Midnight In The Morgue: Part One

(MENAFN- The Post) Some weeks ago, I was talking about the late Morabo Morojele, jazz musician and novelist, and his experience of being a participant in the 2024 Caine prize workshop for African writers.

I turn now to discussing the collection of short stories generated by the 2024 Caine process, namely, Midnight in the Morgue.

This has been published by that vigorous and innovative press, Cassava Republic, based in Abuja and London.

The Foreword to this volume is by Chika Unigwe (2024 Chair of Judges) and I like especially the follwing observation:

“We sometimes hear African literature spoken of as though it were a simple, easily identifiable entity. Reading for the Caine Prize is a reminder of its vast and varied nature. It is sci-fi, horror, experimental writing, realism, fantasy. It is both local and global. Both domestic and political.”

The Preface that follows, by Karen Jennings, editor and workshop facilitator, is a sharp, funny piece that imagines the trauma faced by workshop participants as they stare in their lovely Lake Malawi hotel room at a blank laptop screen or notebook.

The collection begins with the 2024 Caine Prize short-listed stories. The winning entry,“Bridling”, is by Nadia Davids of South Africa.

The lead character here is a female actor playing the role of a seventeenth century gossip, who is punished by having an iron“scold's bridle” clamped inside her mouth.

This follows the announcement by a theatre director that“a company of women performers will stage various artworks by men (and men only) depicting women.”

In other words, the play is going to be a demonstration-and implied critique-of the male gaze. Davids gives a detailed and utterly convincing account of the rehearsal process; the director is demanding and highly intellectual.

And the story has a tremendous, tumultuous ending.

The next story,“Adjustment of Station” by Samuel Kolawole (Nigeria) couldn't be more different.

A story about a“been-to” (Nigerian English for someone who has travelled abroad), it is one of those stories in which the author glosses and explains everything, by contrast with Nadia Davids' highly demanding, postmodernist piece.

An example: in the USA we are told the main character“had no social security number, which meant he couldn't do what other people did without attracting attention and subsequently being in danger of being deported.”

Then comes“Animals” by Uche Okonkwo (also from Nigeria, which might seem over-represented in this collection, but as I have pointed out before, that country is the powerhouse of contemporary African literature).

This is a comic piece, centering on a one-eyed chicken; the comedy comes, for example, in the main character's mother“having their whole family dragged to a police station after he called an officer and his future generations useless and unfortunate.”

Or, on her attitude to her husband watching pornography:“She didn't care about his occasional indulgence, but she would never tell him this. She thought it potentially useful to make a man feel like he had more to be guilty about than he really did.”

To be concluded

Chris Dunton

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