Variety as a Community Reality

The "Celebrate Africa" book fair in Cape Town was the biggest of its kind ever to be held on African soil. Renowned Muslim writers like Imraan Coovadia und Rayda Jacobs were also invited to attend. Almuth Schellpeper reports

One woman describes her addiction to gambling, her relationship to her homosexual son who is suffering from AIDS, and her affair with her sister's husband. What is so astonishing about her story is not her shameless vanity or her ready wit, but the fact that she is a Muslim.

Rayda Jacobs' novel, Confessions of a Gambler, won the 2004 Sunday Times Literacy Award, the most coveted literary prize in South Africa. Its protagonist, Abeeda, doesn't quite fit into the classical image of a serious Muslim woman.

Rayda Jacobs says that she herself is a devout Muslim and that issues such as religion, identity, and morals are indeed always addressed in her books. However, she emphasises that she is not writing specifically for a Muslim readership. Instead, she considers her task as an author to be to change stereotypical perceptions and to point to variety as a community reality.

Social classes, religion, and suppressed rage

Rayda Jacob's latest novel, My Father's Orchid was published in time for the book fair. This novel is about a family torn apart by social classes, religion, and suppressed rage and is based in a Christian/Muslim community at the Cape. The main figure, 28-year-old Hüd, who was named after a Muslim prophet, but raised as a Christian, discovers the secrets that can bind a family together and rip them apart.

The latest novel from Imraan Coovadia, Green-Eyed Thieves, was also published just in time for the book fair. The author, who was born in Durban, South Africa, lives in New York. His novel tells the story of crime and brotherly betrayal. It centres on the twins Ashraf and Firoze, two ne'er-do-wells travelling through South Africa, Pakistan, Monte Carlo, and the USA.

Ashraf is a forger; Firoze is intellectually talented and writes for the Wall Street Journal. He pretends to be an Arab who despises all Muslim countries that do not like the USA. He comes to the attention of high-ranking Republicans. They arrange a meeting between Firoze and President Bush. Coovadia’s book is laced with irony.

Dissatisfaction with collective identities

In it, those who consider what happens on the surface to be reality are held up to ridicule, including the American president. Imraan Coovadia says that he wanted to use this novel to, among other things, express his dissatisfaction with collective identities. Sometimes, he says, he feels as if people have been taken hostage and as if it is considered uncomfortable and disturbing to admit that one shares a certain feeling of brotherhood.

He goes on to say that despite this, certain ties – such as religion – cannot be undone.

His intention is not to provoke. Attacking religion as such has never been Imraan Coovadia's intention. He says that he has never felt that he belongs to the Salman Rushdie school of provocation. Even though he considers himself to be secular, he never wanted to change his religion or stop being a Muslim because, he says, it is all part of his identity.

He goes on to say that he has no intention of breaking his links to the Muslim community or to his family. His next book, he reveals, will deal with the issue of death and will be set in Durban, South Africa.

Muslims completely integrated

Both My Father's Orchid and Green-Eyed Thieves have just been published by Umuzi. Publisher Annari van der Merwe points to the fact that Muslims are completely integrated into South Africa's social structure. She points to the fact that Muslims have been living in the country as long as the whites and that they were part of the movement that resisted apartheid.

She also stresses that manuscripts were frequently published by Muslims, even though the religious background of the authors was not always specifically highlighted.

Another female Muslim author who also attended the book fair in South Africa, Nazia Peer, read from her first book, House of Peace. Here too, the story is set in a Muslim family in South Africa. While on the surface of things the characters appear to be career-oriented and successful, they also struggle with their own inner conflicts.

Nazia Peer offers an insight into a complex Muslim community where religious identity is a central theme. She says that she hopes her novel will challenge prejudices about Islam and remind readers that Muslims, like the majority of people, are searching for inner peace.

Almuth Schellpeper

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan

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