Monday 1 March 2010
Book Review by Sarudzayi Barnes. Amelia's Inheritance by Sarudzai Mubvakure.
Book Review by Masimba Musodza. Amelia's Inheritance by Sarudzai Mubvakure
Reviewed by Masimba Musodza
Zimbabweans are picky readers and even pickier book-buyers. Who can blame us, considering that a considerable portion of the literature that has been churned out over the last two decades has been about the Chimurenga or the more recent political conflict? In a country where professionals earn $100 a month, who really wants to spend $10 on a book about how bad Rhodesia was or how repressive the present regime is? We know all that already.
How refreshing then to come across Sarudzai Mubvakure’s second and latest literary offering, Amelia’s Inheritance! Mostly in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, this is the story of Amelia Gruber, the daughter of a German immigrant man and a mixed-race woman of unknown parentage, who had been raised as an orphan. As a child, her peers mark her as an outcast, and perhaps this pushes her from the psychological and social fortress the White settlers built around themselves and allows her a glimpse of the rest of the world. Her father loses his wealth and dies a broken man, leaving the family to cope as best as they can as one of Rhodesia’s best kept secrets; the Poor Whites. Amelia’s mother loses her mind, and her younger sister elopes leaving Amelia to hold on to precious little else. Sisi, their maid, stays with her.
Speaking of secrets, boy are there plenty! The people she meets along the way seem to know a lot more about her past than they should, and it seems less and less a coincidence that they have come in to her life. Amelia is also learning about the wider world, she is crossing the racial and social barriers of Rhodesia. She makes friends with a Black activist. Through their relationship, we are reminded of a fact that doesn’t seem to get mentioned by other writers; that the dispossession of indigenous Black people’s lands by White Settlers did not end with the Pioneer Column but continued well in to the last days of that ignoble racist political system. Like I noted, Mubvakure doesn’t take up too much prose telling us what we know already. In a suspense-filled, pacy narrative, Amelia becomes part of the process to break down those barriers and the secrets of her past become unlocked in a stunning conclusion.
Mubvakure has marked her own territory on the Zimbabwean literary landscape. Amelia’s Inheritance reminds me of Dickens’ Great Expectations, Oliver Twist etc in that she has a hero whose circumstances are set to change as the mystery of their past unfolds. However, despite her many shortcomings, the most glaring being her poverty and the breakdown of her family, Amelia is hardly a passive subject to the whims of fate. And there may be a bit of Catherine Cookson in the style, too. But Mubvakure’s style is original and establishes her as one of the most exciting new authors on the scene.
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