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Still Life
A New York Times Top Historical Fiction Pick of 2020
A stunningly original new novel exploring race, truth in authorship, and the legacy of past exploitation, from the Windham-Campbell lifetime achievement award winner When Zoë Wicomb burst onto the literary scene in 1987 with You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, she was hailed by her literary contemporaries and reviewers alike. Since then, her carefully textured writing has cemented her reputation as being among the most distinguished writers working today and earned her one of the inaugural Windham Campbell Prizes for Lifetime Achievement in Fiction Writing.
Wicomb's majestic new novel Still Life juggles with our perception of time and reality as Wicomb tells the story of an author struggling to write a biography of long-forgotten Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, whose only legacy is in South Africa where he is dubbed the "Father of South African Poetry."
In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the writer summons the specter of Mary Prince, the West Indian slave whose History Pringle had once published, along with Hinza, his adopted black South African son. At their side is Sir Nicholas Greene, a seasoned time traveler (and a character from Virginia Woolf's Orlando). Their adventures, as they travel across space and time to unlock the mysteries of Pringle's life, offer a poignant exploration of colonial history and racial oppression.
A stunningly original new novel exploring race, truth in authorship, and the legacy of past exploitation, from the Windham-Campbell lifetime achievement award winner When Zoë Wicomb burst onto the literary scene in 1987 with You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, she was hailed by her literary contemporaries and reviewers alike. Since then, her carefully textured writing has cemented her reputation as being among the most distinguished writers working today and earned her one of the inaugural Windham Campbell Prizes for Lifetime Achievement in Fiction Writing.
Wicomb's majestic new novel Still Life juggles with our perception of time and reality as Wicomb tells the story of an author struggling to write a biography of long-forgotten Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, whose only legacy is in South Africa where he is dubbed the "Father of South African Poetry."
In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the writer summons the specter of Mary Prince, the West Indian slave whose History Pringle had once published, along with Hinza, his adopted black South African son. At their side is Sir Nicholas Greene, a seasoned time traveler (and a character from Virginia Woolf's Orlando). Their adventures, as they travel across space and time to unlock the mysteries of Pringle's life, offer a poignant exploration of colonial history and racial oppression.
250 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2020
14 people are currently reading
1286 people want to read
About the author
Zoë Wicomb
24 books68 followersZoë Wicomb attended the University of the Western Cape, and after graduating left South Africa for England in 1970, where she continued her studies at Reading University. She lived in Nottingham and Glasgow and returned to South Africa in 1990, where she taught for three years in the department of English at the University of the Western Cape She gained attention in South Africa and internationally with her first work, a collection of short stories , You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), which takes place during the apartheid era. Her second novel, David's Story (2002), takes place in 1991 toward the close of the apartheid era and uses the ambiguous classification of coloureds to explore racial identity. Playing in the Light, her third novel, released in 2006, covers similar terrain conceptually, though this time set in contemporary South Africa and centering around a white woman who learns that her parents were actually coloured. She published her second collection of short stories, The One That Got Away. The stories, set mainly in Cape Town and Glasgow, explore a range of human relationships: marriage, friendships, family ties or relations with servants.
She was a winner of the 2013 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction.
Zoe Wicomb resides in Glasgow where she teaches creative writing and post-colonial literature at the University of Strathclyde.
She was a winner of the 2013 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction.
Zoe Wicomb resides in Glasgow where she teaches creative writing and post-colonial literature at the University of Strathclyde.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 10, 2023
Still Life is a fantastically thoughtful work by South African writer Zoë Wicomb, published by New Press in the US and Peninsula Press in the UK. At its core, this is an exploration of how to write historical fiction, an examination of point of view, perspective, and voice. The subject is Thomas Pringle, a 19th century white settler to South Africa who is often cited as the father of South African poetry. For obvious reasons, that label is problematic. Further complicating the problematic nature of that label is Pringle’s staunch abolitionist activities and reputation as a person sympathetic to non-settlers who exhibited sensitivity to the beauty of African landscape in his work. A white liberal, we might say today. So how to tell Pringle's story? Wicomb takes a meta approach, beginning in a sort of bardo, an afterlife with characters drawn from Pringle's world. The novel becomes a piecing together of Pringle's biography, a kaleidoscope approach with multiple voices that both deconstructs and reconstructs narrative approaches historical fiction. The framing narrative, then, exists at arm's length from Pringle's story, highlighting the reality that history is necessarily a story independent from events themselves. Wicomb's narrative choices might leave some cold, but I found them to be an effective way to use fiction as a means to explore these themes.
February 1, 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, UK & Ireland
Expert readers the world over read only in the interests of their own groups; that has been and always will be part of their expertise.
Still Life by Zoe Wicomb is published in the UK by Peninsula Press, winners, via Isabel Waidner's Sterling Karat Gold of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize, and this would be a worthy contender for this year's edition.
Ostensibly this sets out to be a historical fiction novel about the real-life Thomas Pringle, but one with a strongly meta-fictional flavour and with overriding themes of privilege, and of how, and by who, stories are told.
The initial narrator of the novel has signed a deal for the book, but sends their agent, Belinda, a sample of writing about her experiences as a supply teacher, which the agent is keen she expands instead:
What can Belinda possibly mean by a novel when I’ve sent her what must pass for a short story? I have told her, admittedly over a year ago, explained in detail that the next novel was to be about the Father of South African Poetry, Defender of a Free Press, Arch-enemy of the Cape Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and as an Abolitionist, an enemy of all slavers: Thomas Pringle.
But the novel's narration is handed over first to a ghostly version of Pringle, keen that his reputation as a poet in his native UK should be as high as it is South Africa (where he spent only a few years) and indeed that he should be better known for his key role in the abolition of slavery in the UK. As Hinza (see below) says, speaking from London:
Certainly, people may not have heard of him here, nor in his native Scotland, but way down in South Africa he is still celebrated as Abolitionist, Defender of a Free Press, and above all the Father of South African Poetry. Although nowadays I believe, in certain leftier-than-thou circles, his humanitarianism is questioned and he is dismissed as a colonial poet. Understandably, earlier, indigenous poetry has become better known since the demise of apartheid, and Mr P’s epithet will have to expand to Father of Colonial South African Poetry. Still, he is well known – every schoolboy and girl has come across the much-anthologised poem ‘Afar in the Desert’.
But Pringle himself then fades from the narrative and his story is instead told by three further characters, all physically resurrected into modern-day London:
1. Hinza Marossi, the subject of Pringle's poem Bechuana Boy, a boy who Pringle rescued/acquired (the likely truth vs. the idealised poem is one of the novel's themes), and came with Pringle when he returned to the UK (as an adopted son, or as a servant - again this ambiguity is key)
Pringle's own account of Hinza is his notes to the poem which the character in the novel somewhat disputes:
2. Mary Prince, a former slave who lived in London with Thomas Pringle. She told her story to Susanna Strickland, a woman working for Pringle, and (with some editorial amendments by Strickland, which are also debated in this novel) this was published as The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative in 1831, the first such account in the UK and which was to galvanise the abolition movement.
and, brilliantly:
3. Sir Nicholas Greene, the fictional time-travelling writer from Woolf's Orlando, both a 17th century poet, a contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and a 19th century critic, so an ideal person to guide his two fellow narrators through the travails of living in a different time, and also forced in the tale to examine his own privilege.
As Pringle comments:
Strictly speaking, on the wings of the woman writer’s prose. (She has perversely dismissed his polite term, lady writer.) If he frets about what she’ll do, how she will proceed, and from which angle, he is also resigned to the fact that it cannot be purely his story, not with all the others clamouring for being, clamouring for control. Whatever happens, some unknown beast will necessarily com yawning and blinking out of the attempt, but he is ready, is game for it, as they say. Invariably there will be a-slipping and a-sliding between third and first persons, elastic conjugations, role-switching perhaps between male and female, subject and author – this century it would see is without limits – so all he can hope for is that the multi-faced monster will be of friendly mien, free at least of malice. He has had quite enough of neck-wrenching, of having turned first this cheek then that to the men of the master classes, be they political or literary. Practised in forbearance, and having survived so many constructions in the colony, both in life and in death – well, if this turns out to be yet another pooh-poohing, would that a final death follow. But thanks to the faithful protégés who have taken up the cudgels he is ready to give it a go, even in this baffling new world. The question, however, arises: what then is his role? The slipperiness of being a subject; for instance, will he as a white man be expected to step aside? What to do about this talk of a dead white man that he does not understand?
And a fourth voice emerges, Vytje the servant from Pringle's The Emigrant’s Cabin:
But she is not passed the narrative baton, and (in the novel's account) was treated very differently to the semi-adopted Hinza: It comes as no surprise that Hinza, that person from nowhere, barely mentions me. It is clear that he has no intention of consulting me on this story – too screwed up, he of the original identity crisis.
Really, with all of us now claiming attention, all wanting to be acknowledged as having known Baas Pringle (I at least do not claim friendship), of having been of interest to him, all of us clamouring to fill in his story (which is also to say our own stories), to have a go at stirring the broth, I have every expectation that the story will be spoilt. This bee hive house of fiction bursts at the seams, buzzes with our competitive spirits; it was not made for so many people.
An intriguing and very clever novel - 4.5 stars.
Further reading
Interview with the author: https://www.litnet.co.za/still-life-a...
A paper that sets the novel in the context of the author's wider work: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/vie...
Expert readers the world over read only in the interests of their own groups; that has been and always will be part of their expertise.
Still Life by Zoe Wicomb is published in the UK by Peninsula Press, winners, via Isabel Waidner's Sterling Karat Gold of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize, and this would be a worthy contender for this year's edition.
Peninsula Press is a publisher of boundary pushing fiction and non-fiction, based in London. It was founded in 2017 by three booksellers.
Ostensibly this sets out to be a historical fiction novel about the real-life Thomas Pringle, but one with a strongly meta-fictional flavour and with overriding themes of privilege, and of how, and by who, stories are told.
The initial narrator of the novel has signed a deal for the book, but sends their agent, Belinda, a sample of writing about her experiences as a supply teacher, which the agent is keen she expands instead:
What can Belinda possibly mean by a novel when I’ve sent her what must pass for a short story? I have told her, admittedly over a year ago, explained in detail that the next novel was to be about the Father of South African Poetry, Defender of a Free Press, Arch-enemy of the Cape Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and as an Abolitionist, an enemy of all slavers: Thomas Pringle.
But the novel's narration is handed over first to a ghostly version of Pringle, keen that his reputation as a poet in his native UK should be as high as it is South Africa (where he spent only a few years) and indeed that he should be better known for his key role in the abolition of slavery in the UK. As Hinza (see below) says, speaking from London:
Certainly, people may not have heard of him here, nor in his native Scotland, but way down in South Africa he is still celebrated as Abolitionist, Defender of a Free Press, and above all the Father of South African Poetry. Although nowadays I believe, in certain leftier-than-thou circles, his humanitarianism is questioned and he is dismissed as a colonial poet. Understandably, earlier, indigenous poetry has become better known since the demise of apartheid, and Mr P’s epithet will have to expand to Father of Colonial South African Poetry. Still, he is well known – every schoolboy and girl has come across the much-anthologised poem ‘Afar in the Desert’.
But Pringle himself then fades from the narrative and his story is instead told by three further characters, all physically resurrected into modern-day London:
1. Hinza Marossi, the subject of Pringle's poem Bechuana Boy, a boy who Pringle rescued/acquired (the likely truth vs. the idealised poem is one of the novel's themes), and came with Pringle when he returned to the UK (as an adopted son, or as a servant - again this ambiguity is key)
Pringle's own account of Hinza is his notes to the poem which the character in the novel somewhat disputes:
“This little African accompanied my wife and me to England; and with the gradual development of his feelings and faculties, he became interesting to us in no ordinary degree. He was indeed a remarkable child. With a great flow of animal spirits and natural hilarity, he was at the same time docile, observant, reflective, and always unselfishly considerate of others. He was of a singularly ingenuous and affectionate disposition; and, in proportion as his reason expanded, his heart became daily more thoroughly imbued with the genuine spirit of the Gospel, so that all who knew him, involuntarily and with one consent, applied to this African boy, the benignant words of our Saviour—' Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' He was baptized in 1827, and took on himself (in conjunction with Mrs P and me) his baptismal vows in the most devout and sensible manner. Shortly afterwards, he died of a pulmonary complaint, under which he had for many months suffered with exemplary meekness."
2. Mary Prince, a former slave who lived in London with Thomas Pringle. She told her story to Susanna Strickland, a woman working for Pringle, and (with some editorial amendments by Strickland, which are also debated in this novel) this was published as The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative in 1831, the first such account in the UK and which was to galvanise the abolition movement.
and, brilliantly:
3. Sir Nicholas Greene, the fictional time-travelling writer from Woolf's Orlando, both a 17th century poet, a contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe, and a 19th century critic, so an ideal person to guide his two fellow narrators through the travails of living in a different time, and also forced in the tale to examine his own privilege.
As Pringle comments:
Strictly speaking, on the wings of the woman writer’s prose. (She has perversely dismissed his polite term, lady writer.) If he frets about what she’ll do, how she will proceed, and from which angle, he is also resigned to the fact that it cannot be purely his story, not with all the others clamouring for being, clamouring for control. Whatever happens, some unknown beast will necessarily com yawning and blinking out of the attempt, but he is ready, is game for it, as they say. Invariably there will be a-slipping and a-sliding between third and first persons, elastic conjugations, role-switching perhaps between male and female, subject and author – this century it would see is without limits – so all he can hope for is that the multi-faced monster will be of friendly mien, free at least of malice. He has had quite enough of neck-wrenching, of having turned first this cheek then that to the men of the master classes, be they political or literary. Practised in forbearance, and having survived so many constructions in the colony, both in life and in death – well, if this turns out to be yet another pooh-poohing, would that a final death follow. But thanks to the faithful protégés who have taken up the cudgels he is ready to give it a go, even in this baffling new world. The question, however, arises: what then is his role? The slipperiness of being a subject; for instance, will he as a white man be expected to step aside? What to do about this talk of a dead white man that he does not understand?
And a fourth voice emerges, Vytje the servant from Pringle's The Emigrant’s Cabin:
P. — You'll find, at least, my friend, we do not starve:
There's always mutton, if nought else, to carve;
And even of luxuries we have our share.
But here comes dinner (the best bill of fare),
Drest by that " Nut-Brown Maiden," Vytje Vaal.
[ To the Hottentot Girl. ] Meid, roep de Juffrouwen naar't middagmaal:
[ To F. ] Which means — " The ladies in to dinner call."
But she is not passed the narrative baton, and (in the novel's account) was treated very differently to the semi-adopted Hinza: It comes as no surprise that Hinza, that person from nowhere, barely mentions me. It is clear that he has no intention of consulting me on this story – too screwed up, he of the original identity crisis.
Really, with all of us now claiming attention, all wanting to be acknowledged as having known Baas Pringle (I at least do not claim friendship), of having been of interest to him, all of us clamouring to fill in his story (which is also to say our own stories), to have a go at stirring the broth, I have every expectation that the story will be spoilt. This bee hive house of fiction bursts at the seams, buzzes with our competitive spirits; it was not made for so many people.
An intriguing and very clever novel - 4.5 stars.
Further reading
Interview with the author: https://www.litnet.co.za/still-life-a...
A paper that sets the novel in the context of the author's wider work: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/vie...
February 2, 2023
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
Zoe Wicomb is a South African born author and now retired academic who has been based in Scotland since 1994 and was a 2013 recipient in the inaugural year of the lucrative Donald Windham Sandy M Campbell Literary Prize – the citation reading that her “subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenge of being in the world”.
The novel was originally published in South Africa by an imprint of the Penguin Random House conglomerate in 2020 and two months later in the US by contrast by the non-profit progressive independent press New Press. The edition I read was a later 2022 publication by the London based small press Peninsula Press who acquired UK rights in 2021.
In 2020 it was named by the New York Times as one of the top 10 historical fiction novels of 2020 – but this, while ostensibly a biography is far from conventional biography or historical fiction.
Its ostensible subject is Thomas Pringle - a true life early 19th Century Scottish writer and poet, revered in (at least liberal white) South Africa as the father of South African poetry from his time there (under Sir Walter Scott’s patronage) as a settler in the Border regions between the English Cape Colony and the hostile Xhosa tribes. There, struggling due to lameness to contibrute on his farm, he founded two radical newspapers with a fellow Scot (later founder of the Old Mutual Insurance company) John Fairburn but earned the enmity and of the Governor (Lord Somerset) and facing financial ruin returned to Britain.
In Britain he settled in London with his wife as well as a native African boy Hinza Marossi who he rescued/acquired in Africa and now treated as an adopted son/servant (and who featured in one of his poems). He met the ex-slave Mary Prince (who interestingly for me was originally a slave in Bermuda – her father owned by the Trimmingham’s – founder of the famous eponymous department store that stood on Front Street for so many years) and facilitated the sensational publication of her autobiography (dictated to a white lady – Susan Strickland) which hugely impacted the anti-slavery debate in England – Pringle himself being Secretary to the Anti-Slavery society.
One can imagine that a conventional biography of Pringle or fictionalisation of his life would have all sorts of problems:
- How to reconcile his fairly vigorous participation in Colonialism with his anti-slavery stance?
-How to understand what really motivated him – rivalry with and revenge on Somerset or a genuine change of heart.
- How to deal with issues of appropriation – for example in his poem about Hinza or Strickland’s ghost writing of (and alterations to) Prince’s own story?
- How to deal with some of the mischaracterisations in Prince’s tales – which lead to successful libel suits by slavers against Pringle?
- How to consider issues of Privilege – white/male? How to deal with White Saviour syndrome – both in Pringle’s relationships with Hinza and Price and more widely in his anti-slavery campaigning.
= How to represent his actions and writings – through a 21st Century lens or a 19th Century one?
- How to evaluate Pringle’s place in the historical South African literary canon given the rapid changes in South African society in the last 40 years or so?
- And of course how to bring in the author of the novel/biography’s own biases and views?
Wicomb approaches this in a brilliantly meta-fictional and imaginative way – which rather than avoiding these questions confronts them head on and puts them at the very centre of the novel.
The book is written by an anonymous non-white Scottish-based author – a supply teacher with an aggressive literary agent, the author having received an advance for a two book deal – the first of which is meant to be an auto-fictional account of her adventures as a supply teacher, the second she has proposed as a biography of Pringle (one which particularly sets out to restore his rather forgotten reputation in his home country compared to his relative fame in his temporary colonial home).
But the story is also told by a series of resurrected historical figures. Early on we hear from Pringle himself, anxious to know what the author will make of his poetry as well as how she will restore his reputation in Scotland (and England) - as well as the author conscious of Pringle standing at her shoulder.
But then (and we have hints of their presence from the first pages) the story is thereafter taken over by Hinza and Mary Price themselves – resurrected to 21st Century London in an implicit deal with the author to assist in her biography. They in turn realise they need something of a canonised white titled literary man to help front their investigations and hit on the figure of Sir Nick Greene from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – already a time traveller there, a contemporary critic of Marlow and Shakespeare who re-encounters Orlando in the Victorian era (and is inspired by his “The Oak Tree”).
Greene though more than the other two struggles to adapt to 21st Century England and also shows limited enthusiasm for their project. Hinza is tortured by the uncertainties of his origins and his true relationship to Pringle – even at one point travelling to Cape Town where an activist Professor of Literature only further confuses his feelings.
Later a fourth historic voice joins the novel – a “Hottentot” servant from one of Pringle’s books but while she seizes the narrative of the novel she resolutely refuses to join the Pringle project instead criticising both his own involvement in colonialisation and Hinza’s relationship to him.
And during all of this all the questions posed are actively debated by the characters amongst each other and in their own thoughts.
If I had criticisms: I would say that the pace of the novel slackens at various points and overall feels perhaps 25% too long. The character of Vytje, while fascinating in principle, did not seem to work for me in practice – perhaps as I did not feel I had a grasp on much of what she was describing. By contrast I felt that if anything the Mary character was under-utilised and after a very strong start, not given enough narrative space compared to Hinza and Sir Nicholas.
But overall this was an intriguing, imaginative and intelligent novel.
Strictly speaking, on the wings of the woman writer’s prose. (She has perversely dismissed his polite term, lady writer.) If he frets about what she’ll do, how she will proceed, and from which angle, he is also resigned to the fact that it cannot be purely his story, not with all the others clamouring for being, clamouring for control. Whatever happens, some unknown beast will necessarily com yawning and blinking out of the attempt, but he is ready, is game for it, as they say. Invariably there will be a-slipping and a-sliding between third and first persons, elastic conjugations, role-switching perhaps between male and female, subject and author – this century it would see is without limits – so all he can hope for is that the multi-faced monster will be of friendly mien, free at least of malice. He has had quite enough of neck-wrenching, of having turned first this cheek then that to the men of the master classes, be they political or literary. Practised in forbearance, and having survived so many constructions in the colony, both in life and in death – well, if this turns out to be yet another pooh-poohing, would that a final death follow. But thanks to the faithful protégés who have taken up the cudgels he is ready to give it a go, even in this baffling new world. The question, however, arises: what then is his role? The slipperiness of being a subject; for instance, will he as a white man be expected to step aside? What to do about this talk of a dead white man that he does not understand? He has prided himself on his dealings with all manner of men, but had never before come across the category of white man. He is somewhat tickled that a woman of her kind – ‘of colour’, as they say – has taken on the task (how the world has changed) and, of course, the idea of vengefulness cannot entirely be ruled out. Will he have to gird his loins for the new and unexpected ways in which to be dwarfed? Och, faith, he admonishes himself, the doubting Thomas must be cast out. Perhaps they could come to some kind of agreement, a contract of sorts.
Zoe Wicomb is a South African born author and now retired academic who has been based in Scotland since 1994 and was a 2013 recipient in the inaugural year of the lucrative Donald Windham Sandy M Campbell Literary Prize – the citation reading that her “subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenge of being in the world”.
The novel was originally published in South Africa by an imprint of the Penguin Random House conglomerate in 2020 and two months later in the US by contrast by the non-profit progressive independent press New Press. The edition I read was a later 2022 publication by the London based small press Peninsula Press who acquired UK rights in 2021.
In 2020 it was named by the New York Times as one of the top 10 historical fiction novels of 2020 – but this, while ostensibly a biography is far from conventional biography or historical fiction.
Its ostensible subject is Thomas Pringle - a true life early 19th Century Scottish writer and poet, revered in (at least liberal white) South Africa as the father of South African poetry from his time there (under Sir Walter Scott’s patronage) as a settler in the Border regions between the English Cape Colony and the hostile Xhosa tribes. There, struggling due to lameness to contibrute on his farm, he founded two radical newspapers with a fellow Scot (later founder of the Old Mutual Insurance company) John Fairburn but earned the enmity and of the Governor (Lord Somerset) and facing financial ruin returned to Britain.
In Britain he settled in London with his wife as well as a native African boy Hinza Marossi who he rescued/acquired in Africa and now treated as an adopted son/servant (and who featured in one of his poems). He met the ex-slave Mary Prince (who interestingly for me was originally a slave in Bermuda – her father owned by the Trimmingham’s – founder of the famous eponymous department store that stood on Front Street for so many years) and facilitated the sensational publication of her autobiography (dictated to a white lady – Susan Strickland) which hugely impacted the anti-slavery debate in England – Pringle himself being Secretary to the Anti-Slavery society.
One can imagine that a conventional biography of Pringle or fictionalisation of his life would have all sorts of problems:
- How to reconcile his fairly vigorous participation in Colonialism with his anti-slavery stance?
-How to understand what really motivated him – rivalry with and revenge on Somerset or a genuine change of heart.
- How to deal with issues of appropriation – for example in his poem about Hinza or Strickland’s ghost writing of (and alterations to) Prince’s own story?
- How to deal with some of the mischaracterisations in Prince’s tales – which lead to successful libel suits by slavers against Pringle?
- How to consider issues of Privilege – white/male? How to deal with White Saviour syndrome – both in Pringle’s relationships with Hinza and Price and more widely in his anti-slavery campaigning.
= How to represent his actions and writings – through a 21st Century lens or a 19th Century one?
- How to evaluate Pringle’s place in the historical South African literary canon given the rapid changes in South African society in the last 40 years or so?
- And of course how to bring in the author of the novel/biography’s own biases and views?
Wicomb approaches this in a brilliantly meta-fictional and imaginative way – which rather than avoiding these questions confronts them head on and puts them at the very centre of the novel.
The book is written by an anonymous non-white Scottish-based author – a supply teacher with an aggressive literary agent, the author having received an advance for a two book deal – the first of which is meant to be an auto-fictional account of her adventures as a supply teacher, the second she has proposed as a biography of Pringle (one which particularly sets out to restore his rather forgotten reputation in his home country compared to his relative fame in his temporary colonial home).
But the story is also told by a series of resurrected historical figures. Early on we hear from Pringle himself, anxious to know what the author will make of his poetry as well as how she will restore his reputation in Scotland (and England) - as well as the author conscious of Pringle standing at her shoulder.
But then (and we have hints of their presence from the first pages) the story is thereafter taken over by Hinza and Mary Price themselves – resurrected to 21st Century London in an implicit deal with the author to assist in her biography. They in turn realise they need something of a canonised white titled literary man to help front their investigations and hit on the figure of Sir Nick Greene from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – already a time traveller there, a contemporary critic of Marlow and Shakespeare who re-encounters Orlando in the Victorian era (and is inspired by his “The Oak Tree”).
Greene though more than the other two struggles to adapt to 21st Century England and also shows limited enthusiasm for their project. Hinza is tortured by the uncertainties of his origins and his true relationship to Pringle – even at one point travelling to Cape Town where an activist Professor of Literature only further confuses his feelings.
Later a fourth historic voice joins the novel – a “Hottentot” servant from one of Pringle’s books but while she seizes the narrative of the novel she resolutely refuses to join the Pringle project instead criticising both his own involvement in colonialisation and Hinza’s relationship to him.
And during all of this all the questions posed are actively debated by the characters amongst each other and in their own thoughts.
If I had criticisms: I would say that the pace of the novel slackens at various points and overall feels perhaps 25% too long. The character of Vytje, while fascinating in principle, did not seem to work for me in practice – perhaps as I did not feel I had a grasp on much of what she was describing. By contrast I felt that if anything the Mary character was under-utilised and after a very strong start, not given enough narrative space compared to Hinza and Sir Nicholas.
But overall this was an intriguing, imaginative and intelligent novel.
March 1, 2021
"If he frets about what she'll do, how she will proceed, and from which angle, he is also resigned to the fact that it cannot be purely his story, not with all the others clamouring for being, clamouring for control. Whatever happens, some unknown beast will necessarily come yawning and blinking out of the attempt, but he is ready, is game for it, as they say."
February's prompt for #ReadtheWorld21 (@end.notes and @anovelfamily) is East and Southern Africa. Zoë Wicomb is a South African writer and Still Life is my second pick for it.
One of the many engaging narrators of this innovative novel proclaims, "Memory is a shape-shifting thing; the truth lies in those fissures." This is perhaps the central tenet of this work which seeks to plumb the depths of history, chart the crevasses of memory. Purportedly a biography of Thomas Pringle, an obscure Scottish writer, and abolitionist dubbed as the "Father of South African Poetry", the book is quick to discard this framework and instead uses it as an ingenious device to talk of other lives in orbit. Mary Prince, a former slave working in his household whose history Pringle had published to public outcry, & Hinza Marossi, a native South African boy either Motswana or Khoisan who was adopted by Pringle, assist the unnamed female author, a stand-in for Wicomb, to write about their benefactor, cement his legacy.
The author finds herself at a loss, does not know where to begin, so decides to recruit someone who is more suited to the task. So comes Sir Nicholas Green, an immortal man of letters from Virginia Woolf's Orlando, into the picture and assumes the helm. At the book's midpoint, another figure comes into the light. Vyjte Windvogel, a Gonaqua-Khoe woman, was a servant for the Pringles in their South African settlement and her wresting control casts precious developments into shadow. Hence, the viewpoint shifts between these five people, four of them Black and none of them Pringle in a book supposed to be about him. As such, Black voices dominate in an attempt to tell their own stories. They accept the help of Greene, the legitimacy provided by his whiteness, but don't allow him to take control of the story which is set in modern London mostly barring a trip to South Africa.
It results in a textured and layered book that changes whenever a different narrator takes over it. It is an examination of the genre of biography itself, asking questions about who is in control of a story and who gets to tell it. It also explores anachronistic comparisons of the past with the present and its pitfalls, the romantic gaze of poetry which is not so much concerned with the truth as it is with aesthetics and personal politics, the curious case of self-revisioning. Wicomb's writing is delightfully meta and makes for interesting reading in a novel that is unafraid to break away from established norms of linearity and cohesion to draw a multi-faceted picture of colonialism and settler attitudes. I won't deny that is dense in most places, circular and obtuse. There are parts that drag and seem cumbersome. It does not have a plot. Still, life like this makes for enriching, worthwhile reading.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review)
November 3, 2020
In many ways this book's cover - an out-of-focus picture of a 19th century man - captures the novel. Ostensibly a biography of Thomas Pringle, poet, colonist, and abolitionist, his story (and legacy) ends up being fuzzy and filtered through: first, 3 black people whose lives he touched; next, by a character from Woolf's Orlando; and finally by a character called "the author". Each layer of this filter hijacks the story at some point, our cast of historical and fictional characters ends up together in modern London with a side trip to South Africa, and the viewpoint shifts among at least 5 different people. None of whom is Pringle.
So lots of questions rise: how reliable is biography, and who gets to control the story (there is a nice irony in having the biography of a white man largely told by black people while a pompous white guy tries to wrestle it back); how far can we go to apply modern sensibilities back onto past eras; how much does poetry airbrush reality; and how does one balance the good in a person's life against his shortcomings and failures.
Wicomb's writing is concise and exact and a pleasure to read. The complicated structure of the novel is deftly built and navigated. The characters are well drawn and their interactions make for an engrossing story in the midst of the Larger Issues. It's well worth reading.
So lots of questions rise: how reliable is biography, and who gets to control the story (there is a nice irony in having the biography of a white man largely told by black people while a pompous white guy tries to wrestle it back); how far can we go to apply modern sensibilities back onto past eras; how much does poetry airbrush reality; and how does one balance the good in a person's life against his shortcomings and failures.
Wicomb's writing is concise and exact and a pleasure to read. The complicated structure of the novel is deftly built and navigated. The characters are well drawn and their interactions make for an engrossing story in the midst of the Larger Issues. It's well worth reading.
March 12, 2021
Loved Still Life so much that I had an interview, via email, with Zoë Wicomb.
Please head to https://bkomagazine.co.za/2020/12/18/... for FOUR PAGES of a candidly delivered chat.
Please head to https://bkomagazine.co.za/2020/12/18/... for FOUR PAGES of a candidly delivered chat.
November 29, 2020
This book prides itself somewhat on the density that it presents, but it is an interesting novel nonetheless. It is introspective to the narrator and main focus- but also allows the reader into a very intricately woven labyrinth of social issues. There's a deep historical dive that any reader would benefit enormously from before progressing through this book, and I would like to think that the time would be dedicated to that as much as possible. I thought this book tried very hard to be obtuse in some senses, but I also understand that the historical context necessitates linguistic gymnastics. It is somewhat remarkable, but perhaps not as accessible nor as informative as it could have been, and so it sits firmly in the middle of the road for me.
March 18, 2025
'a new time of writing had come' - Wicomb uses an entirely new type of writing to explore a new type of historical legacy. The narrative was extremely hard to follow at the beginning, but as it became more grounded in a traditional storyline, the mix of ghosts, publishers, travelling, writers etc. made for an interesting and thought-provoking read
Read
October 21, 2022Didn't finish. The concept is interesting but the prose is so heavy-handed it was painful to read.
September 27, 2021
This is the story of Thomas Pringle, the Father of South African poetry, or, rather, it is a story about writing that story. But more of that later. It is necessary to know something about Thomas Pringle. He was a Scot from Blaiklaw in the Borders, and an acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott. E was of farming stock, but is lameness meant that he was not able to work on a farm. So, he turned to an adventure.
In 1820, the government of the Cape Colony is southern Africa was seeking settlers to be planted in wat is still known as Borders to act as a buffer between the Colony itself and the Xhosa kingdoms. The area was known in Afrikaans as Zuurveld which means sour field. Pringle volunteered to lead one of the groups of colonists. This is how he ended up in what is now the Eastern Cape, and it was the defining moment of his life.
It was here that he met Hinza, who he immortalized in his poem “The Bechuana Boy”. It was also here that e came to realise the cruelty of slavery in the Cape Colony. He quickly left the Zuurveld for Cape Town as his lameness meant that he was not able to farm, where he worked in the newly formed Library and founded a newspaper, that was radical in its political approach. This earned him the enmity of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, the son of the Duke of Beaufort. Somerset made life in the colony intolerable for Pringle, and succeeded in making things very difficult financially. Pringle returned to England with Hinza in 1826, where he became the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. It was in London that he met Mary Prince, an ex-slave, and published her story which caused a sensation, resulting in lawsuits. Pringle lived to see the Abolition of Slavery Act passed in 1833, but died the following year. He never returned to South Africa with Hinza as planned.
In Still Life, Pringle’s story is told by the ghosts, if that is the right word to use, of Hinza, Mary Prince and others, including Sir Nicholas Green, a character from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” and Vytje, the black maid on the Pringle homestead in the Eastern Cape. As you would expect, they all have different perspectives about Pringle and his wife, and they all want to influence the author in different ways. This is an intricately woven story about the man who became the Father of South African poetry written in English. As Sir Nick points out, Pringle is hardly known at all in his own country and this makes him what Sir Nick calls a “provincial” poet.
The word I would use is colonial except for one fact. Pringle was an enemy of the colonialists, and made a significant contribution to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. He has been all but forgotten in his home country and we should not do that. He is a man who deserves our attention.
I said that he did not return to South Africa. This is incorrect. He is now buried there. At least he has been given some recognition in his adopted country.
Zoe Wicomb as done an incredible job in making sure that he is remembered here in Scotland and the rest of the UK, not to mention on a worldwide basis.
In 1820, the government of the Cape Colony is southern Africa was seeking settlers to be planted in wat is still known as Borders to act as a buffer between the Colony itself and the Xhosa kingdoms. The area was known in Afrikaans as Zuurveld which means sour field. Pringle volunteered to lead one of the groups of colonists. This is how he ended up in what is now the Eastern Cape, and it was the defining moment of his life.
It was here that he met Hinza, who he immortalized in his poem “The Bechuana Boy”. It was also here that e came to realise the cruelty of slavery in the Cape Colony. He quickly left the Zuurveld for Cape Town as his lameness meant that he was not able to farm, where he worked in the newly formed Library and founded a newspaper, that was radical in its political approach. This earned him the enmity of the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, the son of the Duke of Beaufort. Somerset made life in the colony intolerable for Pringle, and succeeded in making things very difficult financially. Pringle returned to England with Hinza in 1826, where he became the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. It was in London that he met Mary Prince, an ex-slave, and published her story which caused a sensation, resulting in lawsuits. Pringle lived to see the Abolition of Slavery Act passed in 1833, but died the following year. He never returned to South Africa with Hinza as planned.
In Still Life, Pringle’s story is told by the ghosts, if that is the right word to use, of Hinza, Mary Prince and others, including Sir Nicholas Green, a character from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” and Vytje, the black maid on the Pringle homestead in the Eastern Cape. As you would expect, they all have different perspectives about Pringle and his wife, and they all want to influence the author in different ways. This is an intricately woven story about the man who became the Father of South African poetry written in English. As Sir Nick points out, Pringle is hardly known at all in his own country and this makes him what Sir Nick calls a “provincial” poet.
The word I would use is colonial except for one fact. Pringle was an enemy of the colonialists, and made a significant contribution to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. He has been all but forgotten in his home country and we should not do that. He is a man who deserves our attention.
I said that he did not return to South Africa. This is incorrect. He is now buried there. At least he has been given some recognition in his adopted country.
Zoe Wicomb as done an incredible job in making sure that he is remembered here in Scotland and the rest of the UK, not to mention on a worldwide basis.
October 22, 2020
Mary Prince's Autobiography has become a classic of the English language. She used to be a slave in the colonies. As an adult, she got married to an ex-slave, but in a way she abandoned him when she ran away to England. There was no slavery legally in England at that time, although there was a lot in the colonies.
She was helped by Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, a poet who supported abolition. I thought the novel was going to be more about Pringle, but it is more about Prince. Maybe because his support for her book is the true claim to fame for Prince.
The way it is written it reminds me a lot of Virginia Woolf, specially in the use of narrators and editorial voices. The "writer" presenting a manuscript to editor Belinda and being terrified about the comments she may or may not get was hilarious and one of the high points in this novel.
From a technical point of view, dialogue is embedded between narration without any brackets to mark it up. It takes a little while to get used to it, but it is a technique similar to what Woolf and other modernists used to do, so I got used to it pretty quickly.
I found it interesting that Mary Prince had to make concesions on what was said on her book --- specially given that it was an autobiography. If one cannot say what one wants in one's autobiography, this means that there is something seriously wrong about the publishing world. And then they claim to be the fourth power, and to be the greatest defenders of freedom of speech. Now, I am not sure if the confusion about the pig and the man was true, or just a product of Zoe Wincomb's imagination.
It is also funny what history may make to interpretation. The plaque than the offspring of Mary Prince's owners puts out is historical reinterpretation at its best.
Also, there is a moment in which a character, Sir Nicholas Green, says that he is sick of himself. No wonder, I was sick of him as well!!!!
My only negative is that I felt that it drags a little bit in the middle. Towards the end, my interest peaked again. I felt that the ending was quite strong. It is a slow-burner of a book which takes some time to read, for sure.
https://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/...
She was helped by Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, a poet who supported abolition. I thought the novel was going to be more about Pringle, but it is more about Prince. Maybe because his support for her book is the true claim to fame for Prince.
The way it is written it reminds me a lot of Virginia Woolf, specially in the use of narrators and editorial voices. The "writer" presenting a manuscript to editor Belinda and being terrified about the comments she may or may not get was hilarious and one of the high points in this novel.
From a technical point of view, dialogue is embedded between narration without any brackets to mark it up. It takes a little while to get used to it, but it is a technique similar to what Woolf and other modernists used to do, so I got used to it pretty quickly.
I found it interesting that Mary Prince had to make concesions on what was said on her book --- specially given that it was an autobiography. If one cannot say what one wants in one's autobiography, this means that there is something seriously wrong about the publishing world. And then they claim to be the fourth power, and to be the greatest defenders of freedom of speech. Now, I am not sure if the confusion about the pig and the man was true, or just a product of Zoe Wincomb's imagination.
It is also funny what history may make to interpretation. The plaque than the offspring of Mary Prince's owners puts out is historical reinterpretation at its best.
Also, there is a moment in which a character, Sir Nicholas Green, says that he is sick of himself. No wonder, I was sick of him as well!!!!
My only negative is that I felt that it drags a little bit in the middle. Towards the end, my interest peaked again. I felt that the ending was quite strong. It is a slow-burner of a book which takes some time to read, for sure.
https://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/...
November 1, 2020
📚 REVIEW 📚 Book 109 of 2020 (5/5 stars). Still Life by Zoe Wicomb.
I don't think I've ever read a book like this. The synopsis on Netgalley sounded so strange, but learning that the author is a top literary voice of South Africa made me take the leap and request it anyway. It really blew me away! It's wildly unique and meta but it WORKS.
The book is about an author who is trying to write a book about Thomas Pringle, the "famous" poet of South Africa who was actually Scottish and only lived in South Africa a short time in the early 1800s. The author enlists the help of the ghosts of Mary Prince, a slave woman who Pringle wrote a book about, and Hinza, an indigenous boy who Pringle raised and wrote a poem about. Pringle brought them both to London with him. And finally there is the spirit of the fictional poet Nicholas Greene from Virginia Woolf's Orlando (which I've never read). Pringle, Mary, and Hinza are real historical figures.
Are you confused/ lost yet? Please don't let all that scare you off. The way Ms. Wicomb used these ghosts to reflect on Pringle and his relationship to them, to Indigenous people of South Africa, to colonization, to abolition, and to poetry, is incredibly multi-layered and excellent.
The ghosts are working together to do research in 1970s London and South Africa in order to write this book about Pringle. The way the author used the characters in order to develop and change the reader's understanding of just who this Pringle really was, was impressive.
The book is so precise with its reveals and its unfolding of what was really going on. I can't begin to put it all in this short review. But she pulls the wool away from the reader's eyes, as well as the ghosts' eyes, on how being anti-slavery (as Pringle was) can still have racist reasons such as colonization and "saving" or "civilising" the native people in South Africa and training them to be missionaries. That's just one example of an issue she articulates and shows the reader so well.
It's fiction, but in a way it's an examination of the history of European colonization in South Africa, colourism, sexism, and white saviourism. Blown away.
It comes out Tuesday 11/3!
I don't think I've ever read a book like this. The synopsis on Netgalley sounded so strange, but learning that the author is a top literary voice of South Africa made me take the leap and request it anyway. It really blew me away! It's wildly unique and meta but it WORKS.
The book is about an author who is trying to write a book about Thomas Pringle, the "famous" poet of South Africa who was actually Scottish and only lived in South Africa a short time in the early 1800s. The author enlists the help of the ghosts of Mary Prince, a slave woman who Pringle wrote a book about, and Hinza, an indigenous boy who Pringle raised and wrote a poem about. Pringle brought them both to London with him. And finally there is the spirit of the fictional poet Nicholas Greene from Virginia Woolf's Orlando (which I've never read). Pringle, Mary, and Hinza are real historical figures.
Are you confused/ lost yet? Please don't let all that scare you off. The way Ms. Wicomb used these ghosts to reflect on Pringle and his relationship to them, to Indigenous people of South Africa, to colonization, to abolition, and to poetry, is incredibly multi-layered and excellent.
The ghosts are working together to do research in 1970s London and South Africa in order to write this book about Pringle. The way the author used the characters in order to develop and change the reader's understanding of just who this Pringle really was, was impressive.
The book is so precise with its reveals and its unfolding of what was really going on. I can't begin to put it all in this short review. But she pulls the wool away from the reader's eyes, as well as the ghosts' eyes, on how being anti-slavery (as Pringle was) can still have racist reasons such as colonization and "saving" or "civilising" the native people in South Africa and training them to be missionaries. That's just one example of an issue she articulates and shows the reader so well.
It's fiction, but in a way it's an examination of the history of European colonization in South Africa, colourism, sexism, and white saviourism. Blown away.
It comes out Tuesday 11/3!
November 28, 2020
Thank you to The New Press and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!
Now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indie Bookstore.
Zoe Wiecomb's Still Life is a wholly unique time traveling adventure as an author struggles to write a memoir of Thomas Pringle, a forgotten poet known only as the Father of South African Poetry. Jumping between 18th century Scotland, contemporary South Africa and the West Indies, the cast of characters expands time and space as we meet the seasoned time traveler Sir Nicholas Green, Mary Prince a West Indian slave and Hinza, Pringle's illegitimate son. It's a novel unlike anything I've ever read before as the author breaks the fourth wall constantly, creating a sort of meta questioning into the structure and function of the novel or literature in general. Provocative and interrogative in its relentless examination of Pringle, his racist and colonialist past, Still Life offers a glimpse into what it means to live in South Africa today.
Now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indie Bookstore.
Zoe Wiecomb's Still Life is a wholly unique time traveling adventure as an author struggles to write a memoir of Thomas Pringle, a forgotten poet known only as the Father of South African Poetry. Jumping between 18th century Scotland, contemporary South Africa and the West Indies, the cast of characters expands time and space as we meet the seasoned time traveler Sir Nicholas Green, Mary Prince a West Indian slave and Hinza, Pringle's illegitimate son. It's a novel unlike anything I've ever read before as the author breaks the fourth wall constantly, creating a sort of meta questioning into the structure and function of the novel or literature in general. Provocative and interrogative in its relentless examination of Pringle, his racist and colonialist past, Still Life offers a glimpse into what it means to live in South Africa today.
February 5, 2024
"Ideas themselves, he said, dance about as we wade through the world; they shift their angles in your head, turn as the sunflower with the sun, and throw new shadows where once there had been light" (185)
This book was really interesting and engaging! In addition to beautiful quotes like the above, the writing dealt with the blurring of past and present and the complexity of moral issues in skillful ways. I wish that Kaatje had been one of the characters instead of Vytje because I think Kaatje's perspective would have been a fascinating addition, but overall the characters were well-developed (except for the writer, but that choice kind of makes sense). I learned a lot about South Africa and Thomas Pringle, too.
This book was really interesting and engaging! In addition to beautiful quotes like the above, the writing dealt with the blurring of past and present and the complexity of moral issues in skillful ways. I wish that Kaatje had been one of the characters instead of Vytje because I think Kaatje's perspective would have been a fascinating addition, but overall the characters were well-developed (except for the writer, but that choice kind of makes sense). I learned a lot about South Africa and Thomas Pringle, too.
October 23, 2022
This is a very interesting book that tells of an author trying to write a book about Thomas Pringle but struggling with the interwoven narratives and characters of history. It’s written as a novel but focuses on the themes of authorship, right to history and past exploitation. It’s a super fascinating and interesting idea for a book but I found the format quite hard to follow and engage with. Good writing but the merging of fiction and fact and past and present and the clarity and history of characters was very blurry. Would recommend if you want to know more about Scottish role in colonisation but I do remain sceptical because it is a novel
Read
July 13, 2022DNF after page 121.
I can't rate this book because I didn't understand it.
I think my knowledge on Great Britain and its colonial history is too small plus I don't know about poets.
I enjoyed previous books of the author, which to me were written in an easier style and about topics I knew more of.
I can't rate this book because I didn't understand it.
I think my knowledge on Great Britain and its colonial history is too small plus I don't know about poets.
I enjoyed previous books of the author, which to me were written in an easier style and about topics I knew more of.
November 7, 2024
While the idea of this book and its historical significance is great, the style of writing, lack of quotation marks, and long chapters made it an extremely long and somewhat tedious read. I do, however, really appreciate the notion of telling the truth about historical figures who have been praised for their rights but not condemned for their wrongs.
February 6, 2024
for fans of decolonial literary projects. yes, I liked it. or thought it was brilliant in certain ways. but it is not for the literarily faint of heart -- buckle in for a wild ride where you can't figure out who's talking. it fails convention, in the best way.
Read
October 26, 2020DNF. Tried but i couldn't get into it - the writing is cumbersome and too flowery.
November 22, 2020
I don't think I've ever read a book like this. It's very hard to describe - in fact the synopsis on Netgalley sounded so strange but learning that the author is a top literary voice of South Africa made me take the leap and request it anyway. It really blew me away! It's wildly unique and meta but it WORKS.
The book is about an author who is trying to write a book about Thomas Pringle, the "famous" poet of South Africa who was actually Scottish and only lived in South Africa a short time in the early 1800s. The author enlists the help of the ghosts of Mary Prince, a slave woman who Pringle wrote a book about, and Hinza, an indigenous boy who Pringle raised and wrote a poem about. Pringle brought them both to London with him. And finally there is the spirit of the fictional poet Nicholas Greene from Virginia Woolf's Orlando (which I've never read). Pringle, Mary, and Hinza are real historical figures.
Are you confused/ lost yet? Please don't let all that scare you off. The way Ms. Wicomb used these ghosts to reflect on Pringle and his relationship to them, to Indigenous people of South Africa, to colonization, to abolition, and to poetry, is incredibly multi-layered and excellent.
The ghosts are working together to do research in 1970s London and South Africa in order to write this book about Pringle. The way the author used the characters in order to develop and change the reader's understanding of just who this Pringle really was, was impressive.
The book is so precise with its reveals and its unfolding of what was really going on. I can't begin to put it all in this short review. But she pulls the wool away from the reader's eyes, as well as the ghosts' eyes, on how being anti-slavery (as Pringle was) can still have racist reasons such as colonization and "saving" or "civilising" the native people in South Africa and training them to be missionaries. That's just one example of an issue she articulates and shows the reader so well.
It's fiction, but in a way it's an examination of the history of British colonization in South Africa, colourism, sexism, and white saviourism. Blown away.
On the idea of reparations. "When it came to money, the genteel, Christian folk were deaf to the logic of those words: Give it back! All addicted to wealth, no matter how nastily acquired , like the very effects of tobacco and sugar produced by their distant slaves."
The book is about an author who is trying to write a book about Thomas Pringle, the "famous" poet of South Africa who was actually Scottish and only lived in South Africa a short time in the early 1800s. The author enlists the help of the ghosts of Mary Prince, a slave woman who Pringle wrote a book about, and Hinza, an indigenous boy who Pringle raised and wrote a poem about. Pringle brought them both to London with him. And finally there is the spirit of the fictional poet Nicholas Greene from Virginia Woolf's Orlando (which I've never read). Pringle, Mary, and Hinza are real historical figures.
Are you confused/ lost yet? Please don't let all that scare you off. The way Ms. Wicomb used these ghosts to reflect on Pringle and his relationship to them, to Indigenous people of South Africa, to colonization, to abolition, and to poetry, is incredibly multi-layered and excellent.
The ghosts are working together to do research in 1970s London and South Africa in order to write this book about Pringle. The way the author used the characters in order to develop and change the reader's understanding of just who this Pringle really was, was impressive.
The book is so precise with its reveals and its unfolding of what was really going on. I can't begin to put it all in this short review. But she pulls the wool away from the reader's eyes, as well as the ghosts' eyes, on how being anti-slavery (as Pringle was) can still have racist reasons such as colonization and "saving" or "civilising" the native people in South Africa and training them to be missionaries. That's just one example of an issue she articulates and shows the reader so well.
It's fiction, but in a way it's an examination of the history of British colonization in South Africa, colourism, sexism, and white saviourism. Blown away.
On the idea of reparations. "When it came to money, the genteel, Christian folk were deaf to the logic of those words: Give it back! All addicted to wealth, no matter how nastily acquired , like the very effects of tobacco and sugar produced by their distant slaves."
Read
September 3, 2023"thus must we carry on fooling one another, i thought. there was, it would seem, no other way."
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews