FICTION COVERAGE
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.
The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan (Pan Macmillan) is shortlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize, in partnership with Exclusive Books. Khan discusses the genesis of her novel:
I never intended to write a Durban Gothic novel — all I knew was I wanted to write a love story with elements of magic, tragedy and a big haunted house by the sea. I did know it was going to be set in Durban because I’ve lived in this city my whole life and I’ve come to understand things about the weather, the sea, the green in the trees and what it means to stay in a place where everyone seems to leave. I knew I wanted to showcase a place that often gets neglected in local literature, but that was about all I knew in the beginning.
The novel began as a collection of things that interested me over a period of 10 years when I came out of a kind of depression and became more resilient. With resilience comes a certain renewed interest in life; I wanted to understand more about memory and grief and love and the passage of time. I wanted to explore love in all its forms — rage, passion, jealousy and grief — and I did it through relationships in the book between lovers, spirits, parents and children and siblings. The novel became a box in which I threw all my ideas and slowly shaped a story around it.
But it was just a box of collected things and for a long time the manuscript seemed to go nowhere. It took 12 years to write and publish the novel and I almost gave up because no one seemed to really like or understand it and it was rejected many times by editors and literary agents. But I believed I had an interesting story that had come from some of the lowest moments of my life and I knew I had a house and characters that deserved to be in the world. The story, much like the house, needed a lot of work and I spent a long time cleaning its windows, scrubbing its floors and cutting away the vines that covered the entrance. After years of fighting to keep this book alive, I finally got an agent and after two more years of work, it sold at auction to a publishing house in New York which seemed impossible for a South African author, let alone one still living in Durban, unmarried in an Indian community.
The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil began as a collection of things that began to interest me as a young heartbroken woman navigating the world, but over the years it grew into something else alongside me. It is not only about how a young girl begins to find her voice in a broken mansion; it is also a story about finding your own path in a dark place when you think you may not know the way anymore.
It is about how the things you love can save you in the end.
EXTRACT
‘Arreh. Rounder! We not making world maps here,’ Razia Bibi scolds, waving a rolling pin as she shouts. Sana sits next to her on the small kitchen table covered in flour, trying to roll rotis.
‘It’s all about concentration!’ Razia Bibi states. ‘If your mind is here-there-everywhere, you’ll never be able to roll rotis. You must think about what you’re doing and then they come round.’
As part of Razia Bibi’s plan to turn Sana into a Good Girl she has started giving her cooking lessons. ‘If you learn how to cook from a man, God knows where you’ll end up in life. You’d better learn from me,’ she says. ‘These men who cook, they know the surface things, in fact they’re very good with the surface things — but when it comes down to it, when it comes down to the facts of the matter, these men are useless.’
She is sharing now the basics of samosa making as they roll, telling Sana how to make the perfect mince filling.
‘Onions, lots and lots of onions,’ says Razia Bibi as she bustles around the kitchen, ‘are the secret. If you’re lazy and you don’t use enough, you’re asking for trouble. Some women are so shameful nowadays they buy their fried onions. Hai Rabb, can you imagine? Too lazy to fry onions? Have you heard of such a thing? Even that no‑good Preeti — she didn’t know how to cook when she married my Ziyaad. So big girl she was and she didn’t know. She was living alone for so long, you know? Tell me, which girl lives alone? I should have known from then something wasn’t right. Let me tell you, at the end of the day you can only blame the parents,’ she says as she pokes her rolling pin in the air to make her point. ‘That’s why it’s my duty to teach you. God put you in this house so that you can be raised right. Rule Number One is always fry your own onions. That way, even if it doesn’t come out right, you can’t be cheated by anyone else but yourself. And Rule Number Two is homemade is the best made.’
‘Isn’t that the same as Rule Number One?’ interrupts Sana. ‘Also, don’t you sell . . .’
‘No. They are all different. You keep quiet and let me talk. I’ve been in this business for forty years! You think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Everyone said I won’t make it. Even my husband, he said, Razia, no way someone will pay money for your samosas. He laughed at me. But ha! Look at me now. I got customers coming all the way from Ballito! They love my samosas so much! Go down to Gora’s café in town, his wife, Jameela, you think she can make like my samosas? Oh, I’m sure she tries, but she can’t come close!’
‘Fancy is always saying how good your samosas are,’ Sana says as she tries to discretely pull back an extending blob of roti with her finger.
Razia Bibi stops moving about and looks at her. ‘Eh? What you said?’
‘Fancy always says you’re a good cook,’ say Sana, hovering her rolling pin over the flaw.
Razia Bibi pauses and then continues to roughly break out pieces of dough. ‘Well . . . she must just mind her own business. I don’t care what she has to say.’ She notices Sana’s roti and shakes her head. ‘Your head is in the clouds, my girl. At this rate, no man will marry you.’ She adjusts her scarf around her neck and continues. ‘Don’t make your face like one sour lemon. You don’t marry for love — that is modern thinking. Girls today wait for love and then it’s too late. You just find someone decent who will be there for you when you get old. Before you get aches and pains and cataracts, and then no one will want you.’ She clicks her tongue and moves around the kitchen. ‘Life is lonely enough as it is, and when you get old, well, it’s just . . . bad.’
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