A Big Hand for the Spirits - Interview with Jen Stern

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Jen Stern is one of South Africa's best known travel writers, but she takes on a wide variety of topics - food, culture, you name it. A Big Hand for the Spirits is her first foray into fiction. Not surprisingly, it draws heavily on her travel experiences, and she's visited every place mentioned in the narrative, and partaken of most of the activities – white-water rafting at Victoria Falls, game viewing in Luangwa, diving in Lake Malawi, driving the Great East Road, catching local buses in Malawi, and walking long distances between tiny towns. That provides an exciting backdrop to an adventure thriller involving a murder. Here's our chat about her novel.

Lake Malawi National Park

Jen, you’re well known as a travel writer in South Africa. A Big Hand for the Spirits is your first excursion into fiction. What persuaded you to write a novel?

Watching a performance of the Gule Wamkulu dancers at a hotel in Malawi, I was intrigued by the way they were introduced. The MC claimed that they were not actors, but were real spirits. And then he continued to say that, if an uninitiated person were to see the spirits, even to see one on the road – dramatic pause – they would DIE! So then he went through a quick pseudo-initiation so that we could all safely watch the dancers. I turned to my friend and said, ‘So what would happen if someone were to see the spirits on the road?’ And it sort of just took on a life of its own from there.

A Big Hand for the Spirits has been described as a “genre-blender” and that’s spot on. It’s a southern Africa adventure story, there’s a philosophical as well as a metaphysical side to it, and it has some pretty violent deaths and bad guys thrown in. Did you set out to write something like that, or did it all develop from the characters and the story?

I didn’t have a genre in mind when I wrote it, so – yes – it just developed. I knew the ending, so I had to work it out from there. Once I had my characters and had set them off on their journey, they sort of took over and started having really interesting conversations about life, the universe and everything. And then the story ended up taking on new life to mirror the concepts about life, quantum physics, magic, religion, and the nature of truth. If I had to label it, I’d call it African magical realism. One book seller in Cape Town has called it literary fiction, but I think that might be a tad pretentious.

White water rafting at Vic Falls

Would you tell us about the characters in the book, where they came from, and what roles you wanted each one to play?

You are a writer, Michael, so you know that almost all your characters reflect a bit of yourself and/or someone you know, but that they also somehow get a life of their own and sometimes just refuse to stay in the box you put them in. I don’t really remember how they happened – they were conceived in my head, then they were born, and then they dictated their own lives.
I knew where I wanted to go, and Casey and Wuthering were there from the beginning. Casey is slightly ADHD and – since the inciting incident – somewhat PTSD but her paranoia is well-founded because there is a hitman tailing her. She was initially based on a friend called Tracey but her name morphed into Casey for reasons that are obvious in the book. Also the real Tracey is not nearly as bad-tempered as Casey.
Wuthering is quite a gentle soul despite being intellectually formidable. Culturally, he is a bit of an enigma. In the novel, he refers to himself once as ‘a simple village boy’, which he was until about 12, but thereafter his life took an interesting trajectory. He was awarded a scholarship to an elite, boarding school where he was educated like an upper-class Brit, and he’s lived in California since leaving school. Initially, the only thing I was sure about was that he was tall, Black, and dreadlocked because the plot demanded that. The rest just happened.
Rachel is probably the only remotely normal person in the group of five, and she had to be there as a foil for Casey, and to bring another perspective into the discussions.
While writing the first draft, I woke up one morning and went straight to my desk and wrote ‘There are only 3,000 people in the world’, and created a whole (almost certainly not true) hypothesis. I liked it, and wanted to include it so Jeremy had to be born. I also needed a drug addict.
I’ve no idea how I ended up including Vic Falls but, once I’d decided on the rafting, Gavin just sort of developed. Here’s a confession: Many years ago in Vic Falls, a tall, muscular man with a blond ponytail overtook me walking down the road. I followed him into a shop, and got chatting but he turned out to be not nearly as interesting as he looked. Gavin is also loosely inspired by a person I once knew who was physically impressive and worked in an outdoor adventure industry (not river rafting) but could somehow never stand up for himself.
The two baddies are quite fun, too. Claudia I just made up – she’s your classic beautiful, heartless bitch – but Marco is based on a real person who once ripped me off. So – while in real life I am totally against violence of any sort – it’s kind of satisfying to give him a horrible death in fiction. It’s not obvious but, if and when he reads this, he’ll know it’s him.

Staying dry is not in the job description...

The story ranges across southern Africa, and much of the enjoyment of the book is in learning about adventures in places like the Victoria Falls. However, the climax takes place in Malawi. Is Lake Malawi a favourite destination for you?

I love Malawi. It is such a beautiful country and the lake is spectacular. Sadly, though, like many beautiful places, it is struggling with poverty, drought, and famine.
But I also love Vic Falls and Luangwa. Readers who’ve visited the places featured in the book will recognise them with fond memories and – I’m willing to bet – those who haven’t yet visited will be looking up flights to Vic Falls or Malawi.

South Luangwa National Park, Zambia

As part of the plot you invent a new recreational drug – Sweet Sixteen. Where did that come from?

The plot needed a baddie, and they needed to be a drug dealer. And I don’t really have much experience with drugs, so I figured if I make one up, I will know as much about it as anyone else. It also gave me the freedom to invent a whole theory about there only being 3,000 people in the world.

Who is doing the chasing?

There are some pretty mind-bending discussions of life and the universe along the way. How did that integrate with the novel?

The book can be read just as a rollicking adventure with lots of drugs, sex and whitewater rafting, but you can – if you want – dig deeper. The discussions about life, the universe, and the nature of truth happened because those are the sorts of conversations I tend to get into – and did even more when I was a student.
What I like about fiction, of course, is that I can create a world that mirrors the discussions. And some of the discussions are about how we create our own reality – the world isn’t just sitting out there waiting for us to perceive it, it’s created as we perceive it – a bit like we don’t know if sub-atomic particles exist until we observe them. But then we don’t know whether they only exist because we observed them. So, our lives unfold because we think about them. It’s the way that spells and curses work, and the way that high-powered achievers ‘visualise’ success and victory and thereby manifest that success.

I can’t see a sequel to A Big Hand for the Spirits, but I can easily see you writing another fiction adventure. Anything on the drawing board?

Yup. I’m gestating a vampire detective story and a creative non-fiction book about the history of the world. Let’s see which is born first.

Hmm. African vampires...?

Warm weather travel

Stanley - Thursday

Given today’s forecast of awful weather in Europe, particularly Scotland (poor Caro), I thought I would try to warm Murder is Everywhere readers and bloggers by writing about a hot, sunny place.

Mette and I spent New Year with friends in Malawi, on the banks of the remarkable Lake Malawi, one of two World Heritage sites in the country.  I’d never been there before, so I was intrigued to find out something about it.

The temperature ranged from 20° C to 33° C (70° F to 90° F).  And some thunderstorms.

All my life I have heard stories about how nice Malawians are, both from visitors to the country and from South Africans who employ the many Malawians who have come to the country in search of work.  The stories were true.  No matter where I went, all I encountered was great friendliness.  My impression everywhere was of soft, non-aggressive people, who always were willing to help foreigners needing assistance.

Typical colourful market

More colour

As with so much of Africa, the borders of Malawi as a country were decided upon by people who didn’t live there.  In this case, Britain, which claimed the area first as a Protectorate (British Central Africa Protectorate), and then in 1907 renamed it Nyasaland.  I’m sure the locals had absolutely no say in how their country was defined.  As a colony, it was part of the British-ruled Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.  Eventually, as the winds of change blew across the continent, the Federation broke into three independent countries, Malawi, Zambia (once Northern Rhodesia), and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia).

Of the three, Malawi was by far the poorest, with few natural resources that could be exported.  Zambia had copper and  Zimbabwe was blessed with great soil for growing (and exporting) food and tobacco, and had riches in the ground, such as diamonds.

We started our travels in the capital, Lilongwe, a city of a million inhabitants that has few attractions for a visitor.  Then we went to Cape Maclear, on the banks of Lake Malawi in the Lake Malawi National Park.  The beautiful cape was given its name by David Livingstone in honour of a friend of his.

Cape Maclear

On the water

African Fish Eagle fishing

Lake Malawi is a remarkable place and is often regarded as Africa’s Galapagos because of the huge number of endemic fish in the lake, mainly cichlids.  These fish have been isolated for millennia and are the focus of intensive study.

The Lake is part of the Great Rift Valley that extends from the Middle East and through Africa.  It is about 550 metres (about 1800 feet) lower than the surrounding countryside.  The lake is very deep (over 700 metres or about 2400 feet) and extremely clear and warm.  This makes it a very popular destination for snorkelers and scuba divers.  As friends will attest, I am not an eager swimmer – I find the water too wet – but I did take the plunge into Lake Malawi, albeit only for a short time.  The water was almost too warm.

Great Rift Valley

Proof that I swam

Other than the amazing lake, three things caught my attention in Malawi.  First was the number of bicycles.  Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa, so few people can afford cars.  Everywhere one goes, there are hundreds of bikes – reminding me of The Netherlands.   Second, almost every square metre of land is used to plant corn – next to all roads, vacant patches of land, traffic circles, backyards.  It was remarkable.  And third, there were hundreds of gorgeous baobabs - one of the many wonderful African trees.

Large African baobab - about 12 metres (40 feet) in circumference

Although I thoroughly enjoyed my trip, I wouldn’t regard Malawi as a prime tourist destination – certainly not boring, but also not that exciting.