tackle some broadly ecological issue which is a metaphor for their inner growth and development. In Turtle Walk it was illegal long-line fishing which decimates our marine Leatherback Turtle population; in Rock Steady it’s the illegal trade in San Rock Art. In the third of the series, which I’m currently writing, the girls come face to face with fracking – external and internal!

Of course, back at school, the eco-warriors have to deal with the usual teen issues – first love, parental pressure, really mean teachers, etc. Samantha, the main character, also suffers from anxiety and it’s been fun to explore that in the books.

What was the inspiration behind the YA series?

My inspiration for the series came from the books I saw on the YA bookshelves at book stores – almost exclusively written by foreign authors, set in Europe or the US, telling stories very often based in fantasy, with a preponderance of male protagonists and feeble girl sidekicks who served as loyal friends, victims to be rescued, or passive foils to the boy’s actions. With this series, I wanted to write realistic fiction (a break from wings and wands and fangs), telling South African stories set in our beautiful country, with smart, funny, resourceful, kick-ass heroines. In short, the kind of books I’d love my teen daughter and her friends to read.

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Photo Credit: Fungai Machirori

I am extremely happy to announce that first in my two-part extra special 'Meet' series is Zukiswa Wanner - journalist, essayist and author of several novels, including the shortlisted K. Sello Duiker 2007 novel The Madams and the shortlisted Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011 novel Men of the South. Wanner is also one of the Hay Festival's Africa39 authors. Hope you enjoy!!!!

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself (where you’re from, what you do, any fun details)

I was born in Zambia to a South African father and a Zimbabwean mother and I now stay in Kenya. I am a full time writer but when I’m not writing, I am reading or hanging out with friends.

What was the first piece you ever wrote?

I studied Journalism in school so I can’t recall. The first piece I ever wrote when I considered myself a writer would be my second novel, Behind Every Successful Man (when I wrote my first novel I considered it a collection of thoughts and was pleasantly surprised when I showed it to someone and they wanted to publish it).

What draws you to writing?

The need to tell a story.

What do you do when you are not writing?

I read a lot. I hang out with my partner and son. I travel. I have a little project that I’ve been pulling with my nine year old son since he was 3 where I take him to a different African country every year.

On Novels

You have written a number of books covering various themes, from Men of the South which was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Award (Africa Region) and looked at the lives of three men in Southern Africa to Behind Every Woman, about a husband and wife’s relationship, but I wanted to focus a bit on your latest novel, London CapeTown Joburg:

What was the inspiration behind it?

I think of LCTJ as my socio-politico commentary of a country I love from 1994 to 2010 (the two common high points in my nation’s history). It was important to me that that there’d be an outsider looking in perspective thus the narration of Martin and Germaine.

LCTJ is told from 3 perspectives - the returned exile, Martin O’ Malley; English artist, Germaine Spencer; and their mixed race son, Zuko - how did you find writing from different perspectives? And dare I ask, who did you have the most fun writing?

It was a bit of a challenge but I had had practice with Behind Every Successful Man (which I think I didn’t do as well as in LCTJ) as well as with Men of the South. Martin often surprised me. He is generally a chilled out guy but every now and again he’d say some really crazy witty stuff. I used my son to give authenticity on Zuko. I would get him to read some parts so that I could know whether a boy his age would be able to speak in that voice so that was fun too (I didn’t work with him all the way to the sad part though).

This is a love story, yes, but it’s more than that and you deal with a lot of heavy stuff – race, family relationships, abuse - and I’m going to come out and say it, I was extremely sad after reading the opening sentence to LCTJ and felt I couldn't go on. What was the thought process behind that and how was it writing about Zuko’s suicide and a parent losing their child?

I was challenging myself as a writer. I wanted to write the sort of book that’s linear but not quite. So, a reader finds out at the beginning that Zuko is dead, how then do I work through the rest of the book to ensure that the reader is entertained enough throughout the book and somewhat forgets that Zuko dies so that when they get to the end it’s again a bit of a punch in the gut to remember the beginning.

Interior Relations by Ian Van Coller

Okay, I fibbed a bit, I did have one question about another of your books - Maid in SA. First, let me say I have only read extracts of it, but when I first heard about it I got really excited about it (my PhD thesis focused on domestic workers in Lagos). I also recently found out that your novel ‘The Madams’ also tackled the relationship between a black domestic worker and her black employers:

What made you want to write about domestic workers in South Africa?

The African continent has an emerging middle class which often has liberal credentials. Often they write and talk about justice, fairness, equality but too often too, their relationships with their domestic workers does not embody all these ideals. This has always fascinated me thus my seeming obsession with domestic workers and their madams :).

On Publishing, Being an Author and African Literature

As an author, what’s the toughest criticism and best compliment you have received?

The toughest criticism was from a fellow South African writer, Richard de Nooy, who thought an affair between the domestic worker and her male employer in The Madams was ‘unrealistic’. It was tough because although you and I know it happens, it showed how much of a cultural chasm we have in South Africa. Black South Africans were on some, ‘yes, we have seen this,’ but to Richard it was inconceivable. The greatest compliment would have to be from a Singaporean friend’s mother who speaks mostly Mandarin. She read Men of the South and thanked me because she said she understood it and liked it.

You not only write novels, you are also a journalist and have written for magazines and newspapers, which is the most fun medium to write in?

It definitely is novels. I find them liberating. I can say the sort of unPC things I can never say in articles as voices of my characters :).

Refilwe - Wanner's re-telling of Rapunzel

I’m a great fan of Lauren Beukes’ and also love her weekly guest blog, ‘The Spark’. It was through it I learned you also write kids books. What draws you to writing for children and how do you find it different than writing for adults?

Lauren is an absolute gem and is not only a great friend but an amazing and generously spirited writer. I wrote for children because I was asked to by an organization promoting children’s literacy with an emphasis on our own stories in SA called Nalibali. I love challenges and getting out of my comfort zone so I did two books. Writing for children is different in that you have to get the language right and put oneself in a child’s mind. So I observed my son and my neighbour’s children a lot on mannerisms, language etc.

Lists are a huge part of the literary world and Twentyin20 and Africa39 are a couple of the lists you are on, what are your thoughts on ‘list culture’ and also as an author, what is it like to be on these lists?

I am honoured to be on the lists as it makes me more marketable but I don’t take them that seriously as I know many writers who are as good or even better than me who didn’t get onto those lists. Angela Makholwa and Thando Mgqolozana come to mind.

You are the founding member of ReadSA literary campaign and a judge for Writivisms’ Short Story Prize, so what are your thoughts on the state of African literature today?

Literature from the African continent is at the most exciting place it has ever been in history.

I am a great lover of African literature, could you suggest a book, new or old, that people should read?

Flip, I can suggest tons but I’ve just finished Ghanaian writer Ekow Duker’s White Wahala and that is a definite must read. Duker’s writing is fast paced and has some keen observations.

On Being a Booklover (Questions I’ve always wanted to ask authors)

What are you reading right now?

I’m currently reading Zakes Mda’s Rachel’s Blue which was just launched at Open Book.

Is there any particular author (living or dead) or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult - and why?

Every writer and every book I have read has influenced me. The good books yell out to me the type of writing I would like to aspire to do and the bad works teach me how not to write.

Which, novel or character in a novel do you wish you had written?

Benjamin the donkey in Animal Farm. He has the sort of cynicism that appeals to me.

Have you ever judged a book by its cover (i.e. bought a book based on its looks)? Which?

No. But I judge a book by it’s blurb and first page…and it is almost every book I have bought not written by authors I know.

Hard copy or e-book? Bookstore or Amazon?

Hard copy and bookstore. I’m just old fashioned like that (plus, I tend to take books to bed and wake up with my hand in an odd position – something I can’t do with a Kindle).

Final question (I promise)

What’s next – can we expect a new book soon?

Not soon but in the next two years. I am currently doing research for a book I think I may call Stony River. I have a rough idea of what I wanna do with it in my head but I suspect it will come out very differently after all the research gathering and the writing begins.

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I am so excited about this post. 2015 hasn't even begun and already here are ten new releases to look forward to in the first five months. Looks like it's going to be yet another exciting year!!!!!

A Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg
January 2015

South African writer and scholar, Jonny Steinberg, is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including Midlands and The Number which both won South Africa's premier non-ficiton literary award, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize. He is currently a lecturer in African Studies and Criminology at the University of Oxford.

A Man of Good Hope, published by Jonathan Cape, takes a powerful look at the impact of the Somali civil war on one man, who having lost everything, refused to give up hope.

When Asad was eight years old, his mother was shot in front of him. With his father in hiding, he was swept alone into the great wartime migration that has scattered the Somali people throughout the world.This extraordinary book tells Asad's story. Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a sceptical remove from the adult world, living in a bewildering number of places, from the cosmopolitan streets of inner-city Nairobi to towns deep in the Ethiopian desert.

By the time he reached the cusp of adulthood, Asad had made good as a street hustler, brokering relationships between hardnosed Ethiopian businessmen and bewildered Somali refugees. He also courted the famously beautiful Foosiya, and married her, to the astonishment of his peers. Buoyed by success in work and love, Asad put $1,200 in his pocket and made his way down the length of the African continent to Johannesburg, whose streets he believed to be lined with gold. So began an adventure in a country richer and more violent than he could possibly have imagined. A Man of Good Hope is the story of a person shorn of the things we have come to believe as human - personal possessions, parents, siblings. And yet. Asad's is an intensely human life, one suffered with dreams and desires and a need to leave something of permanence on this earth.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

January 2015

Born and brought up in Zimbabwe before moving to London in 1989, Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before turning her hand to fiction. The Girl on the Train, published by Doubleday, is her first thriller.

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She's even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. 'Jess and Jason', she calls them. Their life - as she sees it - is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It's only a minute until the train moves on, but it's enough.

Now everything's changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she's only watched from afar.

Now they'll see; she's much more than just the girl on the train ...

Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe

January 2015

Novelist, political columnist and essayist, Okey Ndibe's debut novel, Arrows of Rain, will be republished by Soho Press. Originally published by Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2000, Arrows of Rain, looks at a woman's drowning and the ensuing investigation in an emerging African nation.

A young prostitute runs into the sea and drowns. The last man who spoke to her, the "madam" Bukuru, is asked to account for her death. His shocking revelations land him in court. Alone and undefended, Bukuru must calculate the cost of silence in the face of rampant corruption and state-sponsored violence against women.

Arrow of Rain dramatises the relationship between an individual and the modern African state. Okey Ndibe examines the erosion of moral insight in both public and private life, drawing out the complex factors behind the near-collapse of a nation.

The Curator by Jacques Strauss

February 2015

South African, Jacques Strauss, first book - The Dubious Salvation of Jack V - won the Commonwealth Book Prize, Africa. His second novel, The Curator, published by Vintage Digital, is an unforgettable and provocative journey into the dark heart of South Africa.

It's not possible to undo what happened in 1976.

In rural South Africa a family massacre takes place; a bloodbath whose only witness is the family's black maid. Hendrik Deyer is the principal of a state-run school camp who lives nearby with his wife and their two sons, Werner and Marius. As Hendrik becomes obsessed with uncovering what happened, his wife worries about her neighbours, a poor white family whose malign influence on her son Werner is - she believes - making his behaviour inexplicably strange and hostile. One night another tragedy changes each of their lives, irrevocably.

Two decades later, Werner is living with his mother and invalid father in a small Pretoria flat. South Africa is a changed place. Werner holds a tedious job in the administration department of the local university and dreams of owning his own gallery. His father is bedridden, hovering on the edge of death, and furious, as he has been for twenty years. As Werner feels his own life slip away, his thoughts turn to murder as a means to correct the course of all their futures. He can't undo the past, but Werner's desperation to change his own fate will threaten not only his own family but also those still living in the aftermath of what happened all those years ago.

The Burning Gates by Parker Bilal

February 2015

Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub (Sudanese- British writer). The Burning Gates, published by Bloomsbury, is his fourth Makana Mystery.

Private investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. All the dealer can tell Makana is that the piece was smuggled into Egypt by an Iraqi was criminal who doesn't want to be found.

The art world is a far cry from the shady streets and dirty alleyways of the Cairo that Makana knows. but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long, he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames.

Arabic cover

Ritual by Amir Tag Elsir (translated by William Hutchins)

April 2015

Amir Tag Elsir is a Sudanese writer and doctor whose novel The Grub Hunter was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011.

In Ritual, published by Bloomsbury, a Sudanese writer begins to suspect that one of his most idiosyncratic characters from a recent novel resembles - in an uncanny, terrifying way - a real person he had never met. Since he condemned this character to an untimely death in the novel, should he attempt to save this real man from a similar fate?

Set in both sides of Khartoum - the bustling capital city and the neglected, poverty - stricken underbelly - this is a novel of unreliable narrators, of insane asylums and of the (dubious?) relationship between imagination and reality.

A General Theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa

May 2015

Jose Eduardo Agualusa, author of novels including Creole and The Book of Chameleons, is one of the leading literary voices in Angola and the Portuguese language today.

On the eve of Angolan independence an agoraphobic woman named Ludo bricks herself into her apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the pigeons she lures in with diamonds, burning her furniture and books to stay alive and writing her story on the apartment's walls.

Almost as if we're eavesdropping, the history of Angola unfolds through the stories of those she sees from her window. As the country goes through political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo's life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.

A General Theory of Oblivion, published by Vintage Digital, is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.

The Lights of Pointe-Noire - Alain Mabanckou (translated by Helen Stevenson)

May 2015

Award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, Alain Mabanckou, has written several novels including African Psycho, Black Bazaar and Tomorrow I'll be Twenty.

The Lights of Pointe-Noire, published by Serpent's Tail, is a meditation on homecoming.

Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989. When he returns home two decades later to the bustling Congolose port town of Pointe-Noire, he finds a country in some ways changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on American culture has become a Pentecostal temple; his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the superstitions which inform everyday life.

Mabanckou, now a celebrated writer, finds he can only look on as an outsider at the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into memories of his departed mother and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to Congo, Mabanckou slowly builds a wise, wry, moving exploration of the way home never leaves us, however long ago we left.

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
May 2015

Award-winning fantasy and sci-fi writer, Nnnedi Okorafor, is back with the prequel to the highly acclaimed, World Fanstasy Award-winning novel, Who Fears Death. The Book of Phoenix, published by Daw Books, is a unique work of magical realism featuring the rise of Okorafor's powerful, memorable, superhuman women.

A fiery spirit dances from the pages of the Great Book. She brings the aroma of scorched sand and ozone. She has a story to tell ...

Phoenix was grown and raised among other genetic experiments in New York's Tower 7. She is an "accelerated woman" - only two years old but with the body and mind of an adult, Phoenix's abilities far exceed those of a normal human. Still innocent and inexperiences n the ways of the world, she is content living in her room speed reading e-books, running on her treadmill, and basking in the love of Saeed, another biologically altered human of Tower 7.

Then one evening, Saeed witnesses something so terrible that he takes his own life. Devastated by his death and Tower 7's refusal to answer her questions, Phoenix finally begins to realise that her home is really her prison, and she becomes desperate to escape.

But Phoenix's escape, and her destruction of Tower 7, is just the beginning of her story. Before her story ends, Phoenix will travel from the United States to Africa and back, changing the entire course of humanity's future.

Jimfish by Christopher Hope
May 2015

South African novelist, poet and playwright, Christopher Hope - known for his controversial works dealing with racism and politics in South African - is the author of several novels including Krug's Alp (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction) and Serenity House (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1992).

Jimfish is published by Atlantic Books. In the 1980s, a small man is pulled up out of the Indian Ocean in Port Pallid, SA, claiming to have been kidnapped as a baby. The Sergeant, whose job it is to sort the local people by colour, and thereby determine their fate, peers at the boy, then sticks a pencil into his hair, as one did in those days, waiting to see if it stays there, or falls out before he gives his verdict:

'He's very odd, the Jimfish you've hauled in. If he's white he is not the right sort of white. But if he's black, who can say? We'll wait before we classify him. I'll give his age as 18, and call him Jimfish. Because he's a real fish out of water, this one is.'

So begins the odyssey of Jimfish, a South African Everyman, who defies the usual classification of race that defines the rainbow nation. His journey through the last years of Apartheid will extend beyond borders of South Africa to the wider world, where he will be an unlikely witness to the defining moments of the dying days of the twentieth century. Part fable, part fierce commentary on the politics of power, this work is the culmination of a lifetime's writing and thinking, on both the Apartheid regime and the history of the twentieth century, by a writer of enormous originality and range.

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