Tendai Huchu at the European Conference on African Studies

Tendai Huchu will be reading from his book, The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, at the 8th European Conference on African Studies on Thursday 13 June at 1.00pm. The University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies is hosting Europe’s international and largest conference with an African focus from June 11-14. It takes place in the University's central campus and is organised on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS.

The conference brings together 1,500 leading researchers, policymakers, and leaders from across the world. There is a complementary series of artistic and cultural events, as well as various networking and capacity building events, including some particularly aimed at the next generation of African researchers. 

In The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, three very different men struggle with thoughts of belonging, loss, identity and love as they attempt to find a place for themselves in Britain. The Magistrate tries to create new memories and roots, fusing a wandering exploration of Edinburgh with music. The Maestro, a depressed, quixotic character, sinks out of the real world into the fantastic world of literature. The Mathematician, full of youth, follows a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, until their three universes collide. In this carefully crafted, multi- layered novel, Tendai Huchu, with his inimitable humour, reveals much about the Zimbabwe story as he draws the reader deep into the lives of the three main characters.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Huchu presently resides in Edinburgh. In the words of the literary scholar F. Fiona Moolla, Huchu may well be the writer who, through his immigrant Zimbabwean characters in The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician (2014), has written the city of Edinburgh into the twenty-first century global novel, doing for Edinburgh what Charles Dickens did for London, and James Joyce did for Dublin.

The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician is published in Zimbabwe by amaBooks, by Parthian Books in the UK, by Ohio University Press in North America, by Kachifo in West Africa and is available elsewhere through the African Books Collective.

'a powerfully gritty account of three expatriate Zimbabweans living in Edinburgh that is full of wry humour and subtle observation'

Premise: Three expatriate Zimbabweans attempt to adapt to their new lives in Edinburgh at the start of the twenty first century. The Maestro is stuck in a monotonous job stacking shelves in TESCO but feels that he has a higher calling that may or may not lie in devouring every book he can get his hands on. The Magistrate is frustrated by the loss of his social status and has to swallow his pride whilst accepting work as a care assistant. And the Mathematician is a PhD student who sees life in black and white and follows a path that is carefree and verging on hedonistic. Through their shared national identity, their separate lives intertwine in surprising ways towards an ending that is both unexpected and unsettling.

I was tempted to start my synopsis by talking about immigration. But then I came across a quote from the author where he says: “The funny thing is that when some white dude writes a novel set anywhere in Africa or Asia, it’s never referred to as an immigrant novel. They just have the right to be where they want to be and to write what they want.” I will try and avoid that pitfall then because whilst this is unquestionably a story about people who have been displaced from their point of origin, it is equally a social commentary on modern life (the Edinburgh version as well as the Harare version). It is full of wry humour and subtle observation and it is cleverly constructed so that it works on many levels. To boil it down to a book about immigration would be overly simplistic and unfair on the novelist. However, it is a theme that is very much at the beating heart of the story.

When talking about immigration, the news often resorts to generalisations. It clumps together any person that has arrived from a foreign shore. And that has the effect of making us think that the immigrant experience is the same for every Takudzwa, Mick or Garai – which, of course, it is not. Here, Huchu highlights the difference between the laddish culture experienced by the Mathematician and the downward mobility of lost respect experienced by the Magistrate. It is possibility contrasted with disappointment. And the Maestro is a third counterpoint to this. He is defined not by his status as an expatriate but by his sense of depression and his yearning for some greater meaning to the world. And, whilst dealing with life in a new country, all of them are also experiencing the everyday dramas that make up the fabric of existence.

The sad plight of the Zimbabwean nation is explored through each character’s memories of what life was like before. They are desperate to get news of what is going on back home. The Magistrate and, to a lesser extent, the Mathematician become involved with the MDC political party, a meeting of which Huchu describes as descending into a quasi-bar brawl. Fragments of Shona are interweaved with bursts of Scots dialect. It is at times disorientating but then I imagine that life as an immigrant often is. Huchu is unbiased in the way that he sees the world. He tackles racism from both sides of the telescope and deals with the issue of integration. And above all that, the story wends around in unexpected side steps. The surprise ending knits everything together but leaves you with plenty of questions to digest as you replace the book back on the shelf.

There is much to admire in this novel. Having lived in Zimbabwe as a child, it is always nice to read stories that are connected with the country. But it should be pointed out that “The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician” requires no previous knowledge of the beleaguered nation’s state of affairs. I think it is important that we all try to read books by different voices and here is a novelist who weaves a fascinating narrative whilst also making some pretty salient points about the modern world.

Who might enjoy this book: Anyone who has enjoyed “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith or “Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Reviewed by Matt Kendrick: https://www.mattkendrick.co.uk/maestro-magistrate-mathematician

The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician is published in the UK by Parthian Books, in North America by Ohio University Press, in Nigeria by Kachifo (Farafina), in Germany by Peter Hammer Verlag, and elsewhere by amaBooks.

AFRICAN PUBLISHING HOUSES TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON: African Writes

From: http://africawrites.org/blog/african-publishing-houses-to-keep-your-eyes-on/
13 June 2018

Photo courtesy of Mgcini Nyoni

African publishing houses, like anywhere in the world, vary between physical and digital, ones that focus on fiction or non-fiction, adult or children’s literature. What is important to them, however, is their individual mission and the drive behind their creation. This list presents 6 publishers from 4 countries on the continent, all aiming at celebrating and promoting African writing in their own way. Keep your eyes on them as new titles are constantly in the making!

Strong hold of the market

Kwela (South Africa)

Kwela Books, founded in 1994 along with the announcement of South Africa’s democracy, publishes a variety of fiction and non-fiction titles. They take pride in their list, including Booker-nominated Achmat Dangor, South African poet Antjie Krog and Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah among many. Special attention is given to the romance genre by their imprint Sapphire Press (launched in 2010). http://www.kwela.com

Afram Publications (Ghana)

Afram Publications was founded as an indigenous publisher in 1973 in the private studio of Mrs. Efua Sutherland. She was an eminent writer and cultural activist, and is credited with coming up with the idea of an indigenous publishing house as early as 1950. Afram was born out of her own and other intellectuals and creatives’ need to make their locally-produced art available to more people. The name was given in a tribute to cultural findings about the Afram Plains before they were flooded in the 1960s and a poem about the River Afram by A. A. Opoku, according to the publisher’s website. http://aframpubghana.com

Small but significant

amaBooks (Zimbabwe)

amaBooks is an independent trade publishing house based in Bulawayo (the second biggest city in Zimbabwe). Their logo is a Sacred scarab and their focus ‘Contemporary Zimbabwean Writing’. The directors, Brian Jones and Jane Morris, aim to supply the local market with works from debut and established authors as well as make available international books related to Zimbabwe within the country. amaBooks have brought the  Caine Prize anthologies to Zimbabwe, including the 2017 anthology The Goddess of Mtwara and, soon, the 2018 anthology Redemption Song, and their publications are represented in the UK by the Welsh publishing house Parthian Books or the African Books Collective. http://www.amabooksbyo.com

Nigerian publishing houses, physical and digital

Kachifo Limited (Farafina Books) (Nigeria)

Kachifo Limited is an independent publishing house found in 2004 out of the necessity for African stories to ‘be told without any self-consciousness or external guidance’, hence the motto ‘Telling our own stories’. Based in Nigeria, they publish contemporary writing from the entire continent and take pride in titles from authors like Chris Abani, Ben Okri and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Kachifo started Farafina Magazine in 2002 to promote African writing globally until it was rested in 2009. Currently, Kachifo’s imprints include Farafina Books, Breeze, the non-fiction Kamsi, and Tuuti which covers children’s books. http://www.kachifo.com

Okada Books (Nigeria)

Okada Books was named after the motorbike taxis popular in the country. It currently has 18K e-books and over 207K users. The platform started as an alternative for authors to sell their books without mediating booksellers that delay or refuse due payments. The advantages of such Nigeria-based digital publishing application and website are numerous. The focus on local authors and consumers surprisingly stimulated a large production of Hausa Romance novels that cater to the culture of Central Africa. Okada Books also offer religious texts and most importantly, they provide a substantial additional income to their authors!

The founder – Okechukwu Ofili says: ‘The difficulties I experienced as a writer drove me to create something I and other writers can utilise’. Now Okada Books’ creators aim to become the best digital publishing company in Sub-Saharian Africa. https://okadabooks.com

Cassava Republic (Nigeria)

Cassava Republic was founded in 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria but currently has an office in London, UK and is looking forward to establishing one in the US. Their mission is as expressed on their official website: ‘We think that contemporary African prose should be rooted in African experience in all its diversity, whether set in filthy-yet-sexy megacities such as Lagos or Kinshasa, in little-known rural communities, in the recent past or indeed the near future.  We also think the time has come to build a new body of African writing that links writers across different times and spaces.’ Cassava Republic constantly aims to challenge popular preconceptions of the continent and address important questions. Cassava Republic have been friends and supporters of Africa Writes since its inception, and their director Bibi Bakare-Yusuf will be joining us on Sunday 1 July to discuss their new anthology She Called Me Woman. www.cassavarepublic.biz

by Ralitsa Chorbadzhiyska, Production Intern for Africa Writes 2018

This Is Africa reviews The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician

Expats in Edinburgh – making a place your own

By Farai K. Dzvairo on August 15, 2016 — 

In his latest novel, The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, Tendai Huchu follows the lives of three Zimbabwean immigrants as they strive for assimilation and a sense of place.

Identity, belonging and loss are the unholy trinity of the immigrant experience. Millions of Zimbabweans have emigrated throughout the world since the early 2000s. The very fortunate left by choice, to pursue further education; the majority left in search of a better quality of life for their families; the remainder for reasons known only to themselves.

In the novel The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician, the Zimbabwean-born writer Tendai Huchu introduces us to three Zimbabwean-born men living very different lives in Edinburgh in the early 2000s.

Tendai Huchu at Africa Writes (Photo:RAS News and Events)

When we first meet The Magistrate, he is struggling with accepting how his life has changed. Formerly a Someone, a man of means, in Zimbabwe, he is now living as his wife’s dependant, together with his teenage daughter. His storyline is steady in pace and it is to him we return every second chapter as a means of anchoring the overall story.

Farai, The Mathematician, is doing a Ph.D. in economics. His focus on high-risk, high-reward profiteering during short periods of hyperinflation is a nod to the unanswered questions surrounding how some senior Zimbabwean government officials managed to thrive while the nation’s economy buckled prior to the adoption of the United States dollar.  Young and carefree, he comes from a wealthy family and is the only character to enjoy his entire Edinburgh experience.

“If there is one thing I’ve learnt in the last few years, it’s that everyone needs a story. That’s all our lives amount to, nothing but stories that we hope will live on after we are gone.”

The mysterious Maestro is the last of the main characters. White, and possibly suffering from a mental illness, we meet him at the top of a cliff and periodically check in with him as he freefalls to the bottom. Although he was a member of a visual minority as a white man in Zimbabwe, the Maestro would have lived a very comfortable life by any standard, regardless of how humble his background. Given that he is now part of the visual majority in Edinburgh, we’d expect his assimilation to be the easiest of the three. Could it be that the author chose to use a sick mind as a narrative device to show the trauma associated with going from being a ‘baas’ to being the same as everyone else in the blink of an eye?

“But, if there is one thing I’ve learnt in the last few years, it’s that everyone needs a story. That’s all our lives amount to, nothing but stories that we hope will live on after we are gone.” Although uttered by a secondary character in the book, these words perfectly encapsulate Huchu’s goal – to tell a story that will linger with us well after it is over.

Leave Your Assumptions at The Door

Having thoroughly enjoyed The Hairdresser of Harare, Huchu’s debut novel, I was looking forward to more of the same humour and a clearly identifiable storyline in his second book. That was my first (but not my biggest) mistake. The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician is actually three almost independent novellas with no consequential links to each other until the very last moment.

The biggest mistake I made was to assume that because the protagonists and author were all African men living in Europe, the novel could be labeled an ‘immigrant novel’. Far from it – the real story happened in the background, in the mother country, with ‘immigrant tales’ distracting us in the foreground.

In an interview Huchu was asked how immigration affected his writing and his response was caustic: “The funny thing is that when some white dude writes a novel set anywhere in Africa or Asia, it’s never referred to as an immigrant novel. They just have the right to be where they want to be and to write what they want.” That’s exactly what Huchu did with this piece of work – he wrote the story that he wanted to write. If our assumptions and myopia created a certain set of expectations, then that was our mistake, not his.

“The funny thing is that when some white dude writes a novel set anywhere in Africa or Asia, it’s never referred to as an immigrant novel. They just have the right to be where they want to be and to write what they want.”

This is an ambitious work. Each novella has a unique tempo and tone and weaving them together was never going to be easy. Some of the transitions between the characters felt a bit jarring and, as enjoyable as the storytelling was, the middle of the book felt somewhat bloated – it was big, but missing something crucial.

Under the surface

Mark Twain said that “humour is the good-natured side of a truth”. Huchu uses humour as a means of social commentary. There are no sacred cows; religion, politics and relationships are all fair game. My favourite scene is The Magistrate’s first meeting of the Edinburgh branch of the Zimbabwean opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In it, Peter, a hapless councillor, is sent to represent the Mayor’s Office at a meeting for an organisation he knows nothing about. He has the following conversation with Alfonso, a character who introduces himself as “Alfonso Pfukuto, first secretary of the MDC in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, European Union”. (The book clearly pre-dates the Brexit vote.):

“So what’s your party’s philosophy?” Peter asked.

“Change, that’s all we want, that’s all we stand for,” Alfonso replied, fiddling with his camera.

“What do you mean? What sort of change?”

“Well, erm, democratic change. We are a movement, you see. What we want to do first and foremost is change the names of the roads. At the moment a lot of the roads are named after their people, and we have to change that.”

“I don’t think I quite follow.”

“It’s the same with the Heroes’ Acre. At the moment they put their people in it, but we want to put our own people in there as well. You wait and see, a lot of things are going to change.”

What appears at first glance to be a dig at the opposition party and their motives can also be seen as the expression of legitimate concerns around the gatekeeping and ownership of Zimbabwean history by Robert Mugabe and his party, Zanu-PF.

It seems fitting that The Magistrate is the character that is used to interrogate gender dynamics. His days examining evidence in court come in handy. On more than one occasion he wistfully remembers the maid they employed in Zimbabwe as he does chores around the house. He also spends time musing about the messages in Sungura music (a genre of Zimbabwean music that is the result of a melding of the brooding Rhumba sound from central and east Africa with local, percussive rhythms) and the irony that although songs about abusive marriages exist, they were sung by men pretending to be women, given that there were no female Sungura artists.

Conclusion

The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician isn’t a beach read. Although littered with humour and light-hearted moments, the layers of meaning require active reading to be appreciated. Huchu took a tremendous leap of faith in experimenting so much with tone, structure and storyline. While the novel didn’t quite reach what it was aiming for, it is certainly one I will reread in the future to see if hindsight is indeed 20/20.

from http://thisisafrica.me/expats-edinburgh-making-place/

The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician is available in North America from Ohio University Press, in Nigeria and West Africa from Kachifo, in the United Kingdom from Parthian Books and in Zimbabwe and elsewhere from amaBooks.