Book Review: An African Tale by Enna Neru
We live in a time of explanations, data, and reason. We don’t see a lot of fairy tales these days – not true fairy tales, where meaning trumps reason, where characters represent attributes, where evil balances good, and magic is both dark and inexplicable. The original European fairy tales were not the watercolor, bright fancies of Disney animation; they were darker, tales told on winter nights by the fire, allegories that captured the threat of a strange and hostile world beyond the flames.
Most cultures possess a tradition of these folk tales. Flat characters, non-linear story telling, talking creatures, magical objects, magic that exists without explanation – these elements are common to folk tales around the globe. Yet, in modern society, elements of the fairy tale are hidden; they do not fit with our need for data, linearity, and sense. Even in the fantasy genre, we see realistic character sketches, explained magic, stories that progress from A to Z.
Enna Neru’s An African Tale is a throwback to the earlier times of storytelling. Although the book is listed as a work of children’s fiction, it is not told for children accustomed to the brightly painted cartoon fantasies of our video era. In An African Tale, violence is not hidden, protagonists make dreadful mistakes, families fracture, and evil and tribulation are needed to balance good. Also, there are no pictures or song-and-dance routines.
Enna Neru is a pseudonym for the white South African writer Anne Uren, who lives at the edge of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. In An African Tale, Neru uses her experiences and knowledge of the region to craft a powerful cautionary tale about man’s misuse of and interference with nature’s resources.
“At the beginning of human time, which is longer than long, long ago but not as long as time before humans, there was a large freshwater lake in the middle of the southern part of the continent now known as Africa.”With this opening line, Neru sets the stage for her fairytale. In the mythical beginnings of human time, there was a god named Molemo who controlled the water. For many years, humans lived in balance with water, and thus with the creatures around them. But, “as always happens with humans, the easier things became the more restless, discontented, and selfish they became.”
Expansion of the human settlements led to overfishing, over-irrigation, and depletion and pollution of the lake. Molemo sent warning storms, and for “a short time…the survivors were very humble. They knew that Molemo was angry with them and why, and used their resources with care. But then as always happens when things go well for a while, people forget and they slipped back into their old bad, selfish habits, assuming they were superior to all living creatures and that they could control the elements.”
In An African Tale, Neru uses her experiences and knowledge of the region to craft a powerful cautionary tale about man’s misuse of and interference with nature’s resources.
“At the beginning of human time, which is longer than long, long ago but not as long as time before humans, there was a large freshwater lake in the middle of the southern part of the continent now known as Africa.”
With this opening line, Neru sets the stage for her fairytale.
