Synopsis - iAfrica!
iAfrica! by Richard Michelle-Pentelbury. 150,000 words. Literary/Mainstream.
Twenty-five-year-old Adam, about illegally to escape Africa, begins his captivating first-person-present-tense story with his arrival at four-years-old on the Northern Rhodesian game-farm of his Afrikaner side of the family, where he befriends M`dhalha, an old Matabele warrior, whose prophecies infiltrate his life. Intrigued and precocious, Adam continually searches for significance in encounters with snakes, belligerent baboons, a child-snatching crocodile, voracious red-ants, the capture of the man-eating leopard, and the awful day of having to shoot his severely damaged donkey. Abused by his guardians, Adam's need to understand others sustains him through the inordinate difficulties of his unusual odyssey, but the life-long enmity raised by Aikimbo, the little black boy who arrived during the chaotic 60's of Zambia's struggle for independence, haunts at Adam continually. He is sure it is Aikimbo who so brutally waylaid and murdered their family friend, Aunt Valerie.
In Adam's ninth year his estranged English father arrives unexpectedly with the gift of a bicycle that ironically is the ongoing impetus for the prophecies to unfold. Adam meets his titled grandparents, who happen to live on a nearby plantation. They give him the unusual experience of unconditional love, but cannot reclaim him from his Afrikaner family. The horrendous advent of rabies on their farm almost prevents Adam, in his "eleventh year," from going to England by ship with his beloved father. But on the voyage the relationship between alcoholic father and intensely precocious son sadly deteriorates.
Ineluctably returning to Africa Adam again meets with Aikimbo, his perseverant enemy. On the threshold of Zambia's independence, 1964, Adam tries to retrieve his stolen bicycle, but old M'dhalha gets fatefully speared. With his dying breath M'dhalha holds Adam to his promise to write, write about their life. Aikimbo's gang next plunders and pillages Adam's home, murdering his guardian parents, leading to Adam killing a man in self-defense. Aikimbo chases but Adam escapes and bicycles to his English grandparents, only eventually to be reclaimed by his Afrikaner family in South Africa.
In Pretoria with his impoverished family Adam is subject to ongoing abuse. They hold it against him that his English father had impregnated his Afrikaner mother out of wedlock, and thereby brought about Adam's birth and her demise. Adam countenances his pedophiliac uncle, capitulates for awhile to his Ouma's aggrandizing dreams as he converts to the compass of the family church, but soon dangerously compromises himself in an illicit inter-racial liaison with Muhle, the next door's pretty black maid. The horrendous culmination is in his being savagely whipped. Muhle, risking her life, cuts him loose.
The intercession of an insightful headmaster sends Adam off to boarding school in Kimberley, where the cycle of extraordinary events continues to clamor. Following graduation he is conscripted into the army and becomes a sniper in the bush war. While on reprieves he meets the love of his life, Felicity. The army sends yet another Call-Up and after a final poetic come-uppance with his old enemy, Aikimbo, Adam becomes convinced that he no longer can support Apartheid. He decides to go AWOL and also to escape Africa. In doing so he must choose between the sacrifice of staying for Felicity's sake, and the urge to leave his old life for good.
At last on the ship, as prophesied, he finally begins to fulfill the mandate of his childhood promise to his old mentor: "Write! Write about it all." iAfrika! is the compelling result.
Twenty-five-year-old Adam, about illegally to escape Africa, begins his captivating first-person-present-tense story with his arrival at four-years-old on the Northern Rhodesian game-farm of his Afrikaner side of the family, where he befriends M`dhalha, an old Matabele warrior, whose prophecies infiltrate his life. Intrigued and precocious, Adam continually searches for significance in encounters with snakes, belligerent baboons, a child-snatching crocodile, voracious red-ants, the capture of the man-eating leopard, and the awful day of having to shoot his severely damaged donkey. Abused by his guardians, Adam's need to understand others sustains him through the inordinate difficulties of his unusual odyssey, but the life-long enmity raised by Aikimbo, the little black boy who arrived during the chaotic 60's of Zambia's struggle for independence, haunts at Adam continually. He is sure it is Aikimbo who so brutally waylaid and murdered their family friend, Aunt Valerie.
In Adam's ninth year his estranged English father arrives unexpectedly with the gift of a bicycle that ironically is the ongoing impetus for the prophecies to unfold. Adam meets his titled grandparents, who happen to live on a nearby plantation. They give him the unusual experience of unconditional love, but cannot reclaim him from his Afrikaner family. The horrendous advent of rabies on their farm almost prevents Adam, in his "eleventh year," from going to England by ship with his beloved father. But on the voyage the relationship between alcoholic father and intensely precocious son sadly deteriorates.
Ineluctably returning to Africa Adam again meets with Aikimbo, his perseverant enemy. On the threshold of Zambia's independence, 1964, Adam tries to retrieve his stolen bicycle, but old M'dhalha gets fatefully speared. With his dying breath M'dhalha holds Adam to his promise to write, write about their life. Aikimbo's gang next plunders and pillages Adam's home, murdering his guardian parents, leading to Adam killing a man in self-defense. Aikimbo chases but Adam escapes and bicycles to his English grandparents, only eventually to be reclaimed by his Afrikaner family in South Africa.
In Pretoria with his impoverished family Adam is subject to ongoing abuse. They hold it against him that his English father had impregnated his Afrikaner mother out of wedlock, and thereby brought about Adam's birth and her demise. Adam countenances his pedophiliac uncle, capitulates for awhile to his Ouma's aggrandizing dreams as he converts to the compass of the family church, but soon dangerously compromises himself in an illicit inter-racial liaison with Muhle, the next door's pretty black maid. The horrendous culmination is in his being savagely whipped. Muhle, risking her life, cuts him loose.
The intercession of an insightful headmaster sends Adam off to boarding school in Kimberley, where the cycle of extraordinary events continues to clamor. Following graduation he is conscripted into the army and becomes a sniper in the bush war. While on reprieves he meets the love of his life, Felicity. The army sends yet another Call-Up and after a final poetic come-uppance with his old enemy, Aikimbo, Adam becomes convinced that he no longer can support Apartheid. He decides to go AWOL and also to escape Africa. In doing so he must choose between the sacrifice of staying for Felicity's sake, and the urge to leave his old life for good.
At last on the ship, as prophesied, he finally begins to fulfill the mandate of his childhood promise to his old mentor: "Write! Write about it all." iAfrika! is the compelling result.
