Going Home
A review of Going Home by Simao Kikamba. Visit toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partneridB14&sku(361201 for more details.
Going Home is a story told by a political refugee living in South Africa. It investigates the life of one particular immigrant, Mpanda from Angola, and his experiences of trying to make the best of being an unemployed foreign national in South Africa. There are four parts to the narrative. Part one: Mpanda is arrested and sent to the Lindela Repatriation Centre. Part two: We learn of Mpanda's story: his return home to Angola from Zaire, his relationship with a woman called Isabel, his political involvement and embarrassment and his final decision to flee to South Africa. In Part three, we follow his life as a refugee in South Africa. Finally in Part four he is freed from detention and allowed to go back home – to Yeoville. Going home is a very moving debut novel, revealing the anguish of a man trying to survive in a country where nobody allows him to belong. Sim?o Kikamba is a leading new voice in Southern African writing.
Going Home is an assured debut and deserves to be widely read. Simao Kikamba effectively voices the all too prevalent but overlooked plight of African refugees and exiles trying to make a living in host countries where the attitude towards them is increasingly hostile and xenophobic. While the plight of exile and the notion of 'home' is a well established trope in literature, what is new here is the particularly contemporary grounding of the story and characters in South Africa, Angola and the DRC. While it may be true that the South Africa reading public has become jaded with novels depicting apartheid and its immediate aftermath, perhaps the equally bleak stories of contemporary racial discrimination will find a place soon enough, and deserve to.
That said, I do have some problems with the narration in Going Home, which I find rather wooden. This tends to underscore the bleakness of the narrative itself and makes for a harrowing read. As a reader I get a sense of how the world and experiences of the narrator look and seem, but not how they feel. Likewise, the dialogue is a little stilted. All the characters speak in the same manner and I don't get a sense of their individuality; cultural, linguistic or otherwise. Perhaps this shortcoming is as a result of the work not being sure of what it is trying to be. Is it a novel or a memoir? Perhaps the author is not sure either. In its present form, I believe it would be more effectively billed as a memoir, which would cause one to be more forgiving and less rigorous when it comes to the language.
However, these are pedantic quibbles which pale in consideration of the larger importance of this book. I found myself less inclined to criticise the writing in the second half of the book, and rather to appreciate the story. This is the strength of the book; the reader can appreciate not only the narrator's struggle to make a life as a refugee in Angola and South Africa, but also the bravery and dedication of the author in realising this book.
* Reviewed by Byron Loker. Byron Loker's debut collection of short stories will be published in 2006 by Double Storey Books in South Africa. Visit byronloker.com
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