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J JO OH HN N E EP PP PE EL L A AN ND D T TH HE E P PL LA AC CE E O OF F L LI IT TE ER RA AT TU UR RE E I IN N T TH HE E P PO OS ST TC CO OL LO ON NI IA AL L W WO OR RL LD D Kizito Z. Muchemwa It is not often that one reads a Zimbabwean novel that provides such a wide range of pleasures to its readers. Absent: The English Teacher by John Eppel displays an exhilarating verbal agility (which lends the novel much of its humour); a powerful evocation of place and historical period; and the vivid creation of memorable characters. His plot’s construction draws on a rich linguistic inventiveness, his denotations and connotations of words leading the narrator, the (former) English teacher, to new incidents , thoughts and feelings. A sense of the incongruous and grasp of historical detail are also connected as language, characters and events are connected in a web of their referential and allusive power. The narrator has the comic genius of Feste and Hamlet, and this allows him to see all kinds of possible connections in a world that has gone awry. Satire, arising out of a compulsive play on words as both a mental disposition and a mode of viewing a cock-eyed reality, allows the writer to use humour therapeutically as the narrator engages with actuality. Eppel creates vivid landscapes that provide the setting for his novels: landscape that is invested in the weight of historical and cultural memory, a contested site for the location of identities in an endless cycle of migration and displacement. It also represents many aspects of ecology: its diversity , its miraculous capacity to sustain life, and its fragility. Nature, in the raw, reveals that landscapes are far from idyllic despite the tender evocation of the acacia savannah surrounding Bulawayo. What emerges from these descriptions is not only Eppel’s intimate knowledge and love of the local flora and fauna but an abiding concern for the environment; he brings into his writing the expertise of the botanist, ornithologist, zoologist and game ranger. In Absent: the English Teacher, the suburban garden becomes a site of what George describes as ‘ecological imperialism’, ix as well as a symbol of change in the country’s history. Ironically, when Mrs Nyamayakanuna invades George’s suburban home she makes sure that all the indigenous fruit trees, previously planted by George, are destroyed leaving only exotic ones. The traditional ‘English’ garden is transformed into a maize patch. The agents of change are not flattered for their actions. Eppel makes his flat characters the butt of his satire, though in some respects they also provide the novel’s moral centre. His ingenious use of names provide condensed exposés of characteristics that we at once recognise and find ridiculous: Mrs d’Artagnan-Mararike; Minister of Child Welfare, Sweets and Biscuits, Comrade Pontius Gonzo; Mrs Beauticious Nyamayakanuna; the twins Helter and Skelter, and a school girl named City Lights. He plays with names to convey psychological and moral attributes . Possessions are assumed as accessories of personality, markers of ethical and aesthetic positions. Collapsing the distinction between the historical and imagined allows for entertaining inventiveness in plot construction. Historical and invented occurrences are recast and amplified to create a fictional world in which the incredible happens. Change turns a white school teacher into a domestic servant for a black family; the black madam, in a parody of her white forebears, speaks to the white lackey in Kitchen Kaffir and forbids him to speak to her in English; cabinet ministers maintain a string of mistresses ; and wilfully destructive programmes are foisted on the country by a reckless and ruthless elite. If there is a whiff of improbability, it must be remembered that the comic mode that dominates the novel thrives on its capacity to stretch credibility to the limit. Zimbabweans need no reminding , however, that the so-called real world has recently been shaped by what most people would understand as the incredible and unimaginable. In Absent: The English Teacher the writer mocks the excesses: corruption , vulgarity, greed, and insensitivity of the new black elite. He unhesitatingly refers to those events which he sees as characteristic of both the tragedy and the comedy that is post-independence Zimbabwe – the ethnic cleansing in Matabeleland during the 1980s, political repression, absence of the rule of law after 2000...

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