Published by amaBooks of Zimbabwe and
several other publishers,
The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by African
writers shortlisted for the Caine Prize 2014 and from the Caine Prize annual writing
workshop held in Vumba, Zimbabwe during the same year.
On receiving this anthology just before the Harare
launch, I quickly notice that it is a massively solid book. I am intimidated. I
am used to reading the usually thin volumes normally associated with short
books in Africa. But since these are stories from one of the most prestigious
awards in African literature today, I hope that quality will pay for the
volume. I do not remember the last time I felt like this about a book.
I do not want to start with the shortlisted stories. I
want to make my priorities right. I have been invited to anchor the discussion
at the Harare launch. Some of the writers based in Zimbabwe will even give a reading. I quickly go for the Zimbabwean stories.
Having been raised on the short stories of Luis Honwana,
Charles Mungoshi and other writers from the Southern African sub region, I find
Lawrence Hoba’s ‘Pam Pam’ a very comfortable landing pad. Due to my background,
this is the story that speaks most directly to me. The sensitive child is
snooping into the seemingly unusual world of the grownups who are also trying
to come to terms with the most ‘weird’ in their midst. Muffled voice.
Understatement. Power play. A surprise
ending. Hoba’s deft engineering- one soft word on top of the
other… and on top of the other, almost like bricks, tells me that this was not easy to
write.
‘The Sonneteer’ must be the ‘craziest’ story in this
book! I am hoping that somebody will agree with me. I love the deluge of
sonnets towards the end because it is a clever way of flourishing out after
such a deep rendition on the tumultuous Zimbabwean condition. The story ends in
successive loud spurts like a gas canister unleashed onto a hapless crowd. I
like stories like this one, driven by silences – especially by what characters
do not say to one another. We are no longer reading but are also writing the
story alongside Philani Nyoni. The language is vigorously god forsaken and its rigors
remind me of the late Marechera.
Later, at the launch itself, I was impressed by Isabella Matambanadzo’s
views. Her ‘All The Parts of Mi’, just like Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s and Chinelo
Okparanta’s are stories about betrayal, intimacy and courage. During the discussion, I asked Matambanadzo about
what she thinks about the use of the erotica in stories. Her candid answer sent the audience roaring in approval. It took us a while to return to silence.
‘The Intervention’ by Tendai Huchu is part of the
Caine 2014 short list. It confirms my thoughts about his previous stories, especially the
one which I have been struggling to translate from one language to the other.
Here is a writer who has an eye for dramatic irony and the incongruence of
human character. His stories challenge the reader to work from many points of
view.
In ‘The Murder of Ernestine Masilo’ by Violet Masilo,
the protagonist dies slowly from the first time you meet her. Her death is not
shocking but why she dies is riveting. You are left with a feeling that a
flower has withered before anyone could pluck it and place it in a vase. If
only there was enough love…Typical character in typical
circumstances.
‘Music From A Farther Room’ by novelist Brynon Rheam
is a story filled with utmost colours and sounds and wide spaces. It is a piece of painting or tapestry.
If it were a piece of cloth, this story would flatter in the wind like a kite,
landing on its nose until somebody picks it and throw it back into the sky
just in order to see it and shout like toddler! I read it over and over for the
sheer serenity that it gives me.
Had it come in good time, Barbra Mhangami-Ruwende’s ‘Blood
Work’ could have been shortlisted! It is filled with a delicate tension right
from the statement ‘I don’t like black people’ up to the end and you are always
on the edge. I hope I am not being prescriptive
but this looks like my favourite story in this book, at least for now.
I then hurry to the winning story itself, ‘My Father’s
Head’. I had read elsewhere that it is story filled with sad memories. I do not
disagree but I discover that it is full of sweet sadness with more of sweet. Sad
but not depressing. The kind of balance
associated with kopjes. On the second and even third reading, I begin to feel
that this is about a daughter’s celebration of a father’s not so happy life. The
language is syrupy, describing expanses of time and dwelling on tiny-tiny details
of life like the paw of a dog and the flutter of a butterfly. I agree with the
judges. It was right that this story won. Maybe it is not a story after all. It
is life.
Among the short listed stories, I also have lots of
respect for Billy Kahora’s ‘The Gorilla’s Apprentice’. Loneliness of people,
and of animals too? A unique and unfulfilled camaraderie between victims from
different communities? This story could just have won.
However, in
just a few of these stories here, adjectives tend to pile on top of one another;
adverbs trip over each other. Colons clog the flow of even short paragraphs,
and the plethora of semicolons often cause the reader to throw up his hands in
exasperation. If you are able
to forgive the very few overwritten pieces, the Gonjon Book is something to
carry on a journey.
+ a review by Memory Chirere
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