Niq Mhlongo is a South African novelist, short story writer, travel journalist, essayist, editor, and educator who graduated from Wits University with a BA degree (African Literature and Political Studies) in 1997. He has written five novels and three short story collections. He also edited an essay collection and two short story anthologies. His first novel Dog Eat Dog, published in 2004, won the Spanish Literary Award La Mar de Letras in 2006. He has also won several literary prizes in South Africa for his work, including the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Prize, a Humanities and Social Science Award, and the K. Sello Duiker Literary Award. His work has been translated into several languages, including French, Dutch, Flemish, German, Burmese, Spanish, and Italian. Niq is based in Berlin, Germany. Mhlongo is a board member of the annual Berlin-hosted African Book Festival.
South African literature is plagued with its own unique issues: apartheid, the more recent xenophobia, and, of course the political/cultural significance of 1994. The City is Mine, your latest book, observes post-apartheid disillusionment through Mangi and Aza. In retrospect, Niq, would you say your writings have favoured best any one core issue?
I think it’s fair to say that I’m a realist writer. My writing tends to focus on human conditions, rather than a particular theme. In addition to the themes that you have mentioned, I also explore human conditions like love, happiness, sex, hate, and so on. So far, I have written and published more than thirty short stories on various subjects. I have also written five novels and other nonfiction work. For example, I wrote an essay and edited a book called Black Tax, Burden or Ubuntu, which deals with the everyday life of South Africans, the essence of black family life, and the anguish of black family members who often battle to cope. I also edited and wrote short stories called Joburg Noir and Hauntings. This shows that my writing cannot be confined to a particular theme. And yes, apartheid, drug abuse, poverty, racism, immigration and xenophobia are some of the challenges facing South Africa that I also write about.
Your work takes on cultural activism, centering South Africa, particularly your birthplace Johannesburg. What, then, does South African literature mean to you, especially within the general context of global literatures written in English?
The meaning of SA literature for me keeps shifting according to contexts. In the past I used to have those nationalist views of nation building, one nation definitions. Now that I reside in Germany, the meaning has shifted. What comes to my mind when I think of South African literature is awareness and education. Our literature keeps educating me about what it means to be a South African, which is an identity that is characterised by diversity and fragmentations. It gives me true multiple identities that are linguistically and culturally diverse. It keeps reminding me what to remember and forget. It gives me an opportunity to map my way into the future.
Two decades after the publication of Dog Eat Dog, I think it is now possible for anyone to comment on your legacy in shaping contemporary South African writing.
Dog Eat Dog came out in 2004 and is regarded as one of the important books to shape contemporary SA writing. It is still a fresh and authentic voice to capture the views of the South African majority at that time. It talked about the fraught daily challenges of the society in transition, where power balance had shifted, but deep racial memory still complicated things. The book is still relevant today.
You have spoken against the disservice of some South African-based literary prizes and awards. What other things do you hope can be done better towards a proper canonisation of South African literature? Should there necessarily be an ideal dream for South African Literature?
Of course, that was my view then. I’m not much of a follower of South African literary prizes. I think most of them are not a true reflection of the rich and diverse literary landscape in the country. There is still a lot to be done. But there are some literary prizes that are doing their best, like the Sunday Times Literary Awards. There is room for improvement.
I am deeply fascinated by your unshifting focus on proletarian South Africa in your writing. Your last short story collection, For You, I’d Steal a Goat, reflects real economic conditions in South Africa. I am sure you now get sick of compliments on how consistent you have been.
Thank you. For You, I’d Steal a Goat has been a great success according to my standards of short story collection writing. I think the success is due to my handling of topical themes such as sexual orientation, displacements and love life in the diaspora. This year it is coming out in the USA by Ohio Press. It has also been featured by various book clubs outside South Africa, including Ghana.
Big congratulations to you on this. Now, a bit on love. In his essay, “The Novelist as a Teacher,” Chinua Achebe describes love as the novelists’ “truth.” I see this truth in your work, in all the different, often warped forms love may take. It is sometimes tough love. In The City is Mine, the love Mangi has for Aza is likened to the nationalistic enthusiasm that surrounds most of the characters in the story, even if this enthusiasm eventually finds rest in ennui. Where do you situate love in the writing process?
I consider myself lucky because I’m also trained as a scriptwriter for radio, TV and film. I also wrote for comic magazines in the past. Through these different platforms I have learned about many kinds of love, from friendship to passion love, unrequited and consummated love. These forms of love have helped me plot my characters better. I also read a lot of love books and watch TV and films about love. I observe and talk about love all the time. It is true that love is very tricky and hard to capture in novels. You need to feel it and experience it for it to ring true in a story. My experience in Film and TV writing has taught me to show and not tell and to make characters relatable. All these work in my advantage during my writing process.
You have described Johannesburg as a “jilted lover,” its soul “stuck somewhere in an ugly, dark place.” I have not been to South Africa but Johannesburg reminds me very much of Lagos, where I have lived for three decades. Both Johannesburg and Lagos are soulful places packed with statues of bitter and buoyant memories. You were born in Johannesburg, and you seem to pay a debt to the place in your work. In a sense, through the pain of your writing, Niq, you do immortalise “Johustleburg.”
Like I say in the novel, “Joburg is part of me and I’m part of Joburg, once you live in Joburg, it touches you more than hands can ever do.” I think what I was trying to do was explore life in Joburg by delving into the lives of ordinary people who face harsh realities. These harsh realities include, homelessness, mental illness, love, and unemployment in a city that once symbolised hope.
Has there ever been any single mission or guiding principle for you when writing?
I write to edutain and cathart. I write to educate, entertain and heal myself. This means that I first identify a topic/theme before I write and then construct a story around it before committing it to paper. So, before I write, I know my story from the beginning to the end. This doesn’t mean a story doesn’t change along the way. If the theme is heavy, I have to try humour to make it readable.
What books or writers first inspired you to write?
Everything in the African Writers Series. From Es’kia Mphahlele to Camara Laye and Ama Ata Aidoo. I read most of the books from that series.
What African novelist writing today inspires you?
There are so many. But since you asked for only one, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is among novelists that inspire me.
What is the best piece of advice you have gotten on writing?
Read, read, and read a lot, then write even if it doesn’t make sense at the moment.
What has been the most challenging book you have ever written?
After Tears. The second book is always a challenge because of the reception the first book received. You always worry whether your readers are going to like it as much as they did with the first one.
I recently had my first book published, so, yes, I am beginning to understand only now the risks and joys of a first book. It is a special totem. How did publishing your first book feel like, also considering that this was exactly a decade after the official end of apartheid and your country’s painful transition to democracy?
Publishing a first book is always a great feeling. You always feel you’re on top of the world because of the recognition you get. Dog Eat Dog came out at the right time when the South African literary landscape was also in a transition from what people thought was ‘apartheid writing’ into post-apartheid literature. People around the world wanted to know what the South Africans, especially the youth, were doing after the end of apartheid. Dog Eat Dog gave them that taste. It gave them the experiences of unemployment, joy, delusion, love, homelessness, and the relationship between whites and blacks. It packaged all this and showed them to the world. That’s why it was so successful according to my standards.
What book are you currently reading?
I’m reading a novel called All Fours by Miranda July
Are there any new projects in the pipeline?
Yes, I’m busy writing a novel. Hopefully it will come out towards the end of the year.