Harare Review of Books

288 pages.

Expected publication date: Aug. 1, 2023 (Transit Lounge)

SFF/surrealism.

This fever dream of a story spun my head and left me with upside-down impressions of the inhabitants of and happenings in an African village in rural Australia. Bacon uses surrealism to tell the story of Ch’anzu, who loses hir wife and job on the same day. Zie ends up in Serengotti, a village for people who have escaped violence and trauma, where zie’s been employed to create an entertainment experience that will help bring healing to the villagers.

It took me practically the whole book to get my head around the language of the novel, which is very fast-paced, and full of its own dialect and references—the fever dream to which I refer above. Additionally, Ch’anzu’s story is interrupted by odd and unsettling actual dreams, which keep the reader off-balance. Also, Ch’anzu has a (dark) twin, and Tex’s ruminations are inserted into the narrative at various points, quite like Tex is haunting Ch’anzu (…).

So, while this will not be for everyone, I enjoyed the experimental writing. Bacon shows that you can break the traditional structure and all of the rules of writing a novel, and still tell a cracking story.

Thank you to the author, Eugen Bacon, for this ARC.