ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

If you need any proof that the most interesting books being published in Australia come from small publishers, look no further than Serengotti, by Eugen Bacon, a new release from Transit Lounge.  The striking cover design by Peter Lo is just the beginning…

Eugen Bacon is an African-Australian writer who has been attracting international attention for her powerful writing.  She is well-known for her award-winning fantasy and horror fiction, (see her website) but I did not discover her adventurous style until I came across her short fiction collection Danged Black Thing (2021, see my review).

Serengotti also showcases her playful side. I’m not sure, but the title is (I’m guessing) a play on words, one which sent me exploring online (perhaps as the author hoped it would).  The Serengeti is a geographical area of Tanzania, (which is where the author was born).  Its Wikipedia page has very little to say about the people of that area, only that successive catastrophes devastated the Maasai who migrated there in the early 20th century and have since been relocated to the Crater Highlands in Northern Tanzania.  Today the Serengeti is a haven for wildlife, especially lions.  WP (lightly edited to remove unnecessary links and footnotes) says:

The Serengeti hosts the second largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world, which helps secure it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa and as one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world.

Even this brief foray into exploring the Serengeti has shown me that dislocation, trauma and tragedy in Africa are not always the result of war.

Serengotti is not speculative fiction: it’s sited very much in the here and right now.  It has a sombre message, and one that provokes a thoughtful reader to consider more deeply what it means to be African in origin, in Australia, and how best we might support those who are damaged by their experiences.  But Ch’anzu, the novel’s narrator, is often laugh-out-loud funny.

Whatever work you want to put on your project is waste.  You’re distracted pretty much.  Your mind is buzzing with every what else.  You think of Valarie — what’s going on? Why isn’t she answering your calls? You think of Scarlet, but your thoughts about her are oddly connected in a good way to inflation. The dismal world economy and all that … being solo has its merits.  Imagine saying to a potential paramour puckering up for a pash: ‘Mate, you gotta kiss softly.  Seen the price of lip balm?  Gobble my whole damn mouth, and I’ll have to break out more of that bitch-prized balm.’ (P.165)

Chuckling, the reader turns the page, and Bacon undercuts her own jokes.

You laugh aloud at this.  Yep.  Trying to be Dame Edna or what? (p.166)

Ch’anzu has been dumped (by Scarlet) so she is suddenly dealing with a broken heart on the same day that she gets the sack.  She rebounds by upending her life altogether.  She leaves behind her stylish South Yarra apartment and takes up Valarie’s offer of an intriguing job in Serengotti, a gated community outside Wagga Wagga in rural NSW. It is a community of Africans who have come together to provide familiarity and support for people among them who are scarred by the experiences that made them refugees. Moraa’s Black Soul restaurant serves an appetising African menu; burials and wakes (#NoSpoilers) are conducted in culturally familiar ways; and (run by twin elders and traditional healers Tau and Lau), there’s a counselling service that blends traditional ways of thinking with contemporary counselling skills.

Ch’anzu’s new job is an element of the innovative way that this community tackles trauma.  Her skill is in IT coding, and her task is to create computer games that enable people whose dislocations and past tragedies have set them adrift, to tell their stories.

But Ch’anzu hasn’t left everything behind: she has an erratic brother called Tex who has gone missing, but she also has Aunt Maé, who’s like a child’s dummy.  Aunt Maé is the one you can reach out for when you’re feeling needy.  I wish I had an Aunt Maé!

Ch’anzu rings her from Wagga.  (This is a running joke, it’s the place name you have to say twice, unless you’re a local.) She asks after Farji, Aunt Maé’s husband.

‘Oh, you know,’ she says in that elusive way of hers that tells you nothing, then she counters with her own question.  ‘How’s Scarlet?’

‘Finally, you ask.  Last time you were having a moan about Tex — that’s all that seemed to matter.’

‘Eish, stop it, sweet chile.  Don’t be a spoil.  You’re an old soul, and old souls don’t go on about things.  So are you going to answer my question about how Scarlet is doing, or no?’ There’s a hint of laughter in her voice.,

‘She’s looming, and she’s dangerous,’ you say.  ‘She’s out to get me.’

‘Are you gettable?’ (p.167)

Does Ch’anzu find love again?  What I really liked about this novel was its surprising answer to that question.

There is much more to Serengotti than this. Literary allusions provide more jokes when Ch’anzu goes to seek the wisdom of the community’s twin elders:

Tau or Lau hands you a calabash.  You sip its sweet syrup. You stretch out the empty calabash.  ‘Can I have more?’

‘You know what happened to Oliver Twist.’

‘Unless Barkis is willing.’

‘Eish, that was David Copperfield.  What do they teach you in school these days if you can’t remember the simplest thing.  I hope you don’t make a dog’s breakfast of it when you cite Wole Soyinka.’

[Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. I’ve reviewed his latest book here.]

‘Wole?’

‘It means to come home.  Here, take,’ says Tau or Lau handing you a refill.

‘I feel calm but heady,’ you say.  ‘Does this mean the curse is gone?’

Their lute laugh — shaking and scraping and plucking at you.  ‘What it means, eee, mwana wee, is that you’re drunk! Wanzuki is honey wine, nothing more.’ (p.124)

The dialogue is all like this; smart, staccato, quick as a whip.  Also, it’s the first time I’ve encountered narration in the second person that has worked for me.  But what I really liked was the raw honesty of this novel, particularly in the thread about ‘Basket’, the woman Ch’anzu encounters at the swimming pool, but even more so in the thread about Tex and Sticky. (Nope, I’m not telling.  You have to read the book.) I also liked the way the author challenges the glib use of ‘shaming’ as a weapon.

At the very least, she has soni, you’re thinking to yourself, and to have shame is a gift. (p.209)

There is, BTW, a glossary and list of characters and places at the back of the book, but as you can see by the deft way Bacon explains what soni is, I rarely needed it.

I can’t wait to tell my ‘book group*’ about this one.  I liked the cultural allusions new to me: beliefs, mores, food, music and dance; I enjoyed the familiar among the unfamiliar.  (Ch’anzu is super keen about football.)  It’s a wild ride, yet strangely comforting because it’s a powerful assertion of the gifts diversity brings to our culture and society.  And it’s hopeful… this not a Sad Girl Story or a Moaning Migrant Masked Memoir!

*It’s not a book group, we’re just a random group of people who meet at the library once a month to talk about whatever we’ve recently read.  I’ve tried a few of these Book Chats organised by local libraries, but for them to be interesting, the participants need to be reading interesting books.  Blathering about yet another Jane Harper does not do it for me, but the people who come to the one I attend read all kinds of interesting stuff and I come home with recommendations to follow up. Plus, if the library doesn’t have the book I’m bragging about, they put it on their list of books to buy!

I’ll have to warn them about the (a-hem) earthy language in this one, of course…

PS You all know how mean I am with 5-stars at Goodreads.  Serengotti gets 5 stars from me.

Author: Eugen Bacon
Title: Serengotti
Cover design by Peter Lo
Publisher: Transit Lounge, 2023
ISBN: 9780645565362, pbk., 271 pages
Review copy courtesy of Transit Lounge