Peter Ewart
Joined: 31 Aug 2005 |
Posts: 1797 |
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England. |
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:58 am |
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Jon
Nickie McMenemy's Assegai (Macmillan, London 1973) is about a girl, Thola, and set in Shaka's time, the background deriving from the usual well known published works about that period in Zululand. I think I skimmed through it many years ago but can't remember much - I never have liked the idea of novels which include real people and events, if only because one then inevitably gets a fictionalised version of the various characters. Fictional characters based on what is plausible, even based on amalgams of real people, is a better idea I think.
I agree with John that The Tune that they Play is well-written in a fast, uncomplicated, informal style but for me the drawback is the same as in the above. Cy Endfield's novel, Zulu Dawn (Arrow Books, London 1979) on which the film was based, is very similar indeed in many ways to William Clive's little story, and I suppose was published at the same time as the ZD screenplay was written, although the film buffs will know more than me about that. For me, it disappoints for the same reason as above - it takes real people but creates fictional characters for them, although it does, of course, create some fictional (and plausible) people, which is much better I think. To be fair, I suppose one can't really create a fictional general or colonel, but some of ZD's characters and their utterances seem so far-fetched that, when repeated in the film, ended up way off mark. The end result was a film based on a novel, as opposed to to say, ZULU, which was based on a battle (with "novel type" characters like the Witts!)
Does anyone else have Cecil Cowley's KwaZulu (Cape Town, Struik 1966)? This is the story of the Zulu empire "as told" by Queen Mkabi, chief wife of Senzangakona, who is calculated to have lived for 100 years after her marriage and who is often reported (including in this book) to have committed suicide when witnessing the Zulu defeat at Ulundi in 1879. I mention it here because the story is told as she could have related it and would have known it, so it has to be "semi-fiction" if there is such a thing, but is nevertheless a fairly uncontroversial account, based as it is on most of the known secondary sources and on certain oral testimonies, although some aspects will obviously have been challenged. As "semi-fiction", it is certainly more reliable than, say, the TV series Shaka Zulu, which appears to rely much more on dramatic effect and a strange mixure of stories than on any historical base.
Victorian and Edwardian fiction on Zululand, especially involving the AZW and the civil war - usually through the eyes of farmers, traders and hunters - was prolific, as many adventure yarns for boys appeared in this genre. Haggard & Mitford for example. One of the examples of these I have is Hendricks the Hunter - or the Border Farm: A Tale of Zululand by WHG Kingston (Hodder & Stoughton, London 1908). Chapters such as "Caught by the Zulus" and "Escape from Cetchwayo" were obviously intended to appeal to the imagination of lads, and books like this were very popular as school prizes. More cerebral material (I'm not suggesting Haggard's books were non-cerebral!) is to be found, however, although muich of this takes you away from the AZW and Zululand generally.
Peter
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