4 - Euphrase Kezilahabi An Initiatory Realism

Summary

The main subject of Kezihalabi's first four novels is Tanzanian society. Each character is fully integrated in this world where there is little place for fools or marginalized people. This is not to say that everybody is in the right place. Kezilahabi writes fiction precisely because society is an arena of tensions. Conflicts are intrinsic to society. They arise from within, not from the external world. The title of his third novel, The world is an arena of chaos, displays the author's sharp awareness of the presence of disorder at the heart of every aspect of reality. A society can be the subject of a novel because it embodies disorder in its fundamental nature. The reader must go beyond their usual ways of thinking to read Kezilahabi's fiction, because the narrative has nothing to do with a breakdown in societal values and does not conclude with their restoration.

Beyond the apparent realism of Kezilahabi's four early novels, there is a theme of initiation that I would like to examine in the third and fourth works of this early phase, both published in the early 1990s. It is evident that they break away from the realistic mode. Nagona (also the eponymous heroine) and Mzingile are two texts that are explicitly ritualistic. Nagona is about the spiritual quest of a mysterious half-woman half-deer.