海角大神

Rewriting the historical epic: African women writers go big

For more than two decades, wherever the Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah went, the colonial explorer David Livingstone seemed to follow.

She found Livingstone 鈥� his papers, his diaries, his biographies 鈥� in Melbourne and Cape Town and London. She discovered Livingstonia wedged into boxes at Zimbabwean flea markets and tucked onto high shelves in Irish bookshops. Livingstone followed her to estate sales and book fairs and antique shops splayed across nearly every continent.

She couldn鈥檛 shake her fascination with his story 鈥� a 鈥渉eroic failure,鈥� she called him, searching in vain for the source of the Nile River. But more than that, she was struck by the faceless Africans who swirled around him in every account of his journeys: cooks and porters, translators and assistants. Who were they? she wondered. And what did they make of Livingstone and his world?聽聽

Ms. Gappah鈥檚 newest novel, 鈥淥ut of Darkness, Shining Light,鈥� published in the United States in September, is an attempt to answer that question through fiction. Told in the voices of two of Livingstone鈥檚 African companions, the book recounts the real-life journey of 69 of his workers as they transported his body across central and eastern Africa so that it could be put on a ship bound for Europe.聽聽

鈥淭hough he tried enough to explain to me why he was looking for this Nile beginning, I could never quite understand it,鈥� explains one of Ms. Gappah鈥檚 narrators, a cook named Halima, of Livingstone鈥檚 erstwhile quest. 鈥淚 said to him 鈥� the Nile won鈥檛 care about whether you know where it begins. It will flow on as it always has whether you find it or not.鈥澛�

African historical fiction is far from a new genre 鈥� is there a more globally known work of African fiction, after all, than Chinua Achebe鈥檚 1958 classic story of Nigeria at the moment of British colonization, 鈥淭hings Fall Apart鈥�?

But in recent years, the genre has been reinvented by a new generation of African writers. And this time around, most of them are women. Like Ms. Gappah鈥檚, their books are unapologetically ambitious, sprawling across hundreds of years of the past and recasting the lead characters in major events in modern world history.

鈥淏efore, the space to write big grand historical narratives was mostly a man鈥檚 space. Women were expected to focus on smaller, more domestic stories,鈥� says Ainehi Edoro Glines, an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the editor of the African literature blog Brittle Paper. 鈥淣ow you鈥檙e seeing African women writers reconfigure their national histories around women鈥檚 lives 鈥� their bodies, their desires, their capacities. To me that鈥檚 a revolutionary thing.鈥澛犅�

And these writers are also, Dr. Glines says, redefining the idea of what history is worth telling.

鈥淥lder African historical fiction tends to obsess about that colonial moment, this era when African history became legible to the Western world in a certain way,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut many of the writers working now are moving the clock further back. They鈥檙e saying, this is just one of many things that defines the African past, a footnote in a much longer history.鈥�

Take, for example, 鈥淜intu,鈥� Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi鈥檚 450-page epic about three centuries in the life of a cursed Ugandan family. As she trails the family across generations, British colonialism, the original sin of much of African historical fiction, is merely tucked into the folds of a bigger, more sprawling, more dramatic story of a family鈥檚 history, and a country鈥檚.聽 聽

After the initial publication of 鈥淜intu鈥� in Kenya in 2014, Ms. Makumbi struggled to find a Western publisher for a book full of long African names and long African stories, which agents worried would be for British readers.

In fact, it wasn鈥檛. And when 鈥淜intu鈥� was finally published in the U.K. and the U.S., critics effused that it was, perhaps, and compared its to those of Charles Dickens and Gabriel Garc铆a M谩rquez.聽

鈥淭his is a generation [of African writers] that isn鈥檛 just writing about colonialism and postcolonialism, or just looking at African governance and its failures,鈥� says Ms. Gappah. 鈥淲e write history. We write romance. We write science fiction. In this generation we have gained the freedom to write about the things that American and European authors write about, which is to say anything we choose.鈥�

And what they have chosen, even within the confines of historical fiction, is vast. For Ms. Gappah, it was the figures in the shadows of David Livingstone鈥檚 historical glow. For Liberian American writer Way茅tu Moore, in her 2018 novel 鈥淪he Would Be King,鈥� it was her country鈥檚 founding days shot through the prism of magical realism. For Moroccan novelist Laila Lalami, it was the story of one of the earliest European conquests of the new world, narrated by one of the expedition鈥檚 North African slaves. (That novel, 鈥淭he Moor鈥檚 Account,鈥� was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize.)

And for Ayesha Harruna Attah, a Ghanaian writer, the choice was to use fiction to discuss the complicated role that Africans played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Her novel, 鈥淭he Hundred Wells of Salaga,鈥� centers on the lives of two women 鈥� one princess, one slave 鈥� whose lives tangle against the backdrop of a struggle for power between local kingdoms and newly arrived European traders and explorers.聽聽

鈥淲hat I set out to do was to tell us something we鈥檝e forgotten about ourselves, something we don鈥檛 want to go back and consider,鈥� Ms. Attah says.聽

But if the novel was meant to prod at Ghanaian history and change the way readers related to their own past, Ms. Attah, like any novelist, also had a far simpler objective.

鈥淚 also just wanted to tell a good story,鈥� she says.