By Beaven Tapureta
Front cover of the novel 'The Crux'
So far with two novels in Shona (Ndaiti Ndinotewo and Joti Nekatani) and one in English (The Crux), Fanuel Wandayi’s marvellous storytelling gift is already visible, and it positively sets a place for him among the new Zimbabwean novel writers.
His three thrilling novels, published in a short period between 2020 and 2023, indicate his untiring writing energy. Readers are at ease with writers such as Wandayi because they keep producing thoughtful stories reflecting a broad range of themes in human life, themes usually taken for granted.
Previous reviews of his two Shona novels have theoretically tried to compare him with his contemporaries such as Oscar Gwiriri, because of their handling of the traditional anti-hero technique, citing the eventual misfortunes that befall his protagonists. His second novel Joti Nekatani, the main character Martin gives the impression he would be celebrated at the end, but no. The same thing happens with Hatiponi in Gwiriri’s Hatipone.
Wandayi’s English novel The Crux (2023) offers an experimental romantic tale which is set in a village, township, farm, where the characters are battling different obstacles such as disapproval, cultural belief, superstition, politico-economic challenges, and unsolved issues from the past.
Miriro, a brilliant sixteen year old Form 4 student, is obviously under-age according to law, but this fact is ignored as she is catapulted into a whirlwind of infatuated emotions which other characters, except his boyfriend, do not understand. An orphan living with her maternal grandmother, Miriro is too young to see the difference between love and infatuation. She admits in her narrator’s voice, “I was just sixteen and therefore too young to understand love, maybe it was infatuation.”
This is an attention-grabbing opening to the story by the author. It’s what everyone see happening today, under-age girls being surreptitiously welcome in the marriage institution and the girls’ relatives showing no interest to report statutory rape cases for fear of shame in society.
Later in the ninth chapter when Miriro reveals she’s pregnant, Granny mentions, ‘I am going to see that he gets locked up for statutory rape’. But no action happens.
Should the blame for early marriages be placed on the adults, or the young girls themselves or the teachers?
It is shown in the story that Miriro’s Maths teacher has secret feelings for his students.
However, Miriro’s situation allows the unravelling of some hidden truth about the other characters and their different situations also. Through the author’s gripping plotting, the story becomes not only the narrator’s (that is, Miriro’s), but also a story of her deceased mother, of domestic disputes which orphaned her, of cultural and modern views about love, of her her boyfriend Gabriel the widower, of the land reform, of hope for a better future.
Gabriel, the stranger who appears to her in the village while she’s watching the ‘southern star’, assumes the Biblical angelic character in Miriro’s imagination. A few days after meeting him, she tells us, ‘I began to believe that maybe he was an angel that had sojourned the village from heaven…”
Though it is a romantic relationship, the author’s wariness with language is worth applause. Not only love does come alive through controlled, vivid description, but the landscape also. One can visualize it when an affectionate kiss is described. Yet also anger, bitterness, sympathy, other emotions are captured with intensity. The reader is invited to sit with Miriro at sunset and marvel at the ‘southern star’ and the “crescent-shaped moon that was over to the west looking like a golden nail stuck onto the heavens by some extra-terrestrial giant.” As the story begins, a romantic worship of the ‘southern star’ which is traditionally believed to foretell lovers’ future launches the reader into a suspenseful search for what happens next as the star becomes a real person in Miriro's life.
Wandayi’s descriptive powers are enviably immense. Later, when the two lovers attempt a customary marriage at which ceremony the hidden dirt in Miriro’s past rebounds and disagreements occur, one senses Miriro’s (and Gabriel’s) disappointment and sudden loss of appetite through the disdainful description of the served food: “sadza cooked of sorghum meal and black meat of indeterminate source that needed a lot of chewing, and a wash-down of husband’s tea with a few stalks floating, stuck onto the lips of the cups .../ …each bite producing contortions upon his face”.
A large segment of Africa’s new generation has been ignorant to consequences of rushing into marriage.
A character named Robert stirs up the customary marriage ceremony because he feels betrayed over a 'contract' made in the past between Miriro’s family and himself following a murder between relations. On the other hand, Gabriel and Miriro, with their madly-in-love attitude, do not take time to heed the elders’ advice, especially her loving grandmother, about certain complications in their relationship.
The Crux will contribute so much to Zimbabwean literature insofar as it experiments with the concept of love, its emotions amidst a storm seemingly beyond control.
Fanuel Wandayi, the author, was born in Chirumhanzu. He holds a degree in Marketing Management from Midlands State University. The Crux is his first English work.
Writer Fanuel Wandayi
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