Hatchings

John Eppel

Description

" It is New Year in Bulawayo, and anybody who is anybody is out celebrating. Hatchings, with an introduction by Khombe Mangwanda, was chosen by Professor Anthony Chennells in the Times Literary Supplement as his choice for the most significant book to have come out of Africa. ""The story is simple. In a sentence it can be described as a love story centered on a young couple who discover the true power of love amid the social, economic and moral decay that threatens to swallow their love and everything else. But to say Hatchings is merely a love story would be criminal. It is more than that. Hatchings is a story about Bulawayo, about Zimbabwe, about corruption and cultural decay. In Hatchings John Eppel spares no one. With his sharp and yet witty pen he exposes corruption and pokes fun at those that are abusing power and this means literally everyone. Rich, poor, white, black , Indian, foreigner or local."" - Raisedon Baya, Sunday News, Zimbabwe"

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: amabooks
• Date de parution: 15 août 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780797443372
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Hatchings

For Sabine

John Eppel lives in Bulawayo, where he teaches English at Christian Brothers College. He was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for his first poetry collection,Spoils of War, and the MNet Prize for his first novel,D G G Berry’s The Great North Road.

Spoils of War, Carrefour (1989) D G G Berry’s The Great North Road, Carrefour/Hippogriff (1989) Hatchings, Carrefour (1993) The Giraffe Man, Queillerie (1994) Sonata for Matabeleland, Snailpress/Baobab Books (1995) Selected Poems 1965-1995, Childline (2001) The Holy Innocents, ’amaBooks (2002) The Caruso of Colleen Bawn and Other Short Writings, ’amaBooks (2004) Songs My Country Taught Me, Weaver Press (2005)

Khombe Marcel Mangwanda holds an MEd from the University of Manchester as well as an MA and a DLitt from the University of Pretoria. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of South Africa.

Hatchings

John Eppel

with an introduction by Khombe Mangwanda

’amaBooks

ISBN 0797430393

John Eppel 2006

Published by ’amaBooks P.O. Box AC1066, Ascot, Bulawayo email: [e-mail] www.amabooksbyo.com

Typeset by ’amaBooks Printed by Automation Business Forms, Bulawayo

First published in 1993 by Carrefour Press, Cape Town

Cover painting by Anne Simone Hutton

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The characters and institutions in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead and institutions active or defunct is purely coincidental.

Introduction

In John Eppel’sHatchings,gone is the narrative of the Rhodesian nation of Eppel’s first novelThe Great North Road.Gone too is the distance that separated white ‘Rhodies’ from the ‘natives’. More representative of the nation, the characters in this novel are from all races and walks of life. Hatchingsis also different fromThe Great North Roadin that Eppel presents to the reader a community divided along ethical lines, and occupying spaces that, for convenience, are referred to here as positive space and negative space. Consistent with this cleavage between good and evil, Zimbabwe is presented as functioning both as a site of regeneration and as a den of crime. InHatchings,the positive or ‘sacred’ space is associated with the Matopos National Park, with the children, the novel’s heroine Elizabeth Fawkes, and with the Asil Khan egg. Appropriating ennobling mythic properties, these elements conjoin to create a timeless, classic space, the panoramic dimension of which serves to oust the narrowly historicized spatial ‘scenery’ ofThe Great North Road.Indeed, the connection of positive space and the Matopos is established early in the narrative of Hatchings,which appropriately unfolds with the Fawkes family on a campsite in the Matopos National Park. Presented as a place of extraordinary natural beauty, the Matopos National Park offers scenery that is experienced by the Fawkes family, and especially by Elizabeth, as refreshing both physically and psychologically, not least because of its mythic tradition. It is significant that Eppel should set two major episodes of his novel at this locale. Indeed, the Matopos is the scene for both the negotiation on New Year’s Day between Elizabeth Fawkes and her father for the hatching of the Asil Khan egg, and the site for the actual hatching of the egg. Thus, part of Eppel’s strategy is to appropriate the holiness, the regenerative creativity and the fertility associated with this place and to impart it to the character of Elizabeth in her role of ‘hatcher’ of a new nationbuilding ethos. The inscription of the Matopos as a symbol of regeneration is also achieved by reference to the water motif. The contrast between the Matopos and the rest of the country is figured in terms of the contrast between a place where water is available and where it is not. Repeatedly in the novel the importance of water in an otherwise droughtstricken country is emphasized. Just as Eppel’s novel offers a dual representation of Zimbabwe so, too, it allegorizes water in a dual function: as a symbol of the rebirth of the new nation, but equally as a symbol of corruption. This duality in the symbolism