Review: The Alphabet of Birds - SJ Naude

'Isn't it strange where ex-South Africans pop up these days and which subjects and worlds they join together?' a character asks early on in The Alphabet of Birds. The struggle for identity plays a key part in SJ Naude’s collection of interlinked short stories. The South Africans portrayed here are not so much coming to terms with their past as trying to find out where they fit into the world today. Naude’s often nameless protagonists represent a sort of South African diaspora, giving the collection an eclectic feel: the stories are located in Milan, Bavaria, Dubai and Vietnam, and contain discussions of Futurism, Kabuki theatre and vaudeville. The connection comes from a sense of loss which runs through the stories.

After decades as an international pariah state, Naude describes the irrestistable lure that the world beyond South Africa had for young people. Several of the stories here take place close to the border with Lesotho, described by Damon Galgut in his introduction as 'a mythical place... the space that separated us from the rest of the world... every way of thinking that was different and threatening'. His characters are often on the run, seeking to escape their own identity. In A Master From Germany, his protagonist loses himself in the Berlin nightlife, searching for anonymity and telling anyone who asks 'What's in a name? A name, my friends, is just smoke and mirrors'. 

Naude presents black and white characters in The Alphabet of Birds, and does show something of the racial tension which still simmers in South African society: in particular, VNLS deals with white privilege and the kitschy exploitation of African culture in the West. VNLS stands for Victorian Native Ladies Society, an ironic name for a ‘world music’ act featuring musicians in Zulu skirts 'kneeling... their breasts exposed, complete with beads and little patches of leopard skin'. This aspect of their look is accepted by their audience, yet their attempts to create something new and living from the diverse musical traditions of Africa are seen as chaotic and unmarketable. Their commercial struggles exacerbate the tension between white and black musicians, particularly after a fraught performance over the border in Lesotho.

Another story, Van, looks at the AIDS crisis affecting South Africa, and the political issues which hamper efforts to control it. Through the story of Sandrien, 'the only white woman in Bella Gardens... in fact the only white person in town', Naude shows a network of personal influence and patronage building up, and the consequent political squabbling over provision of antiretroviral drugs, failure of infrastructure and lack of basic supplies for medics ('all these connections make me dizzy').

Naude frequently uses illness as a metaphor to explain the state of the body politic, particularly the drying up of provisions. For his characters, South Africa is presented as an ailing mother: 'where there used to be breasts, there are now ribs’. War, Blossoms and Mother’s Quartet both deal with families suffering following the loss of a mother. The latter features a disintegrating family, which has dispersed across the world as their homeland collapses. The fate of these exiles seems almost random: one is trapped in America by a psychopathic ex-husband, and her child speaks no Afrikaans: 'when he hears a strange language, it's as if he's being teased. It provokes him'. Another is 'an ideal specimen of the world's borderless elite,' who has become obsessed with the writings of Thomas de Quincey, and has left his job in search of oblivion as a means of escaping from his childhood. Still another finds herself in Dubai, forced to choose between a husband who faces financial ruin and a predatory, blackmailing lover.

Throughout The Alphabet of Birds, Naude manages to use individual stories to explore political situations, and therefore illuminates without preaching. The tone varies between the hedonism of A Master in Germany and the epic melancholy of Mother’s Quartet, although there is a sense of longing and loss in all of the stories. In one particularly memorable moment, a woman confronts a robber in the ruined remains of her flat, which has been ransacked over a period of weeks. Sitting alone in the dark, she tells him ‘I’m also a looter… Perhaps, we can try to be friends?’

Although the acknowledgements detail the author’s research into language studies, music and dance, this information seems to flow naturally into the text, rather than feeling forced. The stories in The Alphabet of Birds maintain a consistently high quality, managing to be coherent in tone whilst also featuring enough diverse subject matter and locations to ensure that interest levels don’t drop. Overall, the collection exceeded my expectations – it looks like it could be another exciting year for And Other Stories.