Leeds, 18th March 2011 

Email interview between Franziska Kramer, researcher, and Manfred Loimeier, translator of Strife.

© Franzisika Kramer and Manfred Loimeier

Discussion  at the ZGS Harare 14th of April:

STRIFE – ZWIETRACHT: a Book Crossing Boundaries

FK:  What did personally strike you most about the book? As an editor, a teacher of literature and a great expert in the field of contemporary (so called) African literatures?

The last chapter. The more the plot turned to its end the more I wondered which solution the author would find. So it was this formal aspect which struck me most, this idea to compose this last chapter as a theatre scene. All the several voices and different positions which had become obvious during the long run of this novel, meet themselves on the stage and show by this encounter of pros and cons that is has to be the reader herself who has to make his own way out of this maybe confusing conglomerate of views and opinions. 

FK:  What could be the motives for a German readership to read Strife? Will they maybe see the text as an evocation not of exotic Africa exactly, but as troubled Africa? An Africa where nobody feels responsible after the experiences of colonialism?

There may be a kind of ‘exoticism’ nevertheless – but exoticism in that sense the German readers are going to detect the ongoing importance and presence of African philosophy, morality, religion and system of values as a vivid part of the (only partly) westernized day to day life. It may be new even for a greater part of German readers to realize this undercurrent of an African way of thinking in the modern African world, this cosmology of African ethics.

I do not think that Strife is being read in Germany as an evocation of a troubled Africa. German readers who are so open-minded to read not only US-bestsellers have learnt – over the last 30 years of a slowly improving reception of African literatures in Germany – that only one novel can’t be generalized for the whole of Africa. And as Strife is a family novel, and as German readers have made good experiences with family novels – I mention Thomas Mann and Isabel Allende in my afterword – I believe that German readers will read Strife as the story of a family who tries to climb up the social ladder, who struggles to improve its economical and social standard, who follows the idea of freedom and wealth – and all that in a time of political changes and in a period of a redefinition of the base of one’s own way of thinking and living.

This may recall in German readers the situations in Germany after WW II or after the German reunification when people had to reorient themselves, to rebuild their country and their existences, but found themselves in a stage of intellectual irritation. People then concentrated on economics and are lacking now a system of values – what caused the renaissance of family and friendship and commitment. Like the family Gwanangara some people in Germany realize that their lives felt apart ...

FK: Do you think there is anything German readers can ‘find’ in Zwietracht, which they cannot find in other texts by African writers?.

To make such a comparison one has to be aware that German readers have to rely on a rather small amount of books by African authors which have been translated into German. Concentrating on Zimbabwean fiction German readers can compare Strife only with the oeuvre of Chenjerai Hove and Yvonne Vera, of Dambudzo Marechera and Tsitsi Dangarembga, and with several books by Charles Mungoshi – and Shimmer Chinodya’s own  ‘Harvest of Thorns’. Generally speaking, Vera and Dangarembga have been read as representatives for women’s literature, whereas Hove and Marechera have been read as political authors who developed a fascinating poetical style to write about the war for independence in Zimbabwe and about the following civil war (Hove). Knowing this it becomes clear that Strife for German readers is completely new – this novel completely ambushes the readers’ expectations.

But even compared to other present translations of novels by African authors the theme and the style of Strife seems to be unique. It is a calm, reflective style which differs from the trendy fast paced crime novels by South African authors, but also from the over-constructed and over-intentioned novels by the Somalian Nuruddin Farah or the Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa or from the political novels by Abdourahman A. Waberi from Djibouti or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. Nor is Strife as ironical as the novels by the Congolese author Alain Mabanckou, to mention some of the African authors who are read in Germany at the moment. 

FK: 4. Do you think that German readers, male and female, will be interested in the gender aspect of the text? That is: will German men read it differently from women?

I believe that male readers in Germany definitely will read Strife in a different way  than female readers. Whereas male readers will concentrate on the character of the father in its patriarchal and paternalistic position and on Godi’s struggle for caring for his family – in other words: on the aspects of responsibility, career and money –, female readers may look at the efforts of Godi’s mother and will criticise how soon her remembrance vanishes.   They may be surprised at the ways in which male characters in Strife deal with women, wives and sisters. I fear that only in the last chapter when Modernity, the single mom, is speaking, male German readers may realize the Strife also deals with the structural determined/conditioned/ narrowed position of women in a society.

FK: Strife/Zwietracht has been described as a book that crosses boundaries.  Do you agree? If so, what boundaries do you think are crossed in it?  

‘Crossing boundaries’ runs the risk of sounding a little bit simplistic. But in fact some boundaries are crossed: in terms of time (past-presence-question for the idea of the future), in creating understanding between the generations, between the people in the cities and on the countryside, and in bridging the gap between personal and political conditions – the life in Zimbabwe is described in its entirety, and Strife doesn’t cut off/separate tradition from modernity, but shows the long and self-determined way of a people from pre- to post-colonialism, all that by using  a perspective from below. So I think that a lot of literary and academic categories are bridged too ...