By Memory Chirere
It is not every day that one previews a work of fiction. The fast-rising UK based Zimbabwean writer, Andrew Chatora, has a second novel in the wings. It is set to be released soon on November 30, 2021 by his US based Publishers: Kharis Publishing.
The forthcoming Where the Heart Is could be, partly ‘a novel of ideas.’ A ‘novel of ideas’ is a novel whose story expounds and explores a particular philosophical perspective on the world. The idea is as important to the book as plot, character, and setting.
Chatora’s story clearly expounds on and explores a particular debate which may not have been fully explored by many novels from Zimbabwe. For instance; when the native leaves the periphery (Harare) for the centre (England) due to economic reasons, does it make sense for him to want to return to the periphery once more?
If he does return, is this homecoming or second coming, really possible? Are people really able to fully return to their source without sparking contradictions? The man who returns, why does he return at all? Or, to what does he return? You may go back to the source physically but is it viable economically, spiritually and socially?
Chatora’s native returns from the centre (London) to the periphery (Harare) intending to stay for good but returns to the centre in a huff! When a man goes and returns and goes away again, what do we call him? Is such a native confused or is he merely confusing the observer?
Where is his heart?
But there are some in our midst who may say, wait a minute, even if going back to one’s country from the diaspora is difficult, could it be viewed as an entirely wrong thing to do, if one wants to? Which one is one’s country?
Well, Fari Mupawaenda tries to return to good old Harare from England and through him, the novel sparks a storm.
When it finally hits the market, Where the Heart Is, is going to be one of the very few novels by a Zimbabwean that fully imagines the joys and hazards of a physical return home from the diaspora. Olley Maruma tries it with his text Coming Home (2008), but I think his main character does not leave behind any stake in the UK. His is the return of a post pubertal man. He also does not leave for the UK once more. Stanley Nyamfukudza tries it with Aftermaths (1983), but he is only working on the matter in one short story from a whole collection.
The diaspora-based literature by Zimbabwean writers rarely thinks about this crucial reverse trip and its subsequent rich psychology. It is often assumed that it is easy to return because one was born here, anyway.
Yet, as dramatised here by Chatora, the reverse trip is also a story about the human body, a memory test and the struggle between geography and anticipation. During this reverse trip, the traveller is actually carrying heavier and multifarious cargo than during the first outward trip.
In Fari’s case, part of his crucial cargo has actually remained behind in the UK. His wife, a zealous cosmopolitan, the daughter, a conflicted bed hopping undergraduate and the son; a budding homosexual, will not follow Fari in his trip to what they see as the back of beyond. They have decided to invest fully where they are.
Fari is convinced that whatever he achieves in the diaspora should only make adequate sense only if one returns to the source. He constantly judges people and things around him from the point of view of a country that he has long left behind. And yet he has changed.
I enjoy the underlying suggestion that Fari is both right and wrong in trying to return. That is the strongest lesson that I took away from this novel. If you return you are damned. If you don’t return, you are damned too!
I also want to call ‘Where the Heart Is,’ a ‘thinker’s novel’ because you can never read it and not re-examine issues like culture, distance, centre, periphery, family, love, sex, marriage etc .
Just like what we witnessed with Chatora’s first novel, ‘Diaspora Dreams,’ the latest novel will surely throw the readers into irreconcilable camps because the men and women in this story are not always sharing the same ideological pedestal. The women are vehement and their criticism of their men is close to the bone.
And the men, too, are not always agreeing with one another. The silent competition is an act of attrition.
The author also uses sexual intercourse as an extra language of unity and disunity, and this will set tongues wagging.
As in Pepetela’s ‘Mayombe (1979),’ Charles Mungoshi’s ‘Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (1983)’ and Ignatius Mabasa’s Mapenzi (1999), the characters in Chatora’s latest offering come out very clearly individualised. They speak from a very private angle. Each of them has a distinct signature.
‘Where the Heart is,’ is Chatora’s second novel after ‘Diaspora Dreams’ which was published by Kharis Publishing in the US.
It’s now available to pre-order on Amazon’s url link below:
(Chirere is an award-winning writer who teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Zimbabwe).