Sugarcane with Salt by James Ng'ombe

Khumbo stepped into the September sun, now throwing its rays fiercely, but threatened by heavy, dark clouds around it. He knew though that the rains were still a month or so away, and that the bush fires must already have forced hundreds of mice from their underground hideouts into the hands of the scheming and salivating herdboys. The first rain, zimalupsya, when it came, brought with it an aura of ecstasy as expectant mothers rushed out in search of anthill soil which they sucked to satisfy the insatiable greed of the new life within them. Those who didn't have an anthill in sight--although they would not give up looking for this most treasured delicacy delivered by the spirits from underneath through the medium of ants--those who had to look for alternatives, went for the mudwalls of the house, kitchen or nkhokwe, and extracted a lump or two.

Khumbo Dala returns to Malawi from eight years in an English medical school, and finds the place deeply changed. The sugarcane fields that were once privately owned by small farmers have been swallowed up by large conglomerates, who no longer tolerate the friendly theft of a cane or two by hungry children. The school where he was once a student has become increasingly Muslim, and these changing demographics threaten conflict. His family, too, has changed, in ways he did not expect: his mother has given birth to a white child and split from his father; his brother has married a Muslim woman his parents don't approve of (who happens to be Khumbo's childhood sweetheart); the same brother has also gotten mixed up in the drug trade, running hemp. But Khumbo too, has changed. Not only is he now a doctor, but he has a white fiancee, who will soon follow him to Malawi. The two changes push Khumbo in opposite directions: is there a place for him, here, in the country of his birth?

These themes are, in some respect, a little predictable for a novel of mid- to late-century Africa. Sugarcane with Salt is often no more or less than what it presents itself to be; the prose is workmanlike, the story realist to the core, though intricate and interesting. The part I thought was the most engaging, actually, came at the end: Khumbo's brother, arrested by the Malawian regime, who seeks to make an example of him, commits suicide in prison. Tradition demands that Khumbo marry his brother's widow Chimwemwe, and become father to their young son. The fact that Khumbo and Chimwemwe are former lovers only complicates things, and it throws a wrench in his relationship with the Englishwoman Sue, who is already feeling threatened by Khumbo's attentions to a young schoolteacher named Grace. The three women represent different approaches for Khumbo, and perhaps might be thought of as traditionalism, moderation, and radical internationalism. I was interested in the way that, at the end of the novel, Khumbo's situation puts him at the heart of the competing pressures of a modernizing Malawi.

With the addition of Malawi, my "Countries Read" list is up to 115!