'Long after I read it, there are moments of stillness when I begin to think about the book and how much of myself I see in it.'

Bryony Rheam

The day I finally finished reading Bryony Rheam's This September Sun, sometime in September, it was the one book I wondered about how I got to the end, why it ended, and why wasn’t I a little slower as I read it.

This September Sun is the most profound book I’ve read this year and for an author’s first book, I can only begin to think how this work can claim to be fiction. Long after I read it, there are moments of stillness when I begin to think about the book and how much of myself I see in it. Its ability to linger this long is an experience I’m learning to come to terms with.

I’ve read books: Enid Blyton’s Malory Tower series ensured I went to boarding school in a bid to relive the stories. I read another Enid Blyton book about a girl who was a gypsy, who lived in a caravan and was part of a travelling circus. I’m not even going to begin to state how, at one point, I thought my parents should sell the house we lived in, buy a caravan so we could travel and possibly join a circus too. Then there was Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow, from whose pages I got the name Binaebi and gave the name to my son when he was birthed. Some books leave a lasting impression. Some books will never be forgotten. This September Sun falls into that category.

The story revolves around two characters Ellie and her grandmother Evelyn. Ellie, an only child, is a loner who has more adult influences than shared experiences with children her age. Her grandmother Evelyn in this day and age, would be called a feminist. An independent woman who seeks to live her life according to her dictates. Amongst the profound things for me about this book are Ellie’s words as she tells her story. Here’s a passage from Chapter Two:

“Where do you start to put life together? The pieces don’t always fit. Many are missing, or borrowed. From other people’s lives, other people’s memories. Their own puzzles. Where is the beginning when you have only the end to start with? How many lies are told over the course of one lifetime?

What of all that is not said, merely hinted at, subsiding beneath the surface of action and words? All that is yearned for and never had?”

Even now, these lines leave me with a need of wanting to dig deep into life and uncover things I should know and do not know.

There were times when, as I read, I had the feeling the author had perhaps started a plot she did not conclude and had no intention of concluding and this was disappointing for me. Page 76, when Ellie found her grandmother naked in bed with Miles her lover. The next few pages made no mention of the incident and life continued and left me thinking what tha . . . a young girl sees her grandma naked in bed with her lover and the next thing pretends that nothing happened. Tsk, tsk. There I was a reader poking into nonexistent holes because pages into the middle, it pops up again, is mentioned and is laid to rest. That’s the sort of books TSS is, it’s unpredictable and while it doesn’t elicit a rush of adrenaline, it’s calm, it’s pulsing and holds you in a grip.

I’m a little of Evelyn, a little of Ellie, I’m in the book and I’m swept along in their struggles and as they come to terms with themselves. I love TSS. I will read it again. This time with a highlighter. I will mangle its pages, but not to uglify it but to bring out the beauty of its words so I can always take a look at them and sigh, and think.

I’ve never known a book to linger like this one

To hear echoes of its words long after I wistfully said goodbye.

To read a book as though the writer knew you and turned you outside in.

To read words and behold a mirror of your mind.

To reread it in your mind page for page.

To replay the scenes that wrenched your guts and made your eyes drip.

To think and maul.

To chew and not be able to swallow.

To wonder at how words were stringed.

To want to know what could have been going through this author’s mind.

To be afraid. Afraid. Not the sort that fear elicits, but the sort that goosebumps produce because you feel a book became a mirror and you could see a lot of yourself in it.

This September Sun began in August. Proceeded with a feverish grip in September. In its wake left thoughts and silence.

Not all fiction is truly fiction.

By irinajo. http://flittingbutterfly.com/2015/10/07/

I'm Whatever You Say I Am - Tendai Huchu interviewed in the Daily News

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.

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.

WWW.DAILYNEWS.CO.ZW/ARTICLES/2015/09/16/I-M-WHATEVER-YOU-SAY-I-AM-HUCHU

Zimbabwean Writers feature in a Celebration of Africa

from: http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/09/zimbabwean-writers-feature-in-a-celebration-of-africa/

  

Tendai Huchu and Bryony Rheam are set to take part in debates at Africa Utopia. Back for a third year Africa Utopia celebrates the arts and culture of the African continent. The festival looks at how Africa can lead the way in thinking about culture, community, business and technology and includes topics ranging from fashion, gender and power in politics, sustainability and activism. The 2015 edition of the festival features some of Africa's greatest artists across music, dance, literature and the arts, including Baaba Maal, Spoek Mathambo, Tosin Coker, Irenosen Okojie, Tony Allen, Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté, Orchestra Baobab, Kassé Mady Diabaté, Chineke! and Chi-chi Nwanoku.

The festival will be held between Friday 11 September to Sunday 13 September at the Southbank Centre in London. Tendai Huchu is due to take part in a panel on 12 September about 'African Male Identity', exploring the truths and myths of African masculinities, identities, sexualities, fatherhood and friendship. His second novel The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician has recently been published by amaBooks in Zimbabwe and by Parthian Books in the United Kingdom, and will soon be published in Nigeria, North America and Germany.

Joining Tendai at the festival will be Bulawayo-based writer, Bryony Rheam, who is a panellist the following day - Sunday September 13. The panel of which she is a member, will be looking at how genre fiction is changing the narrative of African fiction. Pulp and genre fiction include: sci'fi, horror, crime, erotica, utopia and historical fiction. Following on her first novel, This September Sun, Bryony has just finished writing her second novel, which is a murder mystery set in Bulawayo. This panel is chaired by Zimbabwean editor and literary critic, Ellah Allfrey.

During her visit to the UK Bryony will spend several days in Torquay, where she will receive her prize for being a winner of the Write Your Own Christie writing competition, which celebrates the work of one of the world's best-selling novelists, Agatha Christie. The competition involved writers from around the world writing a collaborative novel, starting with the opening of Christie's A Murder is Announced. Each month, writers were asked to submit the next chapter of the story. The judges then selected the winner for that particular month, and the competition, and the novel, then evolved over a nine month period. Bryony was runner-up for chapter seven, and winner for chapter eight, the judges commenting about her winning entry: 'It was a confident chapter with a terrific ending, as well as a carefully plotted solution.'

Bryony's prize is one night's accommodation at the Grand Hotel in Torquay, where Agatha Christie spent her honeymoon with her first husband. That evening, there will be a dinner at Christie's house, Greenway, now a National Trust property, also attended by the other prize-winners. Before the dinner, there will be a tour of the house, which is now a National Trust property. At the dinner will also be Christie's grandson, Matthew Pritchard, and her British and American publishers at HarperCollins.  Agatha Christie was born in 1890, so this year is the 125th anniversary of her birth and there is a special celebration in Torquay where the annual Agatha Christie Festival is held.

As a great fan of Christie's, Bryony is thrilled to be among the prize-winners. References to Agatha Christie can be found in This September Sun. The character of the grandmother in the novel is also passionate about Christie's work and her intricate plots.

Tendai Huchu, the Edinburgh Festival and the Literary Death Match

Tendai Huchu and his new novel The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician are featured in two events at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Friday 28th August.

At 11am, the 2014 Caine Prize shortlisted author will read from his new novel and discuss with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey how the heritage, traditions, and vibrancy of African storytelling continue to inspire and influence his writing in the Robert Louis Stevenson room at the Royal Overseas League in Princes Street.

Then, Tendai will rush off to the Stand Comedy Club in York Place, where, at 4.25pm, he will compete in a Literary Death Match. Part comedy show, part literary event, part game show, a Literary Death Match brings together four writers to read their most electric writing for five minutes or less before a panel of three ‘all-star’ judges. Tendai will be competing with Salla Simukka (author of As Red As Blood), Kirsty Logan (The Gracekeepers) and John Osborne (Radio Head). The judges – Mark Doty, poet and winner of many book awards, Holly Jack, Scottish actress, and Charlie Baker, stand-up comedian – will take turns providing humorous commentary and select two favourites to advance to the final. The two finalists then compete in a vaguely literary competition to determine the Literary Death Match champion.

Literary Death Match events have become popular worldwide, so far in 57 cities, being described as ‘The most entertaining reading series ever’ (LA Times) and as ‘Revitalizing the coolitude of the printed word’ (Interview)

Tendai’s writing has attracted much interest recently. A recent review of his debut novel, The Hairdresser of Harare, in The New York Times included the passage: ‘Too often in the United States, we have created a single narrative about foreign countries, particularly African countries: They’re impoverished and war-torn and beset by disease or, more benignly, simply teeming with exotic animals.

‘Thankfully, the single story seems to be giving way as American publishing has embraced a vibrant chorus of voices from the African continent — Adichie, NoViolet Bulawayo and Chigozie Obioma among others. To which we can now add one more, Tendai Huchu.’

And Jeanne-Marie Jackson in her review in Slipnet, ‘Tendai Huchu’s The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician – An African Novel and Then Some’ added: ‘Tendai Huchu’s new book reminds us that serious thinking is as important as driving home what we already know.’

In The Maestro, The Magistrate & 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.

The official United Kingdom launch of the novel will take place later, on 30th October as part of the Edinburgh Independent & Radical Book Fair. The Fair is an annual literary festival providing five days of cultural and literary events, which are free for all to attend. The Fair attracts writers, publishers and readers often neglected by mainstream bookshop events and other literary festivals. It aims to support small and independent presses who struggle to get shelf space in major bookshops. Over 70 local and international publishers take stalls to display their titles.

The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician is published in Zimbabwe by amaBooks, in the United Kingdom by Parthian Books and in Nigeria by Kachifo. It is due to be published in North America by Ohio University Press, in Germany by Peter Hammer Verlag and in Italy by Corpotre.

from: http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/08/tendai-huchu-the-edinburgh-festival-and-the-literary-death-match/

The Complete Review reviews The Maestro, The Magistrate & The Mathematician

The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician is set largely in Edinburgh, focusing on the three title-characters -- all 'Zimbos' (Zimbabweans) currently living in Scotland. Each chapter focuses on one of them, with every other chapter centered around the Magistrate and the other chapters not quite alternating between the Maestro and the Mathematician. There is eventually some overlap, but their stories and fates remain largely distinct.

       The central character used to be a well-respected magistrate in Zimbabwe but left the country with his wife and now fifteen-year-old daughter. While his wife has found good employment he has remained jobless, his credentials useless here: 'They think we come from the jungle. They think we have kangaroo courts. They will say, 'How can you practice law here when you couldn't even preserve the rule of law in your own country ?''

        He is finally reduced to taking on a night-shift spot as a caregiver at an old-age-home. The situation has drained some of the life out of his relationship with his wife, and he is also having trouble adjusting to how quickly (and untraditionally) his daughter is growing up.

       The Mathematician is the student Farai, who is working on his doctoral thesis, on 'The Economic Incentives for Sustaining Hyperinflationary Environments' -- a subject of some interest in Zimbabwe, which recently suffered through a rare modern instance of hyperinflation. Farai wants to explore how economic actors can profit from hyperinflationary conditions -- at least short term ones.

       Farai has a local girlfriend, but also close family ties back home -- indeed, he's planning to visit again soon. He does acknowledge, however: 'The thing is, every time I go back, I feel more and more like a stranger. The lingo's changed, the bearer notes have more zeros, the whole vibe, the way people do things is completely different.'

       The Maestro is David Mercer, a white Zimbabwean also working in a menial position who is withdrawing evermore entirely into himself. An eastern European woman, Tatyana, wants to be involved with him, but he pushes even her away. He is a great reader -- but as Tatyana complains: "Books can't replace real life". In his downward spiral he eventually even rids himself of his books -- his last and only hold, aside from the last person he can turn to, Tatyana.

       These three very different characters, with their very different characters and at different stages of their lives, as well as the various people in their orbits, give Huchu the opportunity to draw a broad portrait of Zimbabweans abroad -- but without insistently focusing on their ex-pat-ness. The characters' different relationships with and attitudes towards their homeland play a role in their lives, but Huchu does not harp on this particularly obviously, and instead the three story-lines unfold as different and varying personal experiences. (Huchu amusingly sets up the contrast of his approach to that of Brian Chikwava's Harare North in having the Magistrate buy that novel -- but finding himself baffled by it ("He wasn't one for fiction anyway"), and, cheekily, his daughter, picking it up, complaining: "Dad, if this guy cannae be bovvered to learn proper English, why did he write a novel ?")

       The key figure in the novel turns out to be another party, going by the name of Alfonso, a character who seems almost to be a joker-figure and yet is a significant fixer and helper in the local Zimbabwean ex-patriate scene. It is Alfonso who first tries to get the Magistrate interested in the local chapter of the MDC (the Zimbabwean oppositional party, Movement For Democratic Change) -- a chaotic, disorganized tiny mess of an outfit that the Magistrate does then become active in, giving him a renewed sense of purpose and using his talents to good advantage.

       After weaving back and forth among its three main characters, The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician Huchu ratchets up the ambitions of the novel. An unexpected domestic development in the Magistrate's family would seem to offer more than enough drama -- indeed, that situation already feels a bit forced -- but Huchu has more in store, leading up to more than just a surprising final turn. Ambition seems to get the better of Huchu: the novel's satisfying build-up(s) aren't quite enough to carry through these final leaps which serve to make the novel weightier yet also come, at least in part, too far out of near nowhere.

       Overall, Huchu's ambitions are admirable. This is a pleasingly packed book, where it is long unclear where these stories might be going -- and it is here that Huchu's talents shine brightest: it's fun just going along with these characters when they are more or less meandering forward. It's when purpose creeps in too obviously -- in a tumble of final twists -- that the novel creaks a bit

       There's a cameo appearance by a (still unpublished) would-be writer named Tendai in the novel. Very full of himself, he riffs about how: "publishers don't get my flow, because it's intense, thermonuclear intense, twenty-first century existentialism with a twist". If not quite so intense, the real Tendai does, as in his debut, display real, deep talent in The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician. If some of the plotting (and perhaps the titles ...) could use some wrangling, and despite the occasional rough patches -- oversimplified scenes, especially of confrontation -- the ideas and the writing consistently impress. Huchu writes very entertainingly -- indeed, so accessibly that some of the depth behind it all can be in danger of being overlooked in too plain sight.

       In The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician Huchu ultimately does try to do just a bit too much too suddenly, but it's still very good entertainment, of both the light and heavier sort, through and through.

- M.A.Orthofer, 22 August 2015

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/zimbabwe/huchut2.htm