Conversation with novelist Nthikeng Mohlele

By Edward Tsumele

Celebrated novelist and now a playwright Nthikeng Mohlele has been declared author of the Month by Jacana Media, his publisher. This comes shortly after his debut play I Am a Woman at The Market Theatre has opened at the Market Theatre to critical acclaim.

The novelist has authored a number of novels that have left a big mark on the country’s literary scene since he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA in drama, publishing studies and African literature.

Here we republish a conversation the novelist and playwright has just had with Jacana Media after they had selected him as Author of the Month of August.

Mohlele was partly raised in Limpopo and in Tembisa township, and attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a BA in Dramatic Art, Publishing Studies and African Literature. He is the author of six critically acclaimed novels: The Scent of Bliss (2008), Small Things (2013), Rusty Bell (2014), Pleasure (2016), Michael K (2018), Illumination (2019) and the recently published short-story collection, The Discovery of Love (2021).

Where do you get the information or ideas for your novels?  Primarily from a higher and fertile divine power and source that gives without conditions or restraint; then from terrestrial life and events.     What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?   Ninety-nine point nine per cent of everything I have ever written and published was written on an iPhone. Small screen, you see, as insurance against long-winded nonsense – at thought and narrative planes.    What is the most challenging part of writing?  Discipline. The global drug that is social media. Some ‘loneliness’ from writing being a solitary craft by design.     What other books have inspired you?  Hauntings, a short story collection edited by Niq Mhlongo, The Dying Animal by Philip Roth, The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera, Life and Times of Michael K by J.M Coetzee, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.     What is next for Nthikeng Mohlele?  My second short-story collection, following the current one, The Discovery of Love, is expected early 2023. I have also recently completed a new theatre script which I am scrutinising with great love, amusement and a little suspicion.   ‘I wrestled with life and lost.’ So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering fashion – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and anger, humility and ambition, trust and distrust, selfishness and selflessness. A flawed individual with an acute understanding of the roads that must be navigated to achieve even the slightest insight into the human condition. Lyrical, honest and truthful, Mohlele’s prose is both skilled and incisive.  In this haunting tale of love and learning, the existential chaos of a life ravaged by circumstance takes on a rhythm of its own, one bound by loss and loneliness, but also an intelligent awareness of self. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes brutal, occasionally funny and infuriating, a journalist-comrade-lover caught up in the shadow of politics faces treachery and betrayal. Set against the backdrop of a city where love fails and passion wanes, ‘where suffering has no meaning’. Small Things is provocative and absorbing.   In this superb collection, love is the setting in which Mohlele delves into the intricacies of human agency with profound and often unexpected effects.  Deeply atmospheric, The Discovery of Love is a joy to read.  I Am a Woman’ from The Discovery of Love becomes a dazzling, one-woman play, performed by Nqobile Sipamla, Mzansi’s who gives a performance of a lifetime.