Novels of Botswana in English, 1930â2006 by Mary S. Lederer (review)

386 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews Mary S. Lederer, Novels of Botswana in English, 1930-2006. Lagos, Nigeria: African HeritagePress,2014.196pp. ISBN:9781940729152. £13.96(Paperback). How does one characterize the literary traditions of a country—Botswana— whose historical and cultural development has been thoroughly mediated by outsiders and neighboring forces? And how does a particular literary form—the novel—help frame problems of tradition, modernity, culture, and morality in a country of this sort? Mary Lederer’s Novels of Botswana in English, 1930-2006 provides instructive approaches to these vexing questions. Claiming to be,at least to her knowledge,“the first book-length study to be written on the literature about Botswana,” Lederer’s monograph addresses the difficulty of identifying exactly what various novels from the region—or simply set in the region—offer us (16). Given Botswana’s unusual national formation (it was formerly a British protectorate, only gaining full independence in 1966; it was also precariously situated, at least until 1994 and the end of apartheid, on the northern border of South Africa, its powerful and influential neighbor), gauging the formation of its national literary culture poses unique problems. Thus it may seem odd that the earliest writer that the book discusses at length—Solomon Plaatje (1876-1932)—is South African. Yet, as Lederer correctly notes, Plaatje’s landmark historical novel, Mhudi (1930),“was important in forming early understanding of the Tswana identity”—an identity predating the arrival of European colonization, as well as the imposition of borders that separated people in South Africa who identified as Tswana from the Batswana themselves (17). Later in the book, we are introduced to the American writer Norman Rush, whose novels about Botswana “rely very heavily,” as Lederer sees it, “on the familiar structure of ‘Africa’ as a place where whites go to understand and even discover themselves”(75)—a tradition going back at least as far as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). In Lederer’s (perhaps too harsh?) assessment of Rush,“the Batswana themselves are relevant only to the extent that they assist or hinder the search for expatriate identity” (75). Given the examples of Plaatje and Rush, the conception of an authentic, homegrown, national tradition often seems difficult to imagine. Yet Lederer is able to show how a tradition of “peaceful change,” associated with Botswana’s “exceptional” and relatively non-violent past (especially considering rest of the region),informed local literary talent (31,22). This idea of regional exceptionalism does not suggest that the country is without problems. “Since independence in 1966,” Lederer writes, “Botswana has enjoyed a stable democracy and a strong economy, thanks to its large diamond deposits” (31). At the same time, it also faces increasing “crime emanating from unemployment” and neoliberal economic planning, as well as one of the most horrifying rates of “HIV/AIDS infections CLA JOURNAL 387 Book Reviews and deaths” on the planet (31). Contemporary novelists, such as Andrew Sesinyi, Galesiti Baruti, and Unity Dow, attempt to address these pressing issues. One of Lederer’s main arguments is that, as the idea of Botswana shifts from nostalgia about the historical past to problems in the immediate present,“writing by women offers more of a challenge to ‘the way things are’ and have been” (49). “In a society that is changing rapidly,” she claims, “the literature by men”—by, for example, writers like Sesinyi and Baruti--“seems to cope with changes by calling more strongly for a return to the old ways, while that by women,” such as Dow, “seems to respectfully question some of those same old ways, as well as the new ones” (49). Although this type of argument may seem slightly old fashioned (are we still organizing ideas about gender in terms of strict male/female binaries?), it appears largely confirmed in Lederer’s readings of the novels. The organization of the book is fairly straightforward. After a helpful introduction,whichprovidesbasicdetailsaboutthenation’scultural,historical,and linguistic emergence, as well as a discussion of some of Botswana’s topographical features, Lederer proceeds to group novels together in chapters that examine distinct topics: the concept of “Home;”“Literary” (as opposed to popular or lowbrow ) writing; the advent of adventure fiction...