The modern city and citizen efficacy in a Zambian novel

Abstract

Arguing against the grain of established critical opinion, this article analyses the textual complexity and cosmopolitanism of a contemporary Zambian novel, Dead Ends (Crime, Cops and a Renaissance) by Sekelani S. Banda, focusing on its representation of the modern city and citizen efficacy. Through Banda’s deft handling of narrative time and genre Dead Ends contributes to Southern Africa’s emergent social imaginaries by constructing hope as a social category predicated on the time‐streams of both detection and emergence.

Keywords:

• citizen efficacy
• Bildungsroman
• hope
• urban modernity
• thriller
• Zambia

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Katy Crofton for the surprise copy of The Dead Stay Dumb and other thoughtful gifts, to Stephen Chan for conversations about Zambian culture and politics, to the readers of this article for their comments and to Janet Wilson for precise editorial work.

Notes

1. For other overviews of Zambian literary and cultural practices, see Crehan, Reed, Sumaili, Tripathi and Veit‐Wild and Chennells.

2. In the last three years there has been a vigorous nationwide constitutional debate in Zambia, in which the government has taken one side and a civil society umbrella group called The Oasis Forum has taken the other. The key issue in the debate has been who controls the constitution‐drafting procedures. For recent reports and examples of this debate, see the issues of the Lusaka daily The Post published on 22, 23, 24 and 25 June 2007. It is part of my argument that texts such as Dead Ends helped to engender and pave the way for this debate.

3. In Chapters 4 and 8, the eccentric, multi‐talented detective beats his helper at chess while at the same time demonstrating his powers of ratiocination by expounding on his plan of action.

4. Another unsolved crime is described in passing as having been committed “[i]n a fashion similar to the Florence II Monster in Italy” (5).

5. In this he resembles Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Sekelani Banda has named Christie, Robert Ludlum and James Hadley Chase as some of the crime writers with whose work he is familiar (Primorac, “Interview”).

6. For a discussion of the habit of self‐censorship among Zambia’s cultural practitioners, see Crehan.

7. It is indicative that The Smoke that Thunders may be intertextually linked to novels as ideologically disparate as Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy and A Wreath for Udomo and the Rhodesian settler Peter Armstrong’s Operation Zambezi.

8. For an analysis of “Jim Goes to Jo’burg” narratives in South Africa, see Meg Samuelson’s contribution to this issue; for a discussion of the analogous motif in Zimbabwean writing in Shona, see Kahari.

9. While discussing, and opposing, the rise of “paranoid” or xenophobic nationalism in Australia. Hage’s use of the term resonates with Palmer’s description of paranoia as inherent to the thriller genre.