Book Release!!! | "The Path Which Shapes Us" by Lazola Pambo

The Path Which Shapes Us is a young adult fiction novel written by South African poet, novelist and essayist, Lazola Pambo. Its protagonist Clifford Malothi is caught up in his Uncle's past criminal life and lives in fear of being kidnapped along with his girlfriend. His Uncle's nemesis, Nasty Mike, is a threat to his Uncle and all the people of Evansdale, Clifford's hometown. The only one who can save them is Clifford and he has the perfect plan to overcome Nasty Mike.

Lazola Pambo has had his works published in New Coin, LitNet, The Kalahari Review, Aerodome, Nomad's Choir, Black Magnolias Literary Journal, BlazeVOX, Indiana Voice Journal, and Aji Magazine. He will soon be published in The Sentinel Literary Quarterly. This is his first novel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LPambo

The Path Which Shapes Us will retail for the price of R159,99. It will be available in South African bookstores and online by the end of September 2016. Orders can be sent in advance of release date to the book publisher. Contact: Mr. Isaac Shabangu via email - isaac@linguafrancapublishers.co.za

July's People by Nadine Gordimer | Book Review

Bam and Maureen Smales are a caucasian couple with three kids living in apartheid South Africa. This story begins with them in a village hut being attended to by their black manservant, July. The sudden war in South Africa, a product of racial tensions, has forced everyone to flee the cities and the Smales family is in especial danger because of their race. July's extended family aren't welcoming but they take the Smales in. July's mom even vacates her personal hut at his request so the Smales can stay in it. The plan seems to be to hide out in July's village until it's safe but tensions are rising within the camp. For 15 years July has been the paid manservant who does their bidding but now the Smales are helpless and dependent on July for a lot of things, including their safety. Will they continue to stay with July's People or will they head out on their own?

July's People is about the racism in South Africa at a certain point in time. The story doesn't start out in an exciting way and for a while the only reason I'm clinging on is because it's written by Nadine Gordimer. She's a revered South African author. She won the Booker Prize in 1974 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. I've wanted to read her books for some time now and I initially planned to start with The Conservationist but I changed my mind. Anyway, July's People doesn't build up to some great tragedy or jaw dropping event. It just keeps trudging along for 160 pages. Do I like July's People? Yeah, it was okay... Would I recommend it to anyone? No.

[Image via Amazon]

A Dry White Season by Andre Brink | Book Review

We're told right from the beginning about the troubling deaths of two black South Africans: Gordon Ngubene and his son Jordan. Gordon used to be a janitor at the school where Ben Du Toit, the protagonist, teaches history and geography. Gordon and Ben got to know each other better after Ben helped Gordon out of a tight spot. Ben also took on the responsibility of paying for Jordan's tuition because Jordan seemed like such a promising young kid. All that young promise vaporized when Jordan reached his mid-teens and morphed into a restless fool, boiling with teen angst and unwilling to continue schooling. It's not long before he disappears unexpectedly. There's something really shady about his disappearance and the subsequent police "investigation" that bothers Gordon. Gordon quits his job at the school and goes underground to investigate the circumstances surrounding his son's death but he also disappears and returns as a dead body. Ben Du Toit takes it upon himself to investigate the deaths of these two black men in apartheid South Africa. His hunt for truth and justice come at great personal cost and threatens everything he has - his family, his job, his privacy, his personal safety, and his mental health - but he ploughs on, impervious to the pleas of family and friends. Can Ben Du Toit expose South Africa's police and the country's corrupt legal system?

I dislike forewords, prologues, and introductions in novels. The more pages a writer devotes to his or her prologue, the less chance I'll read the entire thing. I always just want to begin at chapter one. Thankfully, I didn't read this particular foreword until I was done with the novel and its epilogue (I don't mind epilogues) because it would have ruined the entire novel for me. If you do decide to read the thirty-five pages of this novel's foreword there will be little surprise ahead for you and you're going to want to find a reason to keep flipping pages because A Dry White Season isn't that engrossing.

Ben Du Toit is a white man in a racially segregated South Africa who's deeply disturbed by the unjust treatment of blacks and the disgusting cover-ups of their murders by the government. With all of the issues at stake in this novel I expected to be on Ben's side but I'm not moved by him. His naivety is astounding, unnerving and irritating at times. The mere fact that a middle-aged man in that environment still had complete trust in the justice system caused me to lose faith in him and his ability to bring the killers to justice. Is Andre Brink using Ben Du Toit to depict the naivety that results from being in a privileged racial class or is Ben Du Toit just ignorant? Even his confrontation of authority was childish and reckless which is serious because of the potential consequences that could result from being so "fearless". Ben Du Toit is not a martyr for South African blacks but I applaud his earnest efforts and his pushing forth despite all odds. A Dry White Season feels like it's supposed to be a highly compelling portrait of the injustices in apartheid South Africa or something of that sort. I had some difficulty getting through it but in retrospect the novel seems more engaging than it really was. I wish it had been a much better read.

Image via [Goodreads]

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee | Book Review

David Lurie is a fifty-two year old college professor in South Africa. He's a two-time divorcee and father to one child, his daughter Lucy. David lives alone and he has sorted his life into a routine that seems to be working well for him. He teaches a college class, grades papers, makes weekly trips to a brothel, and also engages in casual sexual encounters every now and then. He's quite content with the loneliness that comes with this freedom to do as he pleases. One day he runs into a girl who's a student in his college class. He invites her home and sometime later they begin having sexual relations until it all goes wrong. Horribly wrong. In the wake of the ensuing scandal his entire academic career and everything he has worked hard for are on the line. In the chaos you'd be forgiven to anticipate that the plot of Disgrace would head down a certain path but it doesn't. The path it takes instead is shocking and disturbing.

Disgrace is a great novel. I say that reluctantly not because I doubt its greatness but because of the story itself. I'm just a little reluctant to tie the word "great" to what goes on in this book. I put it down a lot so I could pause to sort out and cool the rising disquiet and the occasional horror. Thoughts like "What???", "What's going on???" "What are you saying???", and "Oh my God..." kept surfacing during my reading. Disgrace is not a convoluted tale that seeks to impress. It stays with you because it's so real. You know this is how life works in some parts of the world and it's frightening. It's messed up. It's so messed up. Our world is messed up. The point where Coetzee leaves us doesn't soothe the readers anxiety. I just sat there after I was done, trying to put it all together and also using my imagination to project what happens afterwards. Disgrace won the Man Booker Prize in 1999 making J.M. Coetzee a two time winner of the prestigious prize at the age of fifty-nine. You should read it.

[Image via Middlemiss] 

Thirteen Cents by K. Sello Duiker | Book Review

Azure's parents were murdered about three years ago in Cape Town, South Africa. He's twelve years old, almost thirteen, when we meet him in Thirteen Cents, hustling with other street urchins, doing anything to survive each day. Cape Town has a market for sex with underaged boys so Azure sells sex to the white men who pick him up from the dark streets. Selling his body fetches a paltry sum that he uses to eat, cloth himself, pay for protection on the streets, and any leftovers get put away in savings. It's a rough life out there on Cape Town's dangerous streets. It's crazy.

Thirteen Cents is unsettling and very compelling. It's just the right size at 190 pages and I kept wishing I could read it in one sitting without interruptions. The story contains bits of foreign language without any English translations. It didn't affect my reading and I appreciated the absence of translations. Thirteen Cents is bold, dark, and violent. Kudos to the late K. Sello Duiker.

[Image via Amazon]

African Roar 2014 | Book Review

African Roar 2014 is the fifth book in the African Roar anthology series edited by Ivor Hartmann and Emmanuel Siguake. It's an annual collection of fictional short stories authored by African writers, and published by StoryTime Publishing. African Roar 2014 is a collection of nine short stories authored by relative unknowns. Flight by Jayne Bauling; My Wedding by Obinna Ozoigbo; The Side Dish by Edwin P. Magezi; Beth's Aid by Tabitha Wanja Mwangi; Talking to a Lizard by Obinna Udenwe; Coming Home in a Box by Olorunfunmi Demilade Temitope; The Bell Not Touched by Nonso Uzozie; Spinoza's Monad by Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso; and A Salute to Safety Sam by Tendai Machingaidze. This is the first collection I have read from the series, and it begins with one of the best, and most inspiring introductions I have ever read, written by the amazing Ivor Hartmann.

African Roar 2014 begins with the interesting tale, Flight by Jayne Bauling (South Africa). In Flight, Phindile has been forced by her mother to shelve her dreams and ambitions so her spoilt little brother can have a better future. It's a simple tale about a caged girl that's pretty good. It's the best of the bunch.

Obinna Ozoigbo (Nigeria) follows Jayne with his tale, My Wedding. It's about a child bride in the Nigerian city of Kano. It's a story with the potential to crush but it misses because Obinna muddles it with crap. It should have been simpler and less cluttered so that this twelve year old's horror doesn't leave you after you're done with the tale.

Edwin P. Magezi (Uganda) livens things back up with his tale, The Side Dish.  I like it. I found it humorous and interesting, and then I got to the end. Magezi wraps up his tale in a manner that I found reminiscent of some of the African tales I grew up reading and listening to. The ones with those "teaching" moments where a devious character is punished or experiences a drastic turn around that drills into its reader the idea that there are consequences to being bad. Tales such as the one where no one helps move the giant rock obstructing traffic in the middle of the road until one "good" person finally does and finds a reward underneath it that has been placed by a wealthy man to reward society for doing good. Or the stories about an old weary beggar on the side of the road who's an angel in disguise, testing people's kindness and generosity. That kind of thing.

Tabitha Wanja Mwangi (Kenya) follows with Beth's Aid. Wamboi is a young girl from a poor background who really, really wants more that what her hardworking parents can provide. It's another good one in this collection.

Obinna Udenwe (Nigeria) penned Talking to a Lizard and he's the first to drop the baton in this collection. In Talking to a Lizard, Edeh and his cousin follow their grandfather Ngele to another town for his annual trip to visit his friend. It's a "meh" tale that bored me.

Olorunfunmi Demilade Temitope (Nigeria) follows Udenwe's poisoned lead with her tale, Coming Home in a Box. In Coming Home in a Box, word spreads that the great chief is dead and arrangements are made for his burial. Family and foes gather to decide how his immense wealth should be split up. It's a familiar African tale, the stuff Nollywood dramas are sometimes made of. Coming Home in a Box is boring and doesn't at all fit in with the caliber of prose I expected to find in this collection. Will there be another tale to prop this collection back on its feet?

Definitely not a tale from Nonso Uzozie (Nigeria) who wrote The Bell Not Touched. A dim, eye-roll worthy story about the mysteries of a giant bell in a village school. I'm just going to stop there. After Nonso's prose I became worried that the best of African Roar 2014 ended with Tabitha Wanja Mwangi's Beth's Aid.

Spinoza's Monad is a badly written tale of two Nigerian lesbians trying to raise a child together in their local community. It was penned by Ezeiyoke Chukwunonso (Nigeria). It's a bland, overly dramatic tale that did not hit any of the chords that it rightly should. I mean this is a tale of Nigerian lesbians who get artificially inseminated and try to raise that kid in a traditional Nigerian community. That's a goldmine of material to work with but Chukwunonso makes it an emotionless mess, that lacks depth and is unworthy of being in this lineup.

Finally, African Roar 2014 closes out with A Salute to Safety Sam by Tendai Machingaidze (Zimbabwe). A Salute to Safety Sam is a mushy travelogue that was a waste of my time. I wish African Roar 2014 had picked a more deserving short story to bid us goodbye until next year.

Overall, it was a great idea to start with Jayne Bauling's Flight. The quality of stories take a dip with Udenwe's tale, and continue that way with all other subsequent authors. I applaud the creator(s) of African Roar for this producing this series. Please do not stop. Inasmuch as I wish I had a better reading experience, I love the concept of this series, and its potential to introduce us all to new talent from all over the African continent. To support the African Roar series, I'll endeavor to review every new African Roar series on this blog every December. Kudos to everyone who had a part in this series. Much kudos to Ivor Hartmann.

[Image via StoryTime]