They played with their boots off

One of the many positive consequences of my recently-acquired freelance role with Aurora Metro is that, in order to familiarise myself with their titles, I have been nudged out of my reading comfort zone. I have tended to shy away from books which revolve around significant contemporary issues. Although it pleases me to believe that this is because  I am mining some more subtle and esoteric seam of literature, which yields ideas and resonances that rise above temporary, topical reference points, I suspect it's more to do with my reality allergy.

It was with surprised pleasure, then, that I read the young adult novel Themba, which deals with the rise to football stardom of a young black boy - the titular character - from an impoverished, rural background in post-apartheid South Africa.  The author skilfully uses this setting to discuss the plight of these communities and the more general and pressing issue of AIDS in South Africa.  The characters and environments are well-drawn and engaging, and the author - Lutz van Dijk - succeeds admirably in offering what seems like a faithful rendition of some very challenging circumstances without his book ever becoming gratuitously grim.  Neither, equally, does the story, including the characters' struggles against some formidable physical and emotional obstacles, ever stray into the region of sentimentality.  The book handles its light and shade with a deft sense of balance, meaning that a healthy compound of pathos and humour makes reading Themba a very rich and fulfilling experience.  My favourite lighter moment occurs during an inter-club tournament, the participants in which are all from similar backgrounds to Themba's team.  When one team is found to contain three players who have somehow managed to acquire football boots, the referee instructs that this footwear be removed, so as to prevent an unfair advantage accruing to that team.  It's a far cry from Premiership football, 'Arry.

Themba is also fittingly educative and informative, and in fact, towards the book's climax, veers somewhat off the narrative rails into didacticism, but without seriously impairing the book's overall positive impact.  Coupling together the glamour and excitement of a rags to riches football story with a description of a family's struggle against poverty, prejudice and domestic abuse is a clever and successful strategy to produce an important, worthy but highly readable novel.

Having also recently read an (old adult) novel which examined the issues surrounding Islam and feminism in Afghanistan (the excellent Freshta), I'm beginning to think that, in order to reward and entice reluctant readers of Books About Important Stuff, such as myself, said books ought to include a sticker (perhaps in the shape of the country or region in which the Important Stuff is active) which could then be applied to a specially-produced world map. When complete, the map could be sent away and returned with an achievement badge which could be sewn onto the reader's sleeve, bearing the legend 'Issue-gatherer' or similar.

I offer this innovation to publishers free of charge.

A Slovak, a Russian and some Afghans walk into a novel....

Through the good graces of Stork Press and the blogger Little Words, I was sent a review copy of the former's Freshta, and am nearing the end of this novel.  Freshta's pedigree of internationalism is impeccable, having been written in Czech (by Petra Prochazkova) and featuring a Russian narrator who marries into an Afghan family and settles in Kabul.  It's like looking at a map of Eurasia through a kaleidoscope.

The bulk of the novel is concerned with the period when the Western nations, spearheaded by the Americans and the British, are moving into Afghanistan, and the reverberations of 9/11 are still freshly sounding around the globe.  The book's  major preoccupation is with describing and commenting upon Afghanistan's culture and people at this point, including all the aspects one would expect (religion, sexual politics, economic hardship, the view of the West, etc...).  Prochazkova's device of using a converted outsider (a Russian woman who meets her future husband in Moscow and then marries him and joins his extended family) works well both in terms of giving a fresh perspective to this examination and in giving a natural form to the exposition of these subjects.  Moreover, the tone of voice adopted by Herra, the narrator, is (at first startlingly) light, which lifts the novel above the potential pitfalls of being over-ponderous or sounding too dutiful or didactic.  In keeping with this approach, there is much very successful humour in character description, situation and dialogue:

'When we first met, my future husband's rhapsodies about his family made me feel inferior.....I invented an actress aunt and when I was told off that actresses were often prostitutes I tried to embellish my family tree with a nuclear physicist uncle'.

Nobody in our family like Uncle Amin......he would laugh that horrid laugh of his that sounded like a hysterical little boy being circumcised.

The most remarkable character for me is the child Muhammad who, with his deformed body and eerie, eclectic knowledge, I read as a metaphor for what is produced when wildly diverse cultures interract, but who is a superb character in his own right.

This tone and approach by no means seal off the story from unpleasant territory, and the details gradually emerge of how the narrator's brother-in-law inflicts sadistic treatment upon his wife, which becomes one of the main drivers of this somewhat picaresque narrative. An effective contrast to the portrayal of the brother-in-law is Herra's husband, Nazir, who occupies a complex intersection of innate decency, sincere belief in traditional Afghan culture and a genuine love and compassion for his wife and family.  This is a rounded portrait that is credible and moving, and which has him veer from behaving with Western style tenderness and respect to Herra to administering physical and verbal rebukes to her when her behaviour stretches the envelope of his tolerance.

The novel's major weakness for me came in what I found to be a rather crude satire of the arrogance and unconscious imperialism with which the American aid workers enter Afghan life, but this is not unremitting, and some scenes involving these characters are very deftly handled.

I could not but recommend this novel to anyone wanting either a humane and balanced description of Afghan and traditional Muslim life or simply a highly engaging story with characters whose vividness is matched by their ability to generate empathy.