The Importance of Time and Place in Strange Gods by Annamaria Alfieri

Annamaria Bragging on Monday

This Sunday morning just as I was leafing through my list of possible blog topics, I learned that the following article had just been published in the Journal of the Historical Novel Society, under the title above.  Its author, Marilyn Pemberton had interviewed me a few weeks ago.  I did not know that this would be the result.  I am, of course, delighted. First let me introduce the author of the article. (It seems to me that, like the founder of the Historical Novel Society, she is British. Can you see the evidence for that below?)

Marilyn Pemberton has a passion for fairy tales that subvert and challenge social mores. Victorian fairy-tale writer Mary De Morgan was the subject first of a biography, then a fictionalised life in The Jewel Garden. Her historical trilogy, Grandmother’s Footsteps, will be complemented by a fourth book, A Bearer of Tales, due to be published later in 2024.

 

 

 

After the publication of her third historical novel set in South America, Annamaria Alfieri’s agent and editor thought it was time for her to write a series. With this challenge set before her, Alfieri knew that she would have to find a place and a time that would allow her to write many stories.

“I had taken a couple of trips to Africa by then and had fallen in love with being there,’ she relates. ‘As with my other books, once I had an interesting place, I looked for the most dramatic time in its history. Once my imagination landed in that place at that time, I knew that there was enough grist for the story mill to last through a series.’

Alfieri has decided to write a ten-book series, based on a theme inspired by her late father. She remembers that, ‘Among his possessions, I found a leather bookmark inscribed with the Ten Commandments,’ she remembers. ‘It was like a message from Dad—to base a book on each of the commandments. So, for each book, one theme is the sin of the commandment. Another is a different evil that has no commandment, and I have the audacity to suggest it should have one.’

Strange Gods (Stonesong, 2023), the first book in the series, is set in the former British East Africa and based on the first commandment, which forbids worship of any but the one true God. ‘This brings up the clash of cultures between what the Europeans believe and what the Africans believe,’ Alfieri says. ‘The sin that has no commandment is the audacity of the colonizers, who move in and take over the territory where the indigenous people have lived for millennia.’

Each of the ten books will be set in sequential years of a decade, starting in 1911, a time frame Alfieri chose after ‘doing TONS! of research.’ She says that ‘All of the good ideas I get for my stories come right out of my research. The best sources for me are always the writings of people who had feet on the ground at the time. Also, there were books written about life in the Protectorate of British East Africa that were meant to attract settlers to the place. I have a copy of one, thanks to reprints by the University of Michigan Library. What a treasure trove! It even has the railway schedule, so that when my characters travel by train, I know what time the train is supposed to come and what time it’s supposed to get to their destination. All my research is aimed at helping me to feel as if I am there. Research is my time machine. Once I am there in my imagination, I can hang out with my characters, hear what they say, and I write down what they do.

Alfieri chose the 1910s in particular because it ‘brings readers to a time fraught with conflict. Colonialism was just really getting going. Missionaries from Britain had been moving into the area for about 20 years. The British government had taken control over the previous 15 years and even built a railroad from the coast to the shores of Lake Victoria and the center of the continent. And the British government had begun a campaign of recruiting settlers who were beginning to move in and establishing farms along that railroad. Also, the tribal people who had lived there for centuries were often in conflict with one another.’

This conflict, she explains, was evident from the outset, when ‘the missionaries and the King’s faithful empire builders of the administration were at odds over how the indigenous people should be treated. The arriving settlers were largely British aristocrats, often second sons, who were no longer guaranteed a cushy life back home and looking to find a place where the cost of living luxuriously was cheaper. Being of the upper class, they looked down upon both the “tin-god” administrators and the “shopkeepers’ sons” among the clergy. With all this conflict, there would be—in that place and time—lots of drama and many reasons for people to want to kill each other.’

There are three main storytellers in Strange Gods, each one representing different groups, and it is their stories that Alfieri tells in this first book. ‘Vera McIntosh is the daughter of Scottish missionaries. She was born and grew up in British East Africa, and her playmates were Kikuyu children. Because of this, she has a foot in two worlds. She knows her parents’ culture and its requirements, but she also knows the world as well as the language of her playmates.

‘Justin Tolliver is the second son of an earl. But his family has no money to bankroll an upper-class lifestyle for him. Like most second sons, he is serving in the British military. His regiment was posted to South Africa in the aftermath of the Boer War. While there, he visited British East Africa and has fallen in love with its beauty. He wants to stay there, but without financial support from his family, he cannot afford to do what people of his class did – take a farm. In order to stay, he takes the drastic step of joining the police force. So, Justin too has a foot in two worlds.

‘Kwai Libazo,’ – arguably the most interesting character in the book – ‘is an askari, a police constable, who is half-Maasai and half-Kikuyu. Growing up, neither tribe accepted him. He is a young man who belongs nowhere. Then, serving in the police force, he meets and begins to work for Justin Tolliver, who holds justice as their goal as policemen. Kwai is now working for the white people, but he is not one of them. Having been rejected by the tribal people, he attaches himself to the idea of justice. Kwai too inhabits the liminal space between two worlds.’

Alfieri would like readers of Strange Gods to ‘feel as if they are there. I want my books to be their time machine that takes them to that fascinating time and place, where they learn what life was like and especially how wondrous, how beautiful is the place that is, after all, the cradle of humanity. Thirty-two of the thirty-three known remains of our hominid ancestors were found in the Rift Valley. To me, when I am in the Kenyan wilderness, on a cellular level, I feel as if I am home. Hopefully, armchair travelers who read my stories will join in and experience vicariously the majesty, the wonder of our ancestral birthplace.’