BULAWAYO - Zimbabwean author Tendai Huchu (TH), who
was shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize, is making a name for himself on the
international scene through his fictional and non-fictional pieces.
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| Tendai Huchu with Baaba Maal photo courtesy of Ranka Primorac |
Huchu’s second novel, ‘The
Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician’ has recently been published by
amaBooks Publishers in Zimbabwe and by Parthian Books in the United Kingdom. It
will soon be published by Ohio University Press in the USA and by Kachifo in
Nigeria, as well in German by Peter Hammer Verlag and in Italian by
Corpotre. His first novel, 'The
Hairdresser of Harare', which was released in 2010, has been translated into
German, French, Italian and Spanish.
The Daily News’
Jeffrey Muvundusi (JM) interviewed Huchu on his writing career.
JM: Who is Tendai
Huchu?
TH: To quote Eminem,
“I am whatever you say I am.” On a forum like this, in a public newspaper, it
doesn’t really matter how I choose to define myself or which aspect of my
multifaceted identity I choose to reveal. Ultimately, what prevails is the
misconception you and your readers decide to project onto the avatar that
stands in for me in your imaginations.
JM: Briefly tell us
what motivated you to become an author?
TH: I have an
itch that can only be scratched by writing, demons that need exorcising.
Flashback 10 000 years ago and I was the dude drawing an antelope on a rock
somewhere. I love reading, and writing is only a flipside of that same coin.
JM: What was your
inspiration for writing The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician?
TH: I wanted to try
something a little different from my first novel ‘The Hairdresser of Harare,’
to stretch myself a bit more as I played with language and structure. The great
thing about being a Zimbabwean writer is that so much crazy shit happens,
you’re in this unique position whereby your fiction is actually a watered-down
simulation of an insaner hyper-reality.
JM: The novel tells
the stories of Zimbabweans based in the UK. Do any of the stories relate to
your own experience of living in the UK? Which of the three main characters do
you feel closer to?
TH:
That’s a tricky question because I am, by default, deeply suspicious of
semi-autobiographical fiction. Then again, a writer can’t write something they
don’t know, so an extreme argument goes, all fiction is autobiographical. Let’s
just say my novel is a mishmash of stuff I’ve seen, stuff I’ve heard about,
stuff I’ve experienced and plenty of stuff I made up.
The characters are all
my babies – I moulded them from dirt and breathed life into them. I can’t say
I’m any closer to one or the other.
JM: I think your novel
tells us much about Zimbabwe by looking at the lives of Zimbabweans abroad. But
does the book have appeal to non-Zimbabweans?
TH:
Look, good fiction is universal. I read books by people from all four corners
of the world, some dead folks for whom the separation is not only geographical
but one of time too.
So, national identity, which in itself
is a fictional construct, is neither here nor there for what draws readers to
literature. The vast majority of my readers, by a significant margin, will be
non-Zimbabwean.
Why? Because there are places in the
world where this art form is considered important and where the economy allows
people both the resources to buy books and the leisure time to read them.
JM: The novel has
strong storylines, and a startling finale, but I also found myself laughing out
loud at some sections. Why do you think humour is important in such a novel?
TH: Humour is an
intrinsic and important part of human nature. Humour is a weapon, a cutting
tool; you can use it to point out the absurdities and contradictions within
society and culture. Then again, either you have it or you don’t, either you
get it or you don’t.
JM: The Magistrate in
the novel keeps 'in touch' with Zimbabwe through listening to Zimbabwean music
as he walks the streets of Edinburgh. What keeps you in touch with home?
TH:
Small point of correction, the magistrate isn’t using music to keep ‘in touch’
with Zimbabwe. He is conducting a psycho-geographical experiment, using music
to buttress his memories of a new space.
And
he is doing this consciously as opposed to the spontaneous, automatic, memory
formation most of us do. Here is a man saying I want to remember this and I will
use music as a tool to help me remember. You don’t need to stay ‘in touch’ with
home, it’s in your heart, coded in your DNA.
JM: One comment about
The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician is that the book shows your
'development as a writer'. In what ways do you think your writing has
developed?
TH:
That’s a pretty generous thing for anyone to say. I suppose writing is like
anything else you do in life. You pick up new tricks as you go along. Few of my
stories are as spontaneous as they used to be.
I
now put a great deal of thought into voice and language, structure and pace,
genre, and so I’m a little more conscientious than I used to be. The technical
aspects of the craft are now as important to me as the stories I tell.
This
may all sound boring and mechanical, but I still have a hell of a lot of fun
doing what I do.
JM: You have been very
active recently, with several events at the Edinburgh Festival and now at
Africa Utopia at the Southbank Centre in London. Do you think these activities
help in promoting a reading culture?
TH:
My bread and butter work is solitary, me in a room with my laptop. This other
stuff is just a sideshow, because the writer is now expected to dance for
her/his bread. I turn down a lot of gigs because I find the schmoozing required
pretty painful.
But
I am also aware that this kind of stuff makes literature more visible and
readers (for reasons beyond me) like to see the people who create the art they
consume.
Reading,
too, can be solitary, just like writing, so these things bring out the nerds
and introverts, so a couple of times a year they can congregate and celebrate
the art form they so love. Let’s just say my feelings about it all are rather
conflicted.
JM: What advice would
you give to aspiring Zimbabwean writers?
TH: Do your own thing
and have fun doing it. Read a lot, everything you need to learn about this is
in your library and online. Everyone out there is probably trying to tell you
what to do. Don’t listen to them, especially dudes in the newspaper dishing out
advice. Do your own thing. Be yourself.
JM: The short stories
you write show your versatility by being in a wide variety of genres: science
fiction, mystery.... What are you working on at the moment?
What
I write is probably a reflection of the fiction that I like to read and want to
read. I hope the stories I write fill a gap in my library that needs filling.
There’s always a subtle pressure for a writer to generate the same type of
story and try to build a loyal market on that basis.
To
me that’s just boring. I try to go into a story with an open mind and work it
in the form that I feel is most appropriate for it, as opposed to saying I am
an X type of writer.
Whether
my readers follow me across all the fronts I’m fighting on is highly doubtful.
But, you just do it for the love, man.
At
the moment I’m scaling back on the short fiction which I’ve done a lot of this
year.
I
have to do a novel as part of the creative writing PhD programme I am on and
with that will come a lot of academic reading and writing for my critical
component.
That
will take up a lot of my time. I also have a sci-fi novel and a literary novel
on the hob. I’m also waiting to get into the next round of my translation of
Ignatius Mabasa’s brilliant novel Mapenzi from Shona to English.
There’s
quite a bit on my plate, so I have to step back and work out how I’ll use my
time and how I can toggle between the various projects I am working on. I have
to figure out the most efficient way of doing what I want to do without
compromising the art.
JM: Do you intend to
come back to Zimbabwe to promote the book?
TH:
When my schedule allows, I may just do that. Though I can’t be sure what good
that does for the book. The market, as Zimbabwean publishers will tell you, is
pretty dire at the moment. Building up a reading culture that can sustain our
growing canon requires a multifaceted approach. There is the state of the
economy.
You
need a decent sized, relatively stable middle-class for this art form to
thrive. Libraries too are essential. I am talking well-stocked libraries with
great staff willing to nurture their service users. Book stores too are
important.
Then
you have the school dimension, access to books for kids to hook them onto the
literary drug while they are young and great teachers, who really are the
writers’ pushers. But this kind of thing requires resources and a lot of
thought over a long, long period of time.
JM: Who can you say
are the greatest authors in the history of Zimbabwe and why do you think they
are great?
TH: There are far too
many to note down and this will quickly deteriorate into a name checking
exercise. For a country that has only been literate for 140 odd years (mass
literacy only really kicks off post-1980), I don’t think we’ve done too badly.
I want us to stop thinking about great authors and maybe focus on great works
of literature, that is, books that stand up on their own against the very best
in the world canon. This, for me, is the really important question, because we
spend so much time thinking about writers and very little on their work. The
average Zimbabwean can name Dambudzo Marechera and will tell you he was a
madman, blah, blah, but how many of us have read his work deeply and
meaningfully?
Do we really have
books that we can confidently stand alongside Crime and Punishment, Pedro
Paramo, Infinite Jest, Germinal, 1984, Lord of the Rings, The Big Sleep, etc,?
Once we start framing
these sort of things differently, thinking about the more fundamental elements
of the truths we seek, I think we open ourselves up to a more intellectually
rewarding debating space.
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