In TheBrowser.com’s excellent “five books” series, To Heaven by Water author Justin Cartwright takes readers through five novels, mainly by white writers, that play light over the concept of “African literature”:
Q: What is African literature?
A: It comes in different varieties. One is African literature written by Africans, and which in South Africa has a particular dimension. Another is white writers writing about Africa. Some people deny there’s any such thing as “white writing” but in fact there clearly is. White writing is a phrase used by John Coetzee [Nobel Prize for Literature 2003]. It’s about the predicament of the white person in Africa – people who have been dropped down, willingly or unwillingly, in an alien environment, and who try to make an accommodation with it. Now a writer like Nadine Gordimer [Nobel Prize for Literature 1991] thinks she’s made such an accommodation with Africa that there is no such thing as white writing at all, but when you look at her books they’re essentially about the same problem: the white man in Africa. It goes back to Conrad and probably further.
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Enjoy this short interview with To Heaven by Water author Justin Cartwright. Cartwright goes into some detail regarding the writing process- the nuts and bolts of novel creation general – and also explores the impetus for his latest work.
If you’ve already read To Heaven by Water you’ll be especially interested to learn how the storyline came about:
Video: Justin Cartwright on To Heaven by Water
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Fans of Alexandra Fuller poured into the Book Lounge last night for the launch of her latest book, The Legend of Colton H Bryant, which tells the tragic story of a young boy who died on the oil rigs in Wyoming.
Fuller – who is best known for her treatments of life in Africa, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Scribbling the Cat – suggested to her audience that while Colton seems to be quite different from her previous books, the similarities between the landscapes and those who people them are uncanny. All three books portray men caught up in nations at war built upon brutal industrial systems. In Colton, the soft drink Mountain Dew – a neon-green brew of caffeine and sugar celebrated for its ability to spur people into euphoric, reckless acts – is ubiquitous, the young man’s fuel, driving him even as he helps drive an oil rig’s drill into the ground, to extract the fuel that runs the United States.
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Author Justin Cartwright speaks to Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith about “families and how to survive them, his writing process and what he feels about South Africa today”.
To Heaven by Water is a touching and hilarious portrait of the Cross family, trying in their own fashion to come to terms with the loss of Nancy, the family’s matriarch. Her husband David knows that his children are perplexed by his increasingly compulsive behaviour, while Ed’s marriage to the lovely Rosalie, a former ballet dancer, is suffering strain, and Lucy is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend.
Hear the author on his latest work:
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Admirers of the London-based author Justin Cartwright gathered at the Book Lounge last night for the world launch of his new novel, To Heaven By Water. (Another launch is scheduled for tonight, 13 May, at Kalk Bay Books: details here.)
Cartwright was interviewed by Shaun Johnson (The Native Commissioner), who described his copy of To Heaven By Water as being dog-eared and full of book-marked pages. The writing, he said, was “profoundly philosophical”, but without the tediousness that can accompany this – a unique achievement.
Cartwright spoke widely about the process of writing and about the thin line between fact and fiction. Laughing, he said that though To Heaven By Water is set in contemporary London, he “chucked in” one or two chapters set in the Kalahari specially for his South African readers.
Audience members were interested to learn that the book’s title is taken from Joyce’s Ulysses – appearing in the “Hades” chapter. Yet the book is distinctly set above ground, in the present day, rather than the underworld or Dublin. Cartwright is critical of our times – what Johnson termed “the end of the era of uber-bling”, the coming of the era of belt-tightening.
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