Fiction
Criteria: The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.
Barbara Boswell discusses the genesis for her shortlisted novel
What does it take to hold powerful men accountable when they transgress? The question refused to recede as I caught snatches of the Zondo Commission, the judicial inquiry into state capture that ran from 2018 to 2022 at an estimated cost of R1bn.
The “state capture” that necessitated the commission lost South Africa an estimated R57bn in state revenue. In the aftermath of the Zondo Commission, R10bn of this stolen money has reportedly been recovered. However, those responsible have shouldered little accountability. While a handful of criminal cases are pending against key actors identified by the commission, the wheels of justice turn at an excruciating pace.
The tales of excess served up at the commission captured my imagination. What must it be like to live in these gilded worlds, with a sense of entitlement so grandiose that it cedes little ground to the bounds of legality, morality or simple decency?
With these musings, I conjured Neill and Anita, the two main characters of The Comrade’s Wife, whose marriage serves as an allegory for the state of the nation. Marriage and political office share interesting commonalities. Both political office bearers and spouses take solemn oaths and vows when they step into these roles. Elected office bearers swear to be “faithful to the Republic of South Africa.” Marriage vows cement a similar commitment.
The crucible of Anita and Neill’s marriage becomes a way to explore the larger operation of power within the nation-state; the ways in which those with political power woo, engage and abuse those who put them in those positions, while shirking accountability when they break the oaths they swore to uphold.
Once I’d established the basic contours of the story, I created detailed sketches of each character. Notebooks filled up with timelines mapping their lives, the places where they grew up and shaped them, their friends, their losses, their dreams and disappointments. Most of this background material never made it into the novel, but provided a grounded sense of the characters and the lengths they would go to get what they want. Within these motivations I found productive conflicts, allowing me to play out, on the page, the ways in which people wield power and exercise it over others.
The marriage is characterised at first by great declarations of love and promises to protect and be faithful, but quickly degrades into an arena of betrayal, gaslighting and backstabbing. In the same way a corrupt politician unobtrusively loots public coffers, Neill stealthily steals his wife’s sanity. As he ascends the party ladder, the marriage crumbles as his deceit, in the manner of a greedy politician, becomes more excessive and undeniable. It is not a great leap when his wife and the reader discover other, larger betrayals.
Being a work of fiction, the novel imagines the accountability that has thus far eluded our body politic — a satisfying ending to write.
Extract
Have I always been like this — timid, unsure? I don’t remember myself before Neill anymore. I try to cast my mind back to a time when I moved assuredly through the world, but conjure nothing. I know myself to be a fighter, someone who shakes things up, but there’s no denying the glass ceiling that I have crashed up against at the university. And who am I without that venerable institution, a place which, through the years, seeped into my pores and has become part of my identity?
But my identity has also changed with Neill in my life. I am his wife; a partner. My life has increasingly taken shape around the contours of his, and with my job gone, I fear he will completely absorb me, mould me to his image.
I smile, feign excitement from behind my coffee cup over his plans for my professional life, but in the pit of my churning stomach, the static continues to hiss.
The next day, he is home early to greet the interior decorator as she arrives. Gwyn, with her short blonde pixie crop, face all sharp angles, has been primed and briefed — she arrives with several concept boards, visualising different styles the office might take: chrome and glass; warm cherry wood, cool white marble — none of them reflective of me.
I say this, and am met with the question: how, then, would you describe your style? Not a question I have ever thought of, or know how to answer. I think back to my old home, my study with the worn corduroy reading chair, the poster of Audre Lorde, arms outstretched, her well-cited words emblazoned across her body: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
I see again the hodgepodge of images stuck against my wall: pictures of feminist writers I’ve admired, postcards from friends, a photo of me, Thandiswa and Claire at a sisterhood brunch, affirmations written in my own hand, stuck to the wall with Prestik to form a mercurial collage of dreams, wishes, imaginings. I had taken them down when I moved, feeling the echo of the precious moment or aspiration each one held. I could not envision them anywhere in the house I shared with Neill. Imagining his horror at the fatty stains the Prestik would leave against the expensive wallpaper in the study, I put my colourful, inspirational confetti in a folder and away in the bottom drawer of my desk. Away from my house, my Audre Lorde poster looked tatty and faded, and I threw it in the bin. I pictured them now in the shiny new office being conjured by this maven.
“I have no style at all!” I joke.
“Well, this is what Gwyn is here to do, get you some style,” snaps Neill.
I had meant to be humorously self-deprecating, and his comment stings.
