My SA Lit Reads of 2009; and Africa’s Book of the Year

December 31st, 2009 by Ben - Editor

Alert! I don’t often do this – OK, I never do this, for a host of reasons, which include a desire to avoid conflict of interest and a fear of being accused of favouritism – but in the spirit of ushering in the new year with something, erm, new, I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking point (which is in a sunny room in Sea Point), and resolved to divulge my SA reads of the year.

There are two, in fact. Before I get to them, the caveats: although I read quite a lot of SA Lit in 2009, I didn’t read nearly enough for my choices to count as anything like definitive. What’s more, 2009 was a banner year for highly-polished writing from across southern Africa, and the books that deserve honourable mentions here are quite literally too numerous to mention (honourably). Finally, I’m posting this in my personal capacity as a critical lover of writing and books, not as editor of BOOK SA. The two works I’m delicately laying out for your consideration are simply those that have made the biggest roosts in my mental rafters (which are, yes, in need of a spring cleaning, and thanks so much for asking).

Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In-between is my SA book of the year. By quite some distance, it’s the most accomplished work of fiction from these parts that I encountered in 2009. It’s that rare thing, a novel of ideas that confronts the politics of our times with the full yet oblique aggressiveness of art. As subversive as JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, High Low In-between yet bears a lighter touch, as its characters, who take you gently in hand, live as best they can around the moral dilemmas – and murder mystery – at the book’s core. Something is rotten in Durban, something whose sweet reek pervades the entire country. This book has the reflecting power to show us where we stand. I recommend it very highly.

Kgebetli Moele’s The Book of the Dead is my runner-up. I’m surprised by the relatively meagre notice it’s attracted in the press, because it’s a dangerous book: it brings a plague sympathetically to life. As a reader who looks out for technical innovation in fiction, I found the straightforward plod through the book’s first section, which lays out the life stories of the main characters in unadorned prose, to be amply recompensed by the momentum-shattering collision in the second, which sees HIV join said characters and start speaking in the first person. From there, Moele arc welds along the seam of a single but disjunct point of view – a finely-effected rupture that delivers on its promise of spooky, thrilling remorselessness.

Buy them and read them, you’ll not regret it.

See other Best of SA Lit in 2009 articles (scroll down to the bottom of the post)

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But wait, there’s more to be said about books and Africa in 2009. Quite on a whim, I’ve also decided to name Africa’s book of the year (published in English) because, as we all know, Africa is a country, and, what’s more, as an exercise, it’s fun.

At the outset, let me say that I’m not presuming to choose Africa’s best book of the year; think of this as of a piece with the “newsmaker” picks that do the media rounds come 31 December.

A betting man would have been confident enough that the book of the year from our continent was going to be Zimbabwean Petina Gappah’s debut collection of short stories, An Elegy for Easterly, to have wagered a large sum on it – both because of its critical reception and because of the splash that its author makes wherever she appears. Gappah’s star power clearly has the potential to wax to the point where it will allow Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to relinquish her duties as Africa’s literary talisman. Her next book is going to be even bigger than Elegy, and we can’t wait to see it.

But there’s someone in the book world whose star power may well never be eclipsed, and in the end, her weighty influence bumped An Elegy for Easterly into the runner-up position, forcing it to give way to another debut collection of short stories. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Oprah’s pick of Nigerian Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them for her book club was the biggest thing to hit African letters since Things Fall Apart. Her choice is the world’s choice; and Uwem Akpan’s first work is Africa’s 2009 book of the year.

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