BOOK REVIEW: CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN FICTION by Derek Wright
The book Contemporary African Fiction posed many challenges for me. The first being the awkwardness of reviewing a book written as a compilation of reviews of other works of fiction. My second challenge being the question of analysing each review in the anthology separately or reviewing them collectively. Furthermore, it posed even a bigger challenge as each material at the most is a combination of two or more works written by different contributors. So I knew my question had been answered. The book is divided into three parts comprising Southern Africa in the first part, and East and West Africa in the second and third parts respectively, with each part consisting of a minimum of four stories. The third and last part on West Africa had considerably more contributors than its predecessors although two are contributions from Derek Wright himself, he also apologised for the minimal number of material in the Southern African section as two of its contributors pulled out at the last minute. No reasons were given for this action.
My third and final challenge would undoubtedly be that Contemporary African fiction as a book was difficult to read let alone critically analyse and review. The book starts off with eleven introductory pages on Writers and Period which I concluded to be an attempt of overview of the entire book. But from the early pages and for the most part the struggle between my mind - the “comprehensioner” and my mind the reader were on a new unfamiliar terrain. But I read on and painfully so. Having dealt with the struggle I dived in with the same vigour and enthusiasm that I would do for a fiction novel only that this wasn't a fiction book (except if the title counts as one) but rather a book about fiction books and writers. I realised on a whole new level that although I loved reading and writing African fiction but not exactly reading about them. There's a distinction there. The current allusion that African fiction is toeing the line of compromising creativity and originality for commercialization is surprisingly absent in the essays in this book, surprising because contemporary modern African fiction writers like myself have been accused of many things from losing their souls for laurels and prizes from the western world to writing not what they would originally want to write but what they think readers want to read. The contemporary African writers profiled in this anthology are those who write about the ills of colonization and its general effects on the lives of the people living in that era. It also profiles their inadequacies in dealing with new rules of living and lifestyles suddenly thrown at them by the mainly western missionaries inhabiting alongside their characters in the colonial era. The fight to maintain ones dignity whilst striving to preserve their traditional African beliefs from being usurped by those of strangers be it the White missionaries or the Arab masters is a recurring theme throughout the book. The reader gets the feeling right from the onset that the authors profiled in Contemporary African fiction – the book; are projected to be something more than just writers. Either as political analysts doubling as writers, or experimental writers seeking international recognition like Okri. “On the other hand, while the Nigerian writer Ben Okri follows such writers’ (Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Marcia Marquez) attempts to dislodge the sceptre of the colonial past through subversive stylistics, he insists that the apparent non-linear basis of his narratives evokes a kind of mimesis equivalent to styles traditionally associated with European writers.” Maggi Phillips, CAF pg 166. Another example would be Wole Soyinka's struggles with the then military government of Nigeria under Gen Sani Abacha as a result of his expository works on the then dictator, and Nuruddin Farah who was quoted as saying in 1986 that "In Africa, Writing is a matter of life and death".(CAF pg 13). Also after Lindsey Collen's "The Rape of Sita" was published in 1993, she became a target of rape and death threats as a direct criticism of her writings on exposing a social injustice on Hindu women in Mauritius. Furthermore, the expository works of many contemporary African fiction writers more or less led them to either solitary confinement or outright exile from their countries of birth. Most were caught up in similar discourses of political oppression, bad governance categorized by corruption, injustice and brutality in their various countries of descent. As pointed out in the closing pages of the introduction “The upshot is that, in Africa, a writer is always more than just a writer…Writers must play an interventionist role…The writer must be l’homme engage: the intellectual man of action…for the word is power and more powerful is it when expressed in common currency” CAF pg 14,15 In the Southern African section: Doubles and Others in Two Zimbabwean Novels Neil Ten Kortenaar quotes Paul Coates as arguing that all works of fiction "exists in a space between the Double and the Other." And that he “assumes that characters in fiction are either a positive or negative projections of the author.” CAF pg 19 How factual is this? In exploration I concluded that Coates spoke from a place of familiarity rather than generality. Although conspicuously hidden in his assumption lay some truth in that as the essay drags on (yes, in heavy doses of repetition) Kortenaar has the hair-scratching habit of making a point and repeating it severally in subsequent pages. But in his defence I table half the blame on him and lay the other half squarely on the shoulders of the book The Mourned One and its author Stanlake Samkange. Although in fairness to the book I haven't read it but if judging from the book's analytical review by Kortenaar - I do not want to read it. All that over-symbolism of common life issues such as separated twins, name changes, mirror images were overdone to the point of stripping the narrative of the book its soul and shine. Attesting to this fact albeit inadvertently, Kortenaar tries to shift the book’s inadequacies to the author when he finally comes to an unstartling conclusion about the book. In his own words “The shadowy character of the narrator is reflected in the directionlessness of the narrative. The grafting of three lives (father, son and condemned man) is far from perfect. In a narrative purpoting to be written by a condemned man, we might expect the imminent end to inflect the entire narrative and all narrative elements to be surbodinated to that end by foreshadowing. This is however a narrative written without what Frank Kermode calls the sense of an ending. Rather than forming an inexorable chain of events, every action in the narrative stands on its own. The discreteness of all incidents in the novel flattens the narrative and engenders many implausibilities, not the least of which are discrepancies in tone: an account of heroics at a school sports day, for instance, when our narrator earned the nickname Scoring Machine, feels out of place in the memoirs of a man on death row and can only be explained by attributing it to the author’s own boyhood memories or dreams of glory. We do not even meet Miss Dobbs until after the charge of rape, so we have no way of gauging what her relations might have been with Muchemwa." CAF pg 26.
This drew the conclusion for me that I see no reason why 21 or so pages should be exhausted to explore the symbolism of Doubles in Stanlake Samkange's The Mourned One and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Expounding a single topic in different dimensions will not make it any more illuminating that it already is. With the exception being of course that the latter Tsitsi Dangarembga’s characters and prose style is more vivid, layered and textured. Not surprising (I expected it sooner), boredom set in and several flips to the last page occurred until page 27 the ninth page of this particular essay. I got the sense even before I read towards the final pages that Dangarembga’s book had more substance than Samkange’s. Which Kortenaar confirmed again “The doubled characters in Samkange’s novel often do not know each other, and when they meet, the meeting takes the form of revelation of identity”pg 39. He went on to explain the strength of characters of Dangarembga’s book thus: “Dangarembga’s novel is about people who have always known each other and who cannot be imagined apart from each other.” He further noted that in The Mourned One “potential selves continue to haunt the present; while Nervous Conditions on the other hand recognises the ineluctability of what has occurred: not that events were predestined, but that events change the world and close off possibilities”. A comparison of mirrors as a symbol of self-searching rather than showed similarities between the novels revealed the upper hand of Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions as Kortenner puts it “Samkange’s novel is a great house of mirrors that mock the self in endless repetition…” whereas he had the following to say about Nervous Conditions “Dangarembga’s novel, too, features a series of mirrors—on the homestead”... He quotes from the book “…had grown so cloudy with age that they threatened to show you images of artful and ancient spirits when you looked into them, instead of your own face”. He concludes that “However, taken together, the series of mirrors (I presume by the two novels) creates a multiplicity of perspectives that suggest a single consensual reality. He finally arrived at an inevitable conclusion albeit unintentional that Dangarembga’s book is better that Samkange’s whilst cautioning that “the possibility of critical understanding is required in wider horizons as it is possible that consensus isn’t the only strategy where solipsism continues to pose a challenge to the more knowable realism” which according to him “could prove valuable alongside each other”. All this fortifies my earlier points on The Mourned one.
I jumped straight to the very last part of the book’s section III which is West Africa due to the very last essay on T.O. ECHEWA. A name I’ve never heard before, not only is he a Nigerian but of the Igbo tribe like myself. Even as a former literature student from my high school days and having a small stint in the English and Literary Studies and Linguistics departments of the University of Calabar, Nigeria, the name T.O Echewa remains as strange as his works. What made it even more interesting is the fact that the writer Derek Wright tagged him a neglected novelist. Reading through what he (Wright) wrote and the excerpts from Echewa’s work I nearly busted open with sheer joy at the power of his prose and literary style. His rich language versed with originality and bounced off the pages. I suddenly developed the urge to lay hold of all his works.
Why is Echewa the neglected novelist? Why are his works not known amongst the popular mainstream Nigerian and African fiction writings and authors? His three novels reviewed by Wright which are incidentally his only three works: The Land’s Lord published in 1976 and a winner of the English-Speaking Union Prize, and The Crippled Dancer published in 1986 which was a regional finalist of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and his third book I Saw The Sky Catch Fire which he published in 1993, according to Wright all enjoyed laudatory reviews on publication notably his last work but like the last two books has largely escaped extended critical comment. Therein laid my answer. Wright further expounded on Echewa’s neglect in the literary circle as thus: “Thus, twenty-one years on from the start of his fiction-writing career, Echewa’a work has still not been accorded the amount and the kind of attention which its laurels and ovations would appear to command” (CAF 255). I suppose when a work of literature is done and considerable effort is not accorded the work to the point of leaving a lasting remark or impression so to speak on the minds, ears, eyes, and lips of members of the literary world, it takes just a matter of time before such work is relegated to the region of the forgotten or even neglected as alluded by Wright on T.O Echewa and his works.
In trying to understand why Echewa is referred to as the neglected novelist I delved more into the reviews of his works. In the Land’s Lord according to Wright is “Echewa’s first and best-known novel, is an outstanding work which bears most of the hallmarks of his fiction…”, there are the obvious familiar terrain of colonial era novelists such as Achebe and Elechi Amadi, and a host of others, yet it stands out in its depictions of what has been formerly known about the traditional Igbo life and culture “Higler notes early in the novel that life among the Igbo was “immediate, earthly and real”. I find Echewa’s prose magical and his language rich in bringing his characters thoughts and actions to life such as on same page 257 “In anger one day, I made them (the wooden idols) into a pile, took my prick like this and pissed in their eyes” (LL 130). Wright went on to conclude that “Echewa’s presentation of traditional Igbo life is in fact pervaded by an earthy and occasionally shocking realism, including graphic descriptions of dogs’ heads on sacrificial stakes and punitive amputations for transgressions, and is on the whole less sparing of the unsavoury aspects of village life and values than the more nostalgic, warmly celebrative portraits drawn in the early novels of Amadi, Nwapa and Munonye.”
What I found most intriguing about Echewa’s work is that it appears unique in its narrative and language skill. Absent are the translated Igbo proverbs which Achebe and other writers of their time are known for, such as the “Egbe belu ugo belu phrase”, which Obierika famously quoted in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Present in Echewa’s work through Wright’s depictions and reviews is a prose so magical and yet so vividly rich that it immediately grabs the reader to a point of captivation: “Men and women are like their organs. A woman’s is mostly private, tucked away like a secret purse between her legs, with little to give away how big or deep it really is. A man’s on the other hand…swells with pride and longing and waves mightily about. But once inside a woman, it thumps a few times, loses its seed, and soon collapses…A woman endures…a woman gets stronger with age” (CAF pg 262-263). Aha! That was the exact word that escaped from my lips after reading this. I have never read words woven into life like that before. More so a narrative that purports the strength and superiority of a woman above the man.
And there’s more
“A man is a part of a tree that grows above the ground and bathes in the sunshine...” (CAF pg 263) If that doesn’t make one stop and think, nothing would. It continues “…The part that wears the flowers and the glory. A woman is the roots, buried deep in the muck and manure…White man! You may think that you are the greatest dung beetle in the world, but I am sure you have never rolled the shit of a woman who has a running belly!” (CAF pg 263).These words singlehandedly brought me to a startling revelation – I have a new favourite writer and a favourite new book – I Saw the Sky Catch Fire by the so-called neglected novelist T.O Echewa!
Not surprisingly, I seem not to be the only one who has been mesmerised by Echewa’s prose as Wright points out “Echewa’s prose, like his Igbo sky, catches fire almost every time Nne-nne draws breath. It is the performance of his language, together with Ajuzia’s intricate, painful self-scrutiny (placing his whole gender under the microscope) that makes ‘I Saw the Sky Catch Fire’ one of the most powerful and exciting works of African fiction to be published in the 1990s” (CAF pg 263).
