Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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POLITICAL REPRESSION and turmoil are often accompanied by an outbreak of literary activity, and the case of South Africa is no exception. Mating Birds, the first novel of Lewis Nkosi, a young Black South African writer, is a story set in and expressly concerned with the current political and social conditions of South Africa. It is short, clear, direct and intensely unforgiving--a cry from the heart, dedicated to "my grandmother, Esther Makatini, who washed white people's clothes so that I could learn to write...
...story is told in the first person by Sibiya in the few days before his execution. There are few characters, and they are hardly developed; even Sibiya seems largely just a symbol, a spokesman and martyr for all of South Africa's Blacks. And the essential subject of the novel remains from beginning to end the larger picture of life under apartheid...
...this narrow focus lie both the greatest weaknesses and strengths of Mating Birds. The novel begins, "In a few days I am to die," but the common 20th century technique of telling a story from the end is not carried off with particular novelty or innovation. So far as contemporary novels go, the plot is largely predictable. It follows the protagonist, Sibiya, from a Zula reservation to his enrollment in school, to expulsion after participation in anti-apartheid riots, to his progressive obsession with Veronica at a beach, to forbidden copulation in her bungalow, to discovery, trial and sentencing. There...
...utilizes them effectively. His tone is never affected or presumptuous but is always immediately understandable and often colorful and refreshingly poetic. He is writing about a world he knows first hand, as is clearly and beautifully evident in images such as those of the Zulu homeland. And the entire novel is suffused with the intensely emotional voice of a man who cares deeply about his country and who tries--and succeeds--in expressing that passion through his writing...
...single powerful sound rolling and thundering, shaking the very foundations of the prison walls." It is not a practical agenda but only a vision of a possible future. Technically, it does not mesh well with the generally hopeless tone. But emotionally, it is the underlying credo of the entire novel: a new world will be--must be--born someday in South Africa...