The best books that give insight into the soul of Southern Africa

I observe that most crime novels, even the best ones, are not literary masterpieces; it’s all about the plot. I found this book remarkable for numerous reasons, but particularly because it is so well written. It’s a murder mystery set in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, on the eve of that country’s first democratic election over the Christmas period in 1980.

The characters are about half black and white, half male, half female, and all extremely well-rounded. That in itself is a remarkable literary feat. It is a murder mystery and deep political intrigue following 25 years of bitter civil war. It’s one of the best crime novels I have read and with an unusually warm woman’s touch. As a matter of interest, the author’s surname, Ndlovu, is also a clan name, meaning elephant. 

The fact that the author lives close to my own little boho surfing suburb on Cape Town’s False Bay coastline might have swayed me. But I assure you this is a very fine and engaging tale of a woman seeking insight into and escape from a childhood overshadowed by a brilliant but alcoholic father. The title, at least, should grab you.

The story is set about between Cape Town and England, from where the father hails. The crocodile tamer works in a circus, where and how the poor young man falls from grace. What sets this book apart from most is that the author weaves her own real and imagined misgivings about writing while she is writing. For any writer-reader, it’s one of the best aspects of the book. Example: “Catholicism taught me three things: I’ve done something wrong, I’ve done something wrong, I’ve done something wrong.” It really is deep stuff, but equally so clever and funny. 

I loved this book because, although we have another, more celebrated writer in the genre of magical realism, I think this is better than the other, which garnered that author a Nobel Prize. And by the way, that is “Sir” Anthony Sher to me and you (and with good reason). Cape Town-born Sher–descended from Lithuanian religious refugees in the late C1–gained fame as a lead male actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The book is an allegory of South African race relations, in which a Lithuanian refugee, Smous (Dutch for traveling salesman), is ordained to travel the South African wastelands with a San (Bushman) woman. Neither can speak the other’s language or English, which, of course, sets up any number of hilariously deplorable situations. It is comedy, tragedy, and farce, set in a mythological South African of the past. It is spell-weaving and spell-binding.

The word “visceral” comes to mind when I attempt to distill what this book is about. A not-so-fictional auto-biography opens in the slum called Paradise, where Chipo, Bastard, Sbho, Stina, and “I” are headed to the–relatively–more affluent area of Budapest to steal fruit. These dirt-poor kids don’t know it, but they are victims of the far-off, murderous regime of President Robert Mugabe–but that always remains hidden in the background. They are brutalized and never know it or know why.

Courtesy of an invite from an Aunt in the United States, the protagonist eventually escapes Zimbabwe. But once there, while things get materially much better, in reality, it is no less bewildering and bereft of meaning: she and her friends spend their afternoons watching hard-core porn while eating popcorn and discussing inane stuff, like “what the hell are they doing?!” It’s funny in parts, but it also hurts in parts. The book's greatest strength is the naïve style in which the writer observes her world. NoViolet turns out to be no shrinking violet.

In truth, I bought this one (yes, I bought all my books in actual paper form) because it won the Booker Prize in 2021. Not all reviews back home in sunny old SA were favorable, but hey, surely it had to have something special. And turns out it does.

Reading it will be a tortured journey for just about any South African: the basic plot, if there is one, is about the promise made by a dying (white) woman to her (black) domestic worker, about the shack in which the latter lives. Of course, the promise is broken again and again. I really liked it, in a really bad-smell-in-the-room kind of way. There’s a problem with being so close to a bad situation, so don’t take it from me–the Booker committee surely can’t be wrong!