Tag Archives: Efemia Chela

Sunshine in my pocket

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Every New Year’s Eve local time at midnight, I tune in to my favourite radio station in Austria to hear the live ringing of the St. Stephen’s Cathedral bells in Vienna. Afterwards, they always play Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” waltz, and then usually a pop song of note. This year that song was Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”. I’d never heard it before, but it was catchy enough to remember. When I looked it up, listened to it properly, watched the video, and read the lyrics, I could not stop dancing to it, and realised that it is the perfect song to start this year with.

Last year … should be best forgotten, at least most of it, especially the first half (ugh!). Personally all I can think of is: I survived. Fortunately more intact than I thought possible. And here I am, ready for 2017! All positive energy and smiles, or as Timberlake sings, with “that sunshine in my pocket”.

A whole sun of sunlight in my heart’s pocket, in fact.

New Year’s resolutions? Ah, you know, the usual: write a few books, win the lottery, travel the world.

In all honesty, I hardly have any plans. It’s the year I turn 40. I will publish two books. All monumental stuff, but it feels like my life should be: I am getting older. I write. I publish. I am embracing it all with great joy. What is different about this year is my involvement with PEN South Africa. I have been co-opted as a board member and will be promoting activities celebrating our inspiring literary heritage and contemporary writing.

For a while now, I have also been dreaming of founding an independent publishing house, a home to exquisite writing. This year might see its birth.

There will be literary salons, book festivals, trips – local and overseas – and lots of tennis to watch (Rafa is back!). I am looking forward to the publication of Koleka Putuma’s Collective Amnesia, Antjie Krog’s Lady Anne: A Chronicle in Verse, SSDA’s next anthology of short stories Migrations: New Short Fiction from Africa (edited by Efemia Chela, Bongani Kona and Helen Moffett), Katherine Stansfield’s Falling Creatures, Melissa Volker’s A Fractured Land, and Sarah Lotz’s next novel in which a Polish character features … I was told she gets to have some great mountaineering adventures … Or was it sex? Both, I hope. As long as she reaches the summit.

karinaI have no doubt this will be a brilliant year for books; many more exciting titles await.

I wish you all lots of health, and if not a sun, then at least a ray of sunlight in your pocket.

Let us dance.

Let’s not stop The Feeling.

How to quench literary thirst?

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Water coverSimple: with Water!

There is a wonderful anthology of short stories coming our way at the end of the year, and I am not only saying this because I had the privilege of co-editing it (with the multi-talented Nick Mulgrew): Water: New Short Fiction from Africa, curated by Short Story Day Africa.

Life should be about all those half-full glasses, and this particular one is overflowing with talent and inspiration. The great thing about most short fiction anthologies is that they give you samples of writers’ work which can lead to amazing discoveries. Most of the contributors to Water were new to me, but all of them, without exception, will remain on my radar of literary interests and I will follow their careers with anticipation.

I think that if you can read a short story a few times (which I had to do for all the stories in the collection) and can still enjoy it, discovering new aspects with each turn and deepening your appreciation, then it has to mean something. Next week, I will proofread all of them one more time before the anthology goes into print, and I do not dread the task at all, but actually can’t wait.

Short Story Day Africa has been doing incredible work since it came into being, offering a space for African authors to express their desires about the African story (as writers and as readers), connecting, inspiring, developing ideas, celebrating a genre that is without equals. A good short story is a good short story, and despite all the rumours that nobody writes, publishes, or reads it, the short story will survive and thrive, because many of us LOVE to write short stories, and we LOVE to read them! It’s all very simple, actually.

All of the contributors to the anthology are good writers and I salute them! When I single out only a few in what I am about to say, it is not because of favouritism, but because I feel that I am only at the beginning of a journey which Water is taking me on.

Efemia Chela: Every time she publishes a story, its exquisiteness astounds me. I know three. All three belong to the best of the best I have ever read. This is someone with a talent so precious that it should be cherished and nourished, so that it can grow strong roots in our literary community. One day, Chela might tower over it like one of those majestic baobabs which grace the African landscape.

Alex Latimer: His story in the anthology is bizarre, to say the least, but it speaks about grief in a way that has touched me deeply. Its handling of the emotion is so subtle and so beautiful, it will stay with me for a very long time. As will Alexis Teyie‘s story about the most unbearable of losses. When you get to the last line, it literally knocks you off your feet.

Megan Ross: After reading her story, I cannot wait to get my hands on the novel she is writing at the moment. May the muse be good to her.

Mark Winkler: He has already published two novels which I might not have looked at, hadn’t I fallen in love with his story in Water. I am nearly finished with his latest, Wasted, published earlier this year (the sense of humour and the unusual, totally unpredictable, plot!), and I will read the first, An Exceptionally Simple Theory (of Absolutely Everything) (2013), as soon as I can.

And then there is Dayo Ntwari: His story is exceptional as a story, but the world and the characters he creates in it are so fascinating that one feels there could be more to them than just this one incarnation. I would love to get to know them and the scary futuristic-mythical place they live in (which is such an astute reflection of our own times) better. Any literary agents out there looking for fantasy/speculative fiction/SF from Africa? Look no more. Just saying.

I can’t wait for readers to dive into Water and discover these treasure among twenty-one excellent stories. And I promise to report more on the journey these waters are taking me on.

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Review: The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories – The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014

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The Gonjon PinThe Caine Prize for African Writing has a reputation of launching literary careers. Previous winners include Helon Habila, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Henrietta Innes-Rose. The Caine Prize collections of stories comprise each year’s shortlisted entries and pieces written during a workshop organised in conjunction with the prize.

By nature an anthology of short stories is usually a mixed bag. This year’s volume, apart from some excellent exceptions, is not particularly accomplished. Reading most of the contributions one senses amazing talent and potential, but the stories, even two or three of the shortlisted ones, feel unfinished. They intrigue, but do not wow despite varied themes, innovative approaches to form and content, and moments of stylistic beauty. All the elements of great short-story writing are present, but they hardly ever feature together in one piece.

African writing has a certain reputation, on the continent and beyond. Depending on individual tastes, readers either fear or count on stories of socio-political relevance, everyday hardship and disillusionment, the diaspora experience, violence and abuse, the HIV pandemic, neglect or instability. There is a prevalent feeling of ‘things falling apart’. The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories includes all of the above and in that sense does not disappoint.

The shortlisted stories stand out for their originality. In Diane Awerbuck’s Phosphorescence (South Africa), a suicidal young woman bonds with her daring grandmother over the bulldozing of a city landmark. While following the election back home on television, a Zimbabwean family tries to negotiate between a quarrelling couple in Tendai Huchu’s The Intervention (Zimbabwe). Billy Kahora’s protagonist develops an uncanny relationship to a zoo gorilla in The Gorilla’s Apprentice (Kenya). And in the winning entry, My Father’s Head by Okwiri Oduor (Nigeria), a woman tries to conjure up her dead father by drawing him, but his head refuses to fit into her sketches.

The shortlisted story which impressed me the most, however, was Efemia Chela’s Chicken (Ghana/Zambia). A young writer of remarkable assurance, Chela has that rare gift of making you pause again and again to appreciate a striking image or a perfectly balanced sentence while never allowing you to take your mind off the story she is telling. Chicken is about a woman who cuts the ties to her family and tries to survive on her own in the big city by making some tough choices.

Of the twelve workshop stories, the titular The Gonjon Pin by Martin Egblewogbe (Ghana) and The Lifebloom Gift by Abdul Adan (Somalia/Kenya) were a true discovery. Reminiscent of the mad and irresistible story-telling of such authors as the Israeli Etgar Keret or the Welsh Alex Burrett, these surreal tales made me sit up, laugh, shake my head, and marvel at the incredible power of the genre. Egblewogbe has his characters dealing with a man’s functioning genitals hanging on a study wall. Adan creates a world where an unusual man spreads cult love by stimulating people’s moles. It is gems like these that make reading anthologies worthwhile.

The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014
Jacana/New Internationalist, 2014

First published in the Cape Times, 10 October 2014.

Review: Adults Only – Stories of Love, Lust, Sex and Sensuality edited by Joanne Hichens

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adultsonlycoverThe stories in this anthology have been selected from some 150 entries submitted for the second annual Short.Sharp.Stories competition. As with all such collections, the quality of the twenty-two individual pieces varies. The authors range from first-time-published to award-winning practitioners of the genre. Additionally, in this particular case, every reader’s sexual preferences will strongly influence their reading of these diverse contributions. Sex in all its permutations is a highly personal experience, as is writing and reading about it. Hats off to the editor and all the authors for their daring explorations of the mine-fields of our sexualities.

As Aryan Kaganof’s narrator states, “there is no love that is not an echo”; he also understands that “real sex happens in the head”. Erotic stories are like lovers. They will either satisfy you or leave you wanting.

No doubt a few of the contributions will bring many readers out of their comfort zone and will have you reading through your fingers. Others will excite you. Some will delight with their humour or tenderness. There is a lot to be learned. Who would have thought that Woolies would emerge from the anthology as the preferred place of choice for sexy lingerie shopping? Or that the smell of semen reminds some of peeled potato? I didn’t even want to know what blunt knives could be used for. Every reader will find something to please or disturb them. No matter what, brace yourself: Adults Only is one hell of ride for most of its journey.

After reading the opening story, Alex Smith’s “The Big Toad”, I knew that I would never be able to look into my kitchen cupboards without apprehension, and perhaps a tiny bit of envy. I might have to get some Jungle Oats to liven up the scene inside my predictable cupboards. Arja Salafranca’s “Post-Dated Sex” made me look at post-it notes with fresh eyes. Her story approaches that beautiful space between lovers where words “dissolve” and become something “instinctive that moves against them.” Beauty is also the subject of Donvé Lee’s “The Mirror”. Lee is the author of An Intimate War (2010), one of the most erotic local novels of recent years. Her story shines with a similar intensity and rare honesty.

The competition’s winning entry, Nick Mulgrawe’s “Turning”, is a well-written and a worthy choice, but it did not move me as much as Ken Barris’s captivating “Louka in Autumn”, or Anthony Ehler’s shattering “Breaking the Rules”, or Alexander Matthews’s illuminating “Entropy”. Efemia Chela is a young writer to watch. Her “Perigee” is as bold and astute as her recently Caine Prize-shortlisted “Chicken”. She writes a lush and supple prose that is a pleasure in itself.

The language of sexuality is a very tricky thing to master. What will arouse one person, will do nothing for another. It’s so easy to fall into clichés and vulgarity. So it was quite refreshing to smile at phrases like “sex has always been at best pedestrian – Tim walks all over me” (in Christine Coate’s “The Cat’s Wife”, a tale of a bored wife seeking out adventures which will make her fly, literally and otherwise), or to admire the eloquence with which Justine Loots describes the sadness of an encounter between a prostitute and a young inexperienced man: “One of his wings, if he has wings at all, is torn at the edge. It won’t affect his flight much, you won’t even see it, but it’s there all the same.” The magic realist twist of Loots’s story “Uncaged” brings a wonderful dimension to the entire book. Strange beasts roam the world she creates; one can never be sure who is the prey and who the predator.

Not every use of the word “cunt” will have the same impact of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. And yet I was reminded of it in Aryan Kaganof’s powerful story “Time Out With My Destiny”. With every paragraph the first-person narrator lures you in, manages to surprise and capture something unique, and ends on a shattering note. A “wow story”, my husband said when I read it aloud to him.

The stories in Adults Only capture different aspects of our relationships: from tender intimacy to raw sex, and beyond, to abuse and rape. Wamuwi Mbao’s “The Ninth Wave” tells of that moment when wanting more from a relationship breaks the little that the other is prepared to give. Alan Waters’ debut story “A Threesome in the New South Africa” recounts a hilarious encounter between a middle-aged man, his younger girlfriend, and a Rastafarian of intimidating proportions. Not every longing is clearly identifiable. In Dudumalingani Mqombothi’s “The Streetwalkers”, the search for his lost father leads a man into the arms of a sex worker.

Adults Only is a fascinating read which showcases the diversity, audacity and vibrancy of South African fiction.

Adults Only: Stories of Love, Lust, Sex and Sensuality
Edited by Joanne Hichens
Mercury, 2014

An edited version of this review was published in the Cape Times on 12 September 2014, p. 10.