A novel from a country or a continent claims to be the standard bearer of greatness for many reasons; including its timelessness, the highly refined or sophisticated way it deals with a specific themes, or the artistic and linguistic refinement it introduces while developing its story line that make the work what critics call a classic. The general assumption is that timelessness comes first as a relatively more reliable yardstick to measure the greatness of a novel.
Homer’s “Iliad and Odyssey” or “Don Quixote” by Spanish writer Cervantes are great works of literature because they have attained epic proportions and timelessness. Four hundred years after its publication, “Don Quixote” is still a great novel and a classic you can enjoy reading in any society. The same can be said about Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” which is a great French classic work still widely read and even adapted to the stage.
Critics play a decisive role in attributing a novel the accolade of greatness. In countries where literary development is relatively advanced, critics have the decisive edge in separating the wheat from the chaff and in giving a kind classification to novels that are published at specific times in history. In countries where literature is at a lower level of development, the readers are mainly responsible for assuming a novel a great work or for neglecting it as mediocre. Their judgments are of course arbitrary based on personal whims and not on critical yardsticks.
If we take an example from our country, the Amharic novel entitled, “Adefres” by the late Dagnachew Werku was considered by readers as something of an abnormality or weird, to use a more modern lexicon. It was ignored for many years before it was recognized as a great work by critics of course, and before it was celebrated as a breakthrough novel relatively lately. It was not or is not of course what we may call, “The Great Ethiopian Novel”. The rank of greatness was taken earlier by Haddis Alemayehu who published “Fiker Eske Mekaber” (Love Unto Death) long before Dagnachew published his remarkable novel.
If we look closely at “Adefres”, we realize that what made it unpopular among the reading public right after it was published was the fact that it took a popular theme, that of a kind of critic of the generation of the 1960s and the social relations of the time to highlight the major existential discomfort educated people of the time felt vs a vis the political arrangements on the eve of the Ethiopian revolution of 1974.
This theme is remotely similar to Be’alu Girma’s “Kadmas Bashager” (Beyond the Horizon) which also dealt with the intellectual and existential angst the leading characters were going through in their search for meaning of lives while dealing with the political and social constraints and facing the tragic fate of the educated men of the time. The two books did not assume the rank of “classics” or “greatness” that the public and critics as well had accorded to the novel by Haddis Alemayehu which is still considered the best Ethiopian novel of all times if you like.
“Adefres” was a weird read at the time of its publication because it was written with a new technique known as “stream of consciousness” that delves into the consciousness of the protagonist and we ‘hear’ them thinking rather reading them. This technique was largely used by various European authors; among them the British author Virginia Woolf. The technique was in vogue starting from the 1930 and the most celebrated author who used this ‘absurdity of language’ is James Joyce, who has written a classic novel called “The Dubliners”. Upon the publication of the novel, Joyce was quoted as saying that he had given critics an assignment that would last for 100 years trying to understand it meaning.
It is normal that literary trends come and go or change according the times and conditions. For instance, what is known as “magical realism” was and still is popular among writers such as the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and later on picked up by Salman Rushdie, the author of “Midnight’s Children”. Magical realism was very popular during the 1970s which is generally considered to be, “Latin America’s literary boom” that brought forth many celebrated writers and the Latin American novels to international attention.
American critics are usually fond of looking for what they call “The Great American Novel” throughout their modern literary history and reaching the highest point in the post-1920s period with the publication of notable novels by some of the most respected authors of the time. Some of the great American novels include, “to Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “The Great Gatsby” Scott Fitzgerald, “the Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger and “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller.
When we come back to the situation in our country, we can observe that no “great Ethiopian novel” has appeared on the literary stage since the publication of “Love Unto Death” which is a novel written in the realistic mode and depicts the tragic love affair between two young people who rejected societal and political norms in order to consume their affections in the turbulent end-of-century feudal Ethiopia. “Oromay”, another novel by Be’alu Girma could be considered a “great novel” if we judge it by the popularity it enjoyed right after it was published and caught the public imagination for a long time.
The sudden disappearance of the writer had added fuel to the popularity or notoriety of the work. Being a political novel based on the events of the time, it was not surprising that “Oromay” became a best seller of the time. However being a bestseller and a classic work are two different things. Yes, “Oromay” was a bestseller but it was not the great Ethiopian novel, if we look at it from the point of view of its literary merits. It was not even better than Dagnachew’s “Adefrs”.
The idea of a “great novel” or a “bestselling novel” not as a critical category but as a publishing categorization based on the number copies sold and the hype that results thereof. It came into existence in the Western world. It is not definitively an African or an Ethiopian concept. The idea was born following the literary booms of the 19th and 20th centuries when book publishing became a very lucrative industry and business after the advent of new printing technologies and media such as the radio and television subsequently making book publishing a great business.
If you ask me which book is “the great African novel”, I may use the same Western standards and criteria to tell you that Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” can be one among many on the basis of its popularity and the critical applause it was welcomed with right after gained popularity after its publication. If you ask me who is the great contemporary writer I would say that the young Nigerian authoress, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” can be considered one with her books “Amricanha”, can be considered a great contemporary African novel. Ben Okri is another Nigerian who wrote what can be considered a great modern African novel and is entitled, “The Famished Road”.
Ethiopian literature at present is not in its glory days similar to the boom of the 1960s and 1970s or to the second boom of the 1990s and post-2000 periods. Of course books are written now and then but few catch the public attention while most of them are unimpressive. Most of them are not literary and deal with autobiographies, memoirs and political history.
When will the modern Ethiopian classic novel be written? No one can give an answer to this question because classics are not written with a time table but appear on the stage quite unexpectedly and surprise us with their dazzling novelty and their power and love that force us to read, reread them and celebrate their greatness without anyone telling about it.
In Africa, many countries have their own “great novels”. We can take for instance the late Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt, Wole Soyinka who has published another novel after his debut novel entitled, and “The Interpreters” was published 40 years ago. Most of the other African writers have passed away and the younger generation of authors has not yet come of ages.
Ethiopia is rich in historical events about which many authors could have used as backgrounds to their literary narratives. We have enough materials that could fill dozens of good ooks but this is not the case so far. When will the great African and Ethiopian writers come up with their great novels? No one knows. If there is something that we can ascertain with some degree of confidence is that sooner or later, they are bound to be written.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 9 MAY 2024
