Kings of the Water

The literary supplement of the French daily Le Monde is a great source of inspiration for me when choosing the next book to read. Why? Well, because it tends to focus on books and authors that are often off the beaten track and to present them under a particular light, often in resonance with current events. Bestselling authors are nice as well to read about - and their books can be a safe haven - but I do find that TV programs (such as this one) and the Internet cover the field quite well, so when I turn to Le Monde, I am basically looking for something different.

When I returned from our trip to South Africa, I frantically searched for South African authors and, quite honestly, did not find that many resources, to my great disappointment. Actually, I found one book that I devoured at the time.

You can easily imagine my contentment when the literary supplement of Le Monde of some weeks ago mentioned a South African author actually writing about South Africa - exactly what I was looking for. This is how I started reading Kings of the Water, by Mark Behr.

Let me tell you: I enjoy reading books in English and try to read English speaking authors in their native language as much as possible (coming from a translator, this may seem paradoxical, I know, but that's another story), so I am quite used to it. But, I admit very humbly, this book is not easy to read and understand. This is probably the result of the specific culture it describes, of text interspersed with local slang and of the author's own style far from what I would call conventional narrative schemes.

Despite the difficulty, I am hanging on and even enjoying the trip down memory lane together with the main character, Michiel. His mother's death has him come back to his homeland and to the family farm - Paradys -  after having spent many years abroad and having built his own life in America as an independent individual and gay partner to Kamil, very far from the Afrikaner model. When he returns home, Michiel needs to face his tortuous past as an Afrikaner and the past, present and future of his country - a dimension he has tried to come to terms with in his exiled life.

The book takes the reader inside the intimate and tormented life of his family in South Africa and of the country's difficult and violent evolution at a time when farms can be reclaimed by the indigenous people and all existing schemes fall down (embodied by Michiel's father) to let in a new order.

"Here there's this obsession with remembering... perhaps it's because people can talk freely for the first time."