Tremors of the Jungle.

Gibbs, James

B. M. C. Kayira. Boulder, Co. / Cape Town. Rienner/Kwela. 1996 (released 1997). 146 pages. $11.95. ISBN 0-89410-856-5.

In some ways a fairly conventional campus romance, Tremors of the Jungle has a refreshing political setting and a decidedly "unescapist" ending. B. M. C. Kayira's novel has particular interest because of the background against which the love affair between a newly appointed assistant lecturer, Mati Unenesyo, and Kettie, a hotel receptionist, blossoms. Kayira's native Malawi, only a political jungle, is the thinly veiled original model for the fictional setting, Manthaland, and readers of the novel who are familiar with Chancellor College, Zomba, will quickly get their bearings.

Those who lived or worked in Malawi during the Banda years will also recognize in the novel the tyranny that "His Excellency" and those close to him exercised. Like Banda, Kayira's head of state, "His Utmost Excellency Dr Kham Kham," has a medical degree, a fondness for repeating - or having repeated - his contribution to the nation's history, and hordes of lackeys eager to report any dissent. Recognizable portraiture extends a little further, and there are elements that link the principal of Kayira's University of Fearfong with Dr. D. Z. Kadzamira, a one-time principal of Kayira's alma mater, Chancellor College.

Intriguingly, Tremors of the Jungle, narrated by Magi, follows the young lecturer into his creative-writing classes and shows the tensions that exist there. These become particularly fraught when, word having spread about the freshness of Mati's approach, the class increases in size and the "students" include the eyes and ears of state. While the romantic affair initially takes a familiar course - partying and an awkwardly timed revelation of pregnancy, for example - the unusual political themes hold the reader's attention and lead to high drama.

Perhaps surprisingly, the denouement owes little to the detail of the historical events of 1992 that made Zomba the setting for confrontation between students and the state. Kayira's version has a confrontation all right, but it is triggered by the deportation of the vice-chancellor and is led by members of staff from the Department of Comparative Literature, Magi, and his hero Professor Chiselwood. It can be argued that the novelist is expressing a poetic truth by presenting this fiction, by suggesting that the spirit of opposition to repression was embodied in members of the English Department - the body partly charged with teaching comparative literature. After all, the faculty included Jack Mapanje, a teacher of creative writing whom Banda sent to "rot, rot, rot" in detention. This theory has some attractions, but Kayira's analysis presents only a small part of the truth, poetic or otherwise.

Tremors of the Jungle can be enjoyed so long as we know where we are; and if we recognize that - despite the presentation of a thinly veiled picture of Malawi under Banda - Kayira has no sustained interest in showing the way in which opposition mounted or repression bared its teeth. What he offers is romantic fiction with a macabre Malawian twist, and it is, even within its own terms, rather untidy romantic fiction. Kayira creates what turns out to be the cross he himself must bear by electing to have as his narrator a teacher of creative writing. Promising indications that we are indeed in the presence of a self-conscious artist as a young man are presented near the beginning of the novel through the use of a dream sequence, but Mati's writing, including his power of description, does not impress. For example, we read, "there [Kettie] was, running up like a child, the stilettos resounding on the gravel." Resounding on the gravel? I don't believe any students in Mati's creative-writing class would have let their young teacher get away with that!

Toward the end of the novel, and following a meeting at which Professor Chiselwood speaks about academic freedom, there is something of a "golden age" at Fearfong. However, and for no obvious reason, the vice-chancellor of the University is deported, dissent turns into protest, protest becomes confrontation, and the security forces "accidentalize" the fleeing Chi and Kettie. It is a pity that the dynamics of this changing situation are not explored in greater depth or with more control of language. Tremors of the Jungle takes popular, romantic Malawian fiction into the post-Banda era with a final twist that violates the Mills and Boon Convention by leaving Kettie dead. This bravery is to be welcomed, but there remains much to be examined, much to be realized in literary terms.

James Gibbs University of the West of England, Bristol