What the Trumpeter Said

Description

A thread that binds the ten stories in What the Trumpeter Said is their locations, exotic for some, routine for others – like life itself. Set in Botswana and other parts of Southern Africa, as well as Eastern Europe and the South Pacific, they feature (mostly) ordinary people in extraordinary situations, disentangling themselves from, or rationalising, ambiguous moral challenges. Several of the stories present the ordeals of moving between belief systems, featuring local residents and expatriate aid workers wrestling with racial typecasting and cultural fluidity. In one story, a Jesuit priest in Botswana, who harboured South African freedom fighters during the apartheid struggles and was the victim of a BOSS mail bomb, is confronted by a tormenter from the past. In another story, the kgosi of a small village in Northern Botswana explains a heart wrenching betrayal he was forced to make in the aftermath of the Zimbabwean War of Independence. Later, a teacher in a Kalahari Desert school, dying of cancer, endeavors, against all odds and logic, to build an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the village with help of a devoted student. In all, the stories attempt to capture the wholly human longing for redemption against the enhanced mirror of cultural understanding and tolerance.